[Sigia-l] right hand nav

[Anders Ramsay]

Well, I can't think of any good examples, and there may be a good reason for
that--it may not be a good idea...

By placing navigation on both sides of the screen, you either need to have
an implementation that scales to fit the screen (tables or Flash) or you
create an, IMHO, unnecessary limitation on available real estate in order to
ensure that your lowest common denominator users will be able to see both
sides of the screen.  At the same time, you'll be making it difficult for
users to associate the relationship between the navigation on the right with
that on the left, since you've got all the web content in the site between
them.

There is a reason why nav menus on the left or top have become
predominant--they scale reasonably well (down or across respectively), and
users tend to understand them.

I look forward to seeing any examples from the list that show otherwise :-)

Barring that, I would recommend keeping all your navigation in one place,
and instead focus on how content is currently organized at the top level,
and work on reducing the number of top-level links.  After that, you could
use some flavor of the Explorer style expanding menus to make the
menu/submenus more compact.

-Anders

On 7/16/02 10:15 AM, Katherine Lumb at KLumb at semaphorepartners.com wrote:

> Hi all:
> 
> I have a client with a very deep site, and I want to break their nav into two
> sections: main nav on the left, and then secondary nav within deeper sections
> on the right. My client is extremely resistant to breaking the nav at all,
> even though  they want to stick with straight HTML and their nav would end up
> cascading a couple window heights below the fold...
> 
> I want to show her some examples to put her mind at ease. Can anyone give me
> some good examples of a nav that breaks down exactly this way (main nav on
> left, secondary on right)? She needs to see it exactly (she's very literal
> minded). Brand name sites would be best -- they'll have greater credibility in
> her mind. 
> 
> Thank you very much,
> 
> K
> 
>> Katherine K. Lumb   Content Designer
>> p 646.336.3418   f 646.336.3433   klumb at semaphorepartners.com
>> .......................................................................
>> 
>> Semaphore Partners     www.semaphorepartners.com
>> 
>> "Top 15 Interactive Agencies"  2002 Advertising Age
>> "Top 20 Interactive Agencies"  2001 Adweek
>> "Top 25 Professional Services Firms"  2001 IDC Ranking
>> "100 Most Technically Innovative Companies in the World"  2001 InfoWorld
>> 
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