R: [Sigia-l] potential challenge to the dominance of the left nav bar in local navigation

[Luca Rosati]

> Great info, thanks.
>
> Btw, I don't actually hold with the notion that local nav
> *should* always be
> placed on the left or even that this is most usable (even wrote an article
> questioning the origins of the practice way, way back:
> http://www.webreview.com/1997/06_13/strategists/06_13_97_3.shtml)
>  but I do
> think it's important to acknowledge that it has become, if not a defacto
> standard than at least *very* commonly applied.
>
That's ok, I understood. I express myself not very well.
I didn't want appearing critics with your view but just contributing to the
theme ;)

> I'm most interested in this from the perspective that a long standing nav
> convention on a major site is being altered to make way for a new approach
> to marketing (even if that new approach is in mimicking the "old" print
> world) and the implications that has for us as a UI designers.

I think it's also the reason Audi migrated its menu for!
For the main menu has been historically positioned on the left, that
position became a pseudo-standard.

On the one
> hand, having a big bag of tricks that includes the ability to be
> flexible in
> the placement of nav so as to accommodate the variety of
> competing interests
> on a website is commendable; on the other hand, the notion that navigation
> is a component that can be moved willy nilly (and I'm not saying the folks
> at NYT have done this, am more stating this strongly for sake of
> argument ;)
> is one that I find, if not chilling, at least something I want to
> sit up and
> pay attention to/think about.

Good, I agree. There are two extremes, equally wrong: innovation at any
cost; conceiving conventions/heuristics as laws unbreakable.

Ciao, Luca