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

[Peter Merholz]

> that in the early days of web design it was customary to design the
default
> (i.e., must see elements to use the page) for a 640X480 screen with the
idea

True. But I don't think it's simply for the notion that the content can
drift to the right, and that navigation should be placed in the One Place We
Know It Will Be Seen, which is on the left-hand-side.

Because, as many sites show, navigation is commonly placed along the top,
too. Local navigation, though, is almost never placed along the top.


Back In The Early Days of the internet, when sites were new and didn't have
a lot of content, having top-navigation that included local navigation was
quite common. As you got deeper into the site, new navigation rows would
appear beneath the prior ones, mimicking your decent.

This is probably obvious, but since this conversation is getting somewhat
academic, it's worth saying that this is likely because the number of items
in a local navigation can get quite large, and try to squeeze them in a row
across the top is nearly impossible. Using the left-hand nav allows for
nearly infinite navigation items.

Dear old CNET pioneered the left-hand navigation
http://web.archive.org/web/19961022174919/http://www.cnet.com/
when they found that the more links they offered at any time, the higher the
number of pages people went to.

CNET's design was so successful, it was copied by everyone.

In fact, the current NYT has nearly infinite navigation items, so I wonder
on what they plan to do with them. I fear they'll place them in a pull-down,
thus obscuring the range of content the NYT has to offer.

This whole discussion is hardly new. A search on google for "left-hand top
navigation web design" returns 17,600 results.

--peter