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

[Benjamin Speaks]

I agree with most of your comments below.

With this discussion in mind I wanted to get some feedback from my peers...

I have been asked to provided feedback on a unique project that will be
using a rather expensive CMS to serve up data in two different languages:
English and Chinese.  In addition, the users of this particular site will be
skewed over the age of 40.  As many of you know many traditional Chinese
manuscripts are read from right to left (yes, the has changed over time but
many learned to read the classics this way).  We, "English" types, of
course, like to read from left to right.

Has anyone seen any usability and/or eye-tracking research on dual language
sites that can address this issue?  In particular any research on navigation
placement when dealing with multinational audiences?

Thanks,
Ben

----- Original Message -----
From: "Welie, Martijn van" <martijn.van.welie at satama.com>
To: "'James Kalbach'" <kalbach at scils.rutgers.edu>; <sigia-l at mail.asis.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 10:56 AM
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] potential challenge to the dominance of the left nav
bar in local navigation


> From: James Kalbach [mailto:kalbach at scils.rutgers.edu]
> > [Jon Hanna wrote:]
> > > matches a read-content-then-go-elsewhere usage
> > > pattern to LTR reading
> >
> > Exactly. From all of the tests we performed with the Audi websites, I
> > believe this to be most important benefits from the
> > right-hand navigation.
>
> Although this reasoning does not seem bad at first sight, I don't think it
> is as simple as that. Especially at the new Audi website there are many
> aspects that compromise the user experience. I personally don't like the
> right-hand navigation at all. The way the subnavigation then grows from
> right to left feels even more weird, at least at the audi.de site. Try the
> site with a fullscreen browser, like I use, and you'll find the navigation
> to be miles away from the content. It breaks the link between content and
> navigation.
>
> Having said that, I like to throw in some other considerations:
> - Putting navigation left indeed puts more emphasis on the navigation. In
> some cases where the users are not very familiar with the site's content,
> this is exactly what you want. It communicates what there is to find and
how
> it is structured. In other cases this may be less important and you can
> decide to have users focus on the main content. So it is not about whether
> right or left is better, it is about what you want to achieve.
> - Right navigation remains dangerous because of the fact that it easily
> appears out of sight, depending how you have (not) coded the behavior of
> navigation. With the Audi site they have tried to solve it but I think it
is
> clearly still problematic to say the least. Further more, if windows are
> moved users move them down or to the right (or both) of the screen. This
> leads to the fact that navigation is (again) out of sight....Top left is
> simply the safest option.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martijn van Welie
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