[Sigia-l] RE: Sigia-l digest, Vol 1 #542 - 13 msgs

[Edwards, Richard]

Michael Piastro,

All pages could link to a "site map" where you list all of your pages as a
comprehensive multi-level outline.  "Leaf" pages (your in-depth information
pages) could popup in a detail window that offers a single "close" button.
Alternatively, these could load in the main window with a solitary "back"
button.  In your main pages, these detail pages could be summoned from
simple embedded links.  Notice that these navigation techniques do not need
any fancy DHTML.

On the backend, put all of your navigational elements into a single
"include" file for use on every page in your site.  Then, whenever you
add/modify/remove a link to/in/from your navigation scheme, simply change it
in the navigational include file.  This keeps your site's navigation easy to
manage.

Huge sites, like www.yahoo.com, that have a deep multi-level page hierarchy
simply summarize their complexity by displaying only the top two levels,
plus detail of the current navigational branch.  Smaller sites can benefit
by web users' familiarity with this categorical approach, especially if the
site's entire content can be depicted by a single static top level map.  In
this case, there is no need for clever code to dynamically generate the path
of "bread crumbs" that depict the current branch.

And finally, for ease of page/link naming, use a simple mnemonic convention
to name your pages.  Perhaps "glue" descriptive lowercase words together
using only capital letters to mark the beginning of multiple words.  It is
probably easiest to use the exact text of your embedded links for these
descriptive words.

My two cents.

--- Richard Edwards.  310-847-5372.  ACS. 

 -----Original Message-----

Message: 13
To: sigia-l at asis.org
From: Michael_Piastro at harte-hanks.com
Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 11:14:43 -0400
Subject: [Sigia-l] good examples of tertiary nav. on small content sites

I am architecting a small content site, where it is conceivable to place 
every site page in a navigation structure. The issue at hand is whether or 
not to use "index pages" that lead to secondary/tertiary level content 
pages, versus having these pages accessible via some form of navigation. 

The first issue is whether to offer subnav. from the home page via DHTML, 
etc. If we do offer subnav in the main navigation, the need for index 
pages for secondary level pages seems to disappear.

The second issue is how to deal with tertiary level pages - these pages 
typically provide more "in depth" information about the subject the parent 
secondary level page deals with. For example, a secondary level page 
"symptoms of diabetes" might provide information about diabetes symptoms 
to a certain depth, while the tertiary level page "symptoms in depth" 
might provide additional information only hardcore information seekers are 
interested in. This is compounded in that there might be in-depth pages 
for each of the symptoms of diabetes (fatigue, blurred vision, etc.). So 
one secondary level page may have multiple tertiary level children. The 
issue whether I'm struggling with is whether and how to offer tertiary 
level navigation, versus some type of index on the secondary level parent 
with a "back to index" link on the tertiary level page.

Examples? Suggestions?

Michael Piastro
Information Architect
Harte-Hanks 



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