[Sigia-l] Isn't that horse dead yet? (was: "meta-"navigation and before that: global navigation meta navigation)

[Steve Krug]

I've been toying with the idea of de-cloaking (being a chronic lurker) and
commenting on this for a while now, since I spent a lot of time five years
ago thinking about what to call these little dickenses (About Us, Site Map,
Contact Us, etc.), and had finally settled on "utilities" as the pick of
the potential-name litter for a number of reasons.

But the impulse to comment was in direct conflict with one of the few
strict rules of personal behavior I have for myself: Never engage in an
argument that has "meta"-anything in the topic. 

But then Donna Fritzsche was nice enough to reference me

> There is a good list and some comments in Steve Krug's book "Don't Make
> Me Think" on p66.

so I thought I'd throw another notion or two on the fire. To me, the
principles that count are:

- It's a very good idea to separate these apparatus/furniture/moving parts
from the content categories. This makes for two smaller, more approachable,
and easier to scan lists.

- The distinction between the two lists should be clear. But this can be as
simple as

                                                 Util-1   Util-2    Util-3
Category-1  Category-2  Category-3  Category-4  Category-5  

  or

Category-1
Category-2
Category-3
Category-4 
Category-5
           [small amount of white space]
Util-1
Util-2
Util-3
Util-4

- It's often nice to make the utilities list typeface a little smaller.
Seems to make them jump out a little more (oddly enough), suggests that
they're not quite as important (that old visual hierarchy thing), and it's
a pretty familiar convention at this point. Being at the very top of the
page has also some conventional gravitational pull.

- Whether Contact Us and About XYZ belong with the categories or the
utilities depends on the site. For a university, for instance, "About XYZ
University" might well belong at beginning of the category list, because so
many people who come to a university site want to learn...about the
university. (As opposed to the small number of people who come to
Amazon.com with a primary goal of learning...about Amazon.com.) 

And now, back into the shadows.

Steve

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Steve Krug               Advanced Common Sense
skrug at mindspring.com          www.sensible.com       
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