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

[Eric Scheid]

On 6/6/05 5:14 PM, "Listera" <listera at rcn.com> wrote:

>> Global navigation can be found at the top, left, right, and I've even seen
>> it at the bottom of the page.
> 
> Finally! The news reaches down under.:-)

Bizarre, Ziya, truly bizarre.

I've not made the geography an issue at all, that's been you. Maybe you'd
next force me to admit that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
so that you can once again crow about some magnificent victory ;-)

> Geography makes little sense in defining "global" navigation. Nor does it
> make much sense to force a bunch of disparate items into some highfalutin
> nomenclature just to sound self-important.

I'm saying there is an observable pattern of web design practice. Again and
again, site after site, can be seen this very same thing. But we don't have
a term for it.

Does not having a widely understood term pose a problem? Well, yes. Even
Steve Krug thought we were talking about some other web design pattern
(utility links commonly found near global navigation).

> Trying to dictate what can/should go into global or any other class of
> navigation without context is wasting time.

I've not been trying anything of the sort, not at all.

What actually go into those navigation sections depends entirely on the
context. I said that many messages ago, were you not paying attention?

I'm saying that there are a few commonly observable design patterns to do
with navigation, each with their own attributes suited to their purpose.
There's a widely observed pattern of grouping links to the entry pages for
the major categories or divisions of a website into one block. Then there's
another widely observed pattern of presenting links to pages within the
local section into a group. A third widely observable pattern of grouping
utility links mostly to do with interacting with the website being presented
with less prominence than the first group, while still being omnipresent
like the first group. This third group might contain more than just links,
such as a search field.

Sheesh! Can you imagine every meeting between practicing IAs and their peers
commencing with that ground work? Can't we just attach some handy label to
these patterns ... like global navigation, local navigation, and utility
navigation?

Putting a name to the thing lets us talk about the thing as a thing. It lets
us delve deeper into what works, and what doesn't work. It lets us document
the circumstances in which it might be called for, and circumstances in
which it isn't appropriate and how it would be counter productive. It lets
us document alternative design patterns to consider.

Can you imagine the confusion on a list like sigia-l if we didn't have names
for things like facetted browsing, search forms, search results, best bets,
bread crumb trails, and so on. We'd be saying things like "click on the
links to get to another page" and we'd all be wondering what's so special
about that.

These are commonly observable design patterns. Another commonly observable
pattern is that group of links at the bottom of the page. Which we don't
have a handy label attached to so it makes it difficult to carry on a
conversation about the thing, and lacking that conversation we have
difficulty identifying the useful characteristics of that thing. This thread
is an example to that point: instead of talking about what links might or
might not go into such a group, and under what circumstances and contexts,
and determining other characteristics, attributes, and principles ... we
instead are boring everyone to death as to whether we should point out the
elephant in the room.

So, as IAs, how much do we know about that thing which according to Ziya has
no name? Is that a useful question? How about: how much do we know about
so-called "meta navigation" blocks?

Perhaps if we knew more about that thing a better name may arise. I'm not
averse to that. I'm also not averse to delving deep into what we do, perhaps
with the hope of discovering something new and useful.

> If you want to call it "aboutness navigation," go right ahead...

Well, "aboutness" is such an ugly neologism, so it's not my favourite.

e.