[Sigia-l] global navigation meta navigation

[Amanda French]

I like the terminology of "primary," "utility," and "footer" 
navigation, and the article linked to gives a good, clear definition of 
"global" navigation: navigational elements that appear on every page on 
the site.

The term "meta-navigation" is at the very least imprecise, but I can 
see why some might incorrectly call the utilities and footer links 
meta-navigation. They (usually) lead to pages that are childless 
orphans at the highest level of the navigation, unlike the links in the 
primary navigation, which lead you further down in the site structure.

It does seem as though people want a good collective term to embrace 
both utilities and footer links in order to distinguish them from the 
primary-secondary-tertiary navigation. How about "brevigation"? I just 
now coined it from the Latin "brevis," for "shallow"--I figure it 
implies "shallow navigation."

Amanda


On Jun 2, 2005, at 10:22 AM, Patrick Grizzard wrote:

> Joining this thread a little late, but I generally break global 
> navigation down into the following categories: primary, utility and 
> footer (see 
> http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000103.php). 
> In this context, the items listed below (contact, help, search, etc.) 
> would be considered utility navigation, i.e. - "tools for the user 
> that will support the main tasks, but are not tasks themselves." Along 
> with local navigation, these are the nodes I would normally include in 
> a site map.
>
>
> :Patrick
>

-----
Amanda L. French, Ph.D.
CLIR Post-Doctoral Fellow in
Scholarly Information Resources

Digital Library Initiatives
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