[Sigia-l] Left-hand nav

[Olly Wright]

Unless i'm missing something, that doesn't make sense!? It's just related to how far your cursor has to travel from its original start point. Fitt's Law in other words. Which is uneffected by being left or right handed. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts's_law

If you are talking touchscreens, then perhaps. But i'd take some convincing.

I like your original assumptions Paola. We've been using similar ourselves. Although coming to an even more radical conclusion: that a site with well designed content needs almost no navigation at all.

Footer nav seems to be working well for us lately (or 'safety net nav' as I like to call it).

Your comments do remind me very much of the current redesign (still in flux) that the gawker network has rolled out: gawker.com

/ Olly Wright


On Mar 4, 2011, at 3:51 PM, minko mihaly wrote:

> Dear Paola,
> 
> my company has lots of preferences :)
> I have one argument to attach:
> People are mostly right handed (unlike me), so when you want to navigate,
> you have to go over the whole screen with your mouse pointer in order to
> click on the desired navigation element. If one puts the navigation
> right-side, than you don't have to cross the screen, the pointer is close to
> your (mostly) right hand. This eliminates the X crossing effect.
> What do you think?
> 
> Misi
> 
> 2011/3/4 Paola Kathuria <paola at limov.com>
> 
>> A gillion (i.e., 11) years ago, I posted to this list in a thread
>> on upside-down L navigation*. This is when global nav is along
>> the top and local nav is in the left-hand column.
>> 
>> I'd been advocating for putting *content* before navigation. That
>> is, local nav on the right.
>> 
>> Assumptions:
>> 
>> a) (in left-to-right reading) the left-hand side is more
>> important that the right
>> 
>> b) content is more important than navigation (you can have a
>> semi-useful site without navigation but not one with content)
>> 
>> c) people click on links to get to content, not site navigation
>> 
>> d) when narrowing a browser, the navigation gets clipped
>> first, not the content - see (b)
>> 
>> e) site navigation is a like a steering wheel in that you can
>> move it to the other side and people will still recognise
>> its purpose by its design
>> 
>> 
>> In the intervening years, most sites now have right-hand local
>> navigation. But some still don't.
>> 
>> A company whose Twitter feed I am following recently announced
>> the launch of a client site redesign. It has local links on the
>> left. I @replied to ask why they favoured left-column nav. They
>> said that "on the whole" they had "no preference".
>> 
>> Why don't (some) web companies have a preference?
>> 
>> Does yours?
>> 
>> 
>> Paola
>> --
>> http://www.paolability.com/
>> 
>> 
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