Navigation
- Purpose of navigation
In order to provide a way for users to get from my home page to the rest of my site without difficulty I designed my navigation to organize it so. Honestly this was not diffucult, mainly because my site rarely moves beyond three levels, therefore requiring secondary navigation. This page is a good example of one requiring secondary navigation, and that navigation is positioned at the bottom of this page.
- Common conventions
In general, my site conforms to web design conventions, as it should. This is continued in my navigation. First of all, my navigation can be found on the left hand side, above the fold but below the head. My secondary navigation at the bottom of this page follows another of these conventions. As you can see, all of the text in the secondary navigation is blue and underlined, except for the "navigation" text. This is because we are on the navigation page. In a way, this difference allows the user to see where they are in my site, and therefore find their way around more easily.
- Site ID
On this web site the site ID sits in the top, left hand corner as part of my header. The user knows they are still on my site because that head and site ID are still in place. It works its magic by sitting on the top of every page, framing my site. Additionally, I have worked hard to make sure my site ID looks like a logo by making the typeface distinctive and recognizable.
- Get back home
Obviously, one important part of navigation is being able to get back to the homepage. All of my pages have a button to the homepage in the main navigation, and in the page footer. On top of this, I also linked my Site ID to my homepage. This page is one of many examples of these ideas on my website.
Intro • Page Layout • Page Copy • Navigation • Home Page Development