ISSUE-62: What should be best practice for position and structure of navigation?

What should be best practice for position and structure of navigation?

State:
CLOSED
Product:
Best Practices Document
Raised by:
Kai Scheppe
Opened on:
2005-11-16
Description:
In the BP document we talk in section 5.3 about navigation.
In this section we make many points

- URLs should be short
- a site map, in form of a link list, would work well
- don\'t put too many navigational links on a page
- when you accesss a link you should get what you bargained for
- use the same type of navigation and group them as much as you can
- use access key if you can
- provide further information about the target of the link, if warranted
- don\'t use a lot of image maps and make sure the device can handle them
- don\'t use refresh, redirect or spawned windows if you can avoid it

However, what is missing is where the author should put navigation.

Why is this important?
Because we are aiming to have both PC user as well as mobile users view
one source of content.
That means the navigation must work for both.

Currently PC type navigation is on the upper left, which does not work
for mobile devices, because it blocks content.

So, how then are people supposed to structure their navigation?
Especially if they do NOT have content adaptation at their disposal?


Suggested solution:
Use flat navigation, meaning something that is thin, unobtrusive and is
located on the upper edge of the screen.
It would work for both PCs and mobile devices.
If you have content adaptation capabilities, restructure common vertical
PC type navigation into flat, horizontal navigation.
Related Actions Items:
No related actions
Related emails:
  1. RE: [minutes] Thursday Dec 1 teleconference (from paul.walsh@segalamtest.com on 2005-12-02)
  2. [minutes] Thursday Dec 1 teleconference (from dom@w3.org on 2005-12-01)
  3. [minutes] Thursday Dec 1 teleconference (from dom@w3.org on 2005-12-01)
  4. Re: ACTION-104 / ISSUE-62 (from andrea@trasatti.it on 2005-11-30)
  5. New BP Draft 1k (from jo@linguafranca.org on 2005-11-28)
  6. RE: ACTION-104 / ISSUE-62 (from jo@linguafranca.org on 2005-11-28)
  7. [minutes] Thu Nov 24 teleconference (from dom@w3.org on 2005-11-24)
  8. ISSUE-62: What should be best practice for position and structure of navigation? (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2005-11-16)

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Jo Rabin <jo@linguafranca.org>, Daniel Appelquist <daniel.appelquist@vodafone.com>, Chairs, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux <dom@w3.org>, François Daoust <fd@w3.org>, Staff Contacts
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