Which type of navigation do you think is better for a Home Page?
1.) Navigation Tabs horizontally across the top
or
2.) Menu Bar in the Left Column
or
3.) Both Horizontal Navigation Tabs and a Menu Bar in the Left Column
Thanks,
TomTees
It depends on your site design and structure … if there was a single answer, web design would be a whole lot less interesting.
definitely not 3)
Why do you say that?
Too confusing?
Too much clutter?
TomTees
But there must be some rules-of-thumb as to why you’d choose one over the other? :-/
BTW, r937, I don’t have any examples at the moment, but it seems to me that a lot of websites have both a left navigation area and horizontal navigation tabs as well.
It seems to me that you would want to use Horizontal Navigation Tabs for major areas within your website. Whereas a Left Column is good for things like User Tools (e.g. Log-In, Update Preferences, etc) as well as things which are noteworthy but maybe not as important as the Tabs would be.
Isn’t that what SitePoint does?
TomTees
for some reason i (mis)understood your first post as suggesting that the same links would be found in both the top nav and side menu
obviously, you should have as many different types of navigation as necessary
i personally favour three – top, side, and footer
Part of my problem is the whole circular logic thing, i.e. In order to build “A” I need “B”, but in order to build “B” I need “A”?!
Currently I don’t have a lot of content on my website - although I’m working on that as fast as I can.
In the mean time, I am trying to get a basic website structure set up so that I have enough to put something online and let the web crawlers and search engines find me. (Not SEO, just being indexed.)
(If I just throw up a blank page that says “Hello World”, I won’t likely be indexed. So I need something decent enough so that I will be indexed (and searchable). That will buy me time so that in a few months when people can find me I will have a better looking site!)
Having limited content makes it challenging to fill out my home page.
Personally I like horizontal Navigation Tabs, but then again, it seems like a lot of websites your a Left Column to highlight keys sub-sections and content.
And that is what caused me to create this thread.
Hope that makes more sense?!
TomTees
Where the two menus perform different functions, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a horizontal menu and a vertical menu. For example, the horizontal menu could list four or five broad sections of the site, and then within each section, the left menu would give a more detailed selection of pages. Personally I think that that works better having two horizontal menus, and then it is easier to see the relationship between the two, but it’s still a valid design choice.
Rule of thumb - what works best for your site.
Part of it depends on what kind of content you’ve got, and whether you need to maximise the screen space you have available.
One website I run is for local bus timetables, and so a key consideration is the amount of space that a large data table takes up - I wanted to maximise that space, to reduce the chance of the table running out of space on smaller screens and reduce the number of separate tables needed (which would improve usability and printing), so I’ve used a horizontal menu.
Another website has content that flows much more, mostly text with some illustrations. To avoid having either excessively long lines or too much dead space, I’ve used a vertical menu down the side, to deliberately reduce the available space for the main content. Making best use of the page when printing is not an issue because the content just reflows to fit the page.
If you are using fly-out menus, I would recommend a horizontal menu - it works more like the traditional OS menus, and gives a bigger hotspot to aim at when following from the menu item onto the submenu.
Okay, rules of thumb.
Navigation tabs semantically are for when the content can also work as-is on the same page. When that content is condensed in to tabbed navigation, that can make it easier to navigate those different sections of the page.
A left menu bar navigation is more suitable for a complete-site navigation. You can also pull out major sections from the left navigation and compose them as top-of-page navigation.
i’ve noticed that top navigation seems to be taking over as the definite leader on websites these days; that does not necessarily mean it’s better, but that makes it better. it’s easier for someone to use the site because it fits into their expectations for a website. top nav works a little better with the trend to have websites centered with potentially a lot of white space on either side for people on 1900 pixel wide screens.
one thing that’s definitely worth considering is what the menu items are… if there are a small number of main headings and little to no chance of more being added, top navigation works great. If they may expand, a vertical navigation can accomodate that better.
My initial inclination would actually be opposite what pmw57 is suggesting (if I’m understanding correctly)… I would expect primary categories to be tabs across the top and a supplemental side nav to delineate secondary sections of each primary category.
but really it could go both ways, and you could indicate which with placement and hierarchy. for instance if the top bar extends across the whole page including the left nav, then it would be the primary categories. if the side nav extends beside the content AND the horizontal menu, then it’s probably the primary categories
Agreed.
one thing that’s definitely worth considering is what the menu items are… if there are a small number of main headings and little to no chance of more being added, top navigation works great. If they may expand, a vertical navigation can accomodate that better.
Agreed.
My initial inclination would actually be opposite what pmw57 is suggesting (if I’m understanding correctly)… I would expect primary categories to be tabs across the top and a supplemental side nav to delineate secondary sections of each primary category.
I agree mostly with this, yet I can see his way too.
For me, I would expect there to be 6-8 horizontal tabs to denote major sections, and then miscellania in the left margin. (Although I can see PMW57’s logic of selecting a major section in the left margin and the tabs almost represent “Major Section - Page 1”, “Major Section - Page 2”, etc.
I guess it comes down to the content.
Someone told me before to “Let your content drive the web design and layout” and I think he/she was right!
but really it could go both ways, and you could indicate which with placement and hierarchy. for instance if the top bar extends across the whole page including the left nav, then it would be the primary categories. if the side nav extends beside the content AND the horizontal menu, then it’s probably the primary categories
Seems logical.
Thanks,
TomTees
i think Horizontal Navigation Bar is much better than vertical
I’m personally not a big fan of having a horizontal and vertical menu on a page. I feel the best would be a one or the other with rollover dropdowns (horizontal) or dropouts (vertical). Tuts can be found all over, including downloadable code. I feel it also gives a bit of an ‘ooh-ahh’ aspect to a site.
Horizontal navigation across the top is your “Global Navigation” so it is advisable to keep on each page.
Left menu depends on content group, and what information you want to showcase when your users scan your page.
well it’s preferable to have menus in the header & footer part for SEO purposes.
As regards the left side it might be OK if you’re presenting specific information which concerns a particular page
no, it isn’t
and besides, this forum is ~not~ about seo
It’s not but the issue discussed is related to it
It’s just a matter of a good design, header & footer menus should be presented on all the sites pages both for easier navigation & better indexing.
first of all, that’s only your opinion
you make it sound like every web site has to have header and footer menus, and of course that’s not true at all
the best answer was already given, in post #2