Navigation Support in Browsers - Page 13

At a minimum, web browsers need to have better support for structural navigation. They should have features for moving up one or more levels in the information architecture from the current page as well as features for visualizing the relationship among the pages visited by the user. Special features should be available for moving to the next and to the previous elements in a sequence of objects (which is different from the Back button found in browsers, which doesn't move to the neighboring object but instead to the previously seen object). Also, links should differ, depending on whether they stay within the current site or point to another part of the Internet.

It would also be helpful to have integration between the client- side knowledge of what the user is doing and the server-side knowledge of the site's structure. An active sitemap might highlight the user's current location as well as visualize his or her trail through the site. And, of course, the search could be integrated with this sitemap and show the main areas of the sites that match the user's current query.

Internet-wide search engines should be integrated with the browser to permit searches that are limited either to sites that the user likes or to specific pages that the user has already seen. How often do you attempt to find something that you know you've seen on the Web? Well, if you could only tell the search engine this, the search problem would be drastically simplified (any individual user will typically have seen no less than a few thousand and, at most, a million pages out of the billions that are available).

One of the most useless navigation aids I have seen on the Web. The user clearly has five different possibilities, but there is no way to know what the possibilities are without rolling the mouse over each of the buttons. Maybe the Olympic Committee wants to ensure that the nerds get some minimal exercise by moving their mouse around. (Wow, I feel my right bicep bulging already.) A navigation interface needs to show all the available alternatives at the same time so that users can make an informed decision as to which option will satisfy their needs best. Not only is it annoying to have to move the mouse around to see the options, it is outright user-hostile to require users to keep the previously seen options in their short-term memory while they consider additional choices.

The final touch of death in the Olympic navigation design comes from the panel on the left part of the screen. This panel supposedly allows users fast access to the main navigation options on later screens, but only if they happen to remember that a blue square stands for "official emblem." Not exactly a particularly natural color association, so users would be forced to study this website for hours to commit the color scheme to long-term memory if they were ever to use it efficiently. And one thing we really know about the Web is that nobody is sufficiently devoted to a site to go through a special training class to use it.

Navigation: Examples - Page 12
Designing Web Usability
Site Structure - Page 14