Topic:
One of the most important features of a Web site is its navigation controls. The "success" of your site depends on its visitors' abilities to navigate quickly and easily through your Web site.
There are three basic schemes commonly used to create navigation controls:
However, selecting a scheme doesn't guarantee a successful implementation. You'll also need to consider your site's purpose, its graphics, the content, and the underlying directory tree. Planning and proper coding are also important to your navigation controls. In the sections that follow, we'll walk you through the planning and basic preparations for each of the three basic navigation control schemes.
The easiest way to create a confusing and troublesome navigation system is to fail to plan it in advance. Take time to plan and lay out your base Web site structure. Here is an example of a Web layout plan. This image shows the main pages of the Web site and indicates the inter-page links. Using this type of layout, a navigation system and be quickly and easily designed.
Scheme selection is more than a random choice. You need to consider the advantages and draw backs of each type before making your selection.
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
Advantages:
Disadvantages:
No matter which scheme you choose, proper planning and implementation is important. If you choose a graphics-based control system, be sure to include an alternate text version (using the ALT= tags within your IMG tags) so text-only viewers can still navigate around your site.
Listed below you'll find numerous URLs to on-line resources that can help you construct and organize your navigation controls.
Clickable Imagemaps
Text Links
Icon Links
