Every usability study I've seen in last several years showed the nav menu on the right performing at least as well as on the left, as long as it was designed with strong affordances and, as was mentioned, wasn't killed by resizing, and is more ergonomic because of its location near the scroll bar. Moreover, the pervasiveness of blogs, who often have right-hand navigation, makes it at least as common a convention. I think the left-hand nav convention died in 2001-ish. In any case, it's not a worry as far as I can discern.
One caveat: don't mix ads and navigation; then navigation does take a hit in findability and usage. On Sat, Sep 20, 2008 at 5:33 AM, Todd Zaki Warfel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: > We've been working on a number of web-based applications recently and used > a right-hand navigation/action panel. Some of these past applications had > the standard horizontal navigation across the header and sub-nav below that. > Others used a primary navigation across the header and sub-navigation in the > left rail. > > We chose to have the primary 3-5 sections as primary navigation tabs across > the header. Global actions, which are kind of sub-navigation, but kind of > not, have been put in the right hand rail. Additionally, status information > (e.g. the Account Balance $530.00) lives in this right hand panel as well. > So, we've made it into a global status and actions panel. > > We've done some A/B testing with the old applications and the new > redesigned framework and it's been very successful so far. There's some > initial delay, as is expected since these guys have been using the old > system for over 5 years. But after that initial delay, the efficiency has > increased over 20%. > > I'd contribute these improvements to a number of things: > 1. The overall redesign is organized better, visual spacing improved, > readability improved. > 2. We've surfaced global areas into a common, predictable area. Something > they had to hunt for under a number of different menus before. > 3. The content is first, actions are second in reading left to right. So, > the content these people need to access in order to complete the task is > first in the screen, shaving off some time, effort, and cognitive load. > > > > Cheers! > > Todd Zaki Warfel > President, Design Researcher > Messagefirst | Designing Information. Beautifully. > ---------------------------------- > Contact Info > Voice: (215) 825-7423 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > AIM: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Blog: http://toddwarfel.com > Twitter: zakiwarfel > ---------------------------------- > In theory, theory and practice are the same. > In practice, they are not. > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
