Well if your concern is always having the menu on the screen for the user to find then just use JavaScript to position it according to the view-port. If the user has JavaScript turned off then it will always appear at the top and not move. The user has a number of ways of navigating back to the top of the screen to use the navigation, scroll wheel, scroll bar, back to top links and the home button all achieve that.
Wrapping the entire content area in an overflow div is not going to achieve a good result, you have to set a width and height on it and the scrollbar on the right-hand side is going to be slightly offset from its normal position. In all honestly, if it was going to improve usability of the website then we'd see quite a few more websites employing it. S -----Original Message----- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 10:02 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout > -----Original Message----- > From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Samuel Richardson > Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:40 AM > To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org > Subject: RE: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout > > There is nothing to stop you from fixing the navigation to > the same place in > your page design. I don't really work on a site like this per se. I guess I am just looking for an answer if the technology of the Internet shouldn't be used in a different way than what we do at the moment. We currently design websites in a very inconvenient way which forces users to always scroll back to the top of the page before they can continue to a different page. Personally I feel our minds are still stuck with designing for print and we haven't quite understood yet how to design big amounts of information for the Internet. > That only leaves the other area of the page which is > contained in an overflow, there's not much point in this > either as it's only > going to serve to annoy your visitors as they're scrolling a view port > inside the browser rather then the browser window itself. Interesting point. In a way I see what you mean: users are accustomed to having their scrollbar at a certain position of their screen. The question is: would users be willing to accept scrollbars of different sizes and positions in exchange for a menu that is available at all times? Perhaps we would need a standard to ensure that the scrollbar of the content area is always on the right hand side of the browser window...? > I > suppose it does > stop the navigation from scrolling off the screen but if > that's really a > concern then you're either not designing your page properly > or trying to > force the user to do something you shouldn't Don't quite agree with you here. The way we design pages at the moment you cannot prevent the menu to scroll off the screen. And there's no real way for users to continue browsing other than getting back up to the menu. Of course we can always put a text navigation at the bottom of the page, but there are two problems with that: 1. Who says the user is at the very bottom of the page? There might be that much information on the page that the user can't see the top or the bottom. 2. The text navigation at the bottom looks completely different to the menu button at the top which the user clicked on in first place. This means the user's mind has to switch between two different menus - that's not really intuitive. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] > Sent: Wednesday, 27 September 2006 9:16 AM > To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org > Subject: [WSG] The usability of a frame-style layout > > There was a time when lots of websites utilised frames, to provide the > advantage of a static menu that is always available on the > screen, no matter > what area of the page the user looks at. > > I am sure we covered the topic enough to agree that frames > are not the way > to go, as they carry accessibility issues with them and can > cause problems > for search engines. So we all moved away from frames and are > now accustomed > to a page layout that contains the menu somewhere at the top > (or top left). > > However, with css we now have the ability to imitate frames > in an accessible > and search-engine friendly way for browsers that support it. > So the question > comes back to usability (and maybe aesthetics): wouldn't it be more > user-friendly to always make the primary navigation available > to users, no > matter what part of the page they are looking at? > > Let's not worry about the problem of aesthetics right now, > but imagine a > site that uses css to create this frame-design: our menu sits > on the left > hand side, our content on the right hand side. We have got a > scroll bar that > only moves the content areas (achieved through overflow). The menu is > available at all times. Which means the users not only are > aware of all of > their options at any given point in time, but they can also > be visually > reminded of their current position in the page (e.g. through > breadcrumbs or > highlighted current menu item). > > A browser that does not support css would simply display our > sample page the > way we currently do it: menu static at the top, the scrollbar > moves the > entire page. No accessibility or search-engine issues. > > I'd be curious to know what people think of that? Did our > passion for Web > Standards make us overlook the advantages of the frame-style > layout? Or are > there usability/accessibility issues I am overlooking here? > > > Andreas Boehmer > User Experience Consultant > > Addictive Media > Phone: (03) 9386 8907 > Mobile: 0411 097 038 > http://www.addictivemedia.com.au > Consulting | Accessibility | Usability | Development > > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************************************* > > > > ******************************************************************* > List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm > Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ******************************************************************* > > ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ******************************************************************* ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
