On 6/22/07, Brandon Stout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm a fan of text menus also. You cannot search an image for the text in it... and even if a search-engine or two supports the alt attribute for images, you can't search the page (ctrl +f) for it. Whenever possible I use text. When people put text below a picture (eg: "left-to-right: Joe, Frank, and Fenton Hardy") and save it as part of the jpg, I trim it back out and position text near the picture. This makes the page size a bit smaller, more searchable, and more CSS friendly. Besides, if one really wants buttons, you can put background colors and borders around text and make it look like a button. Of course, one cannot click background colors.
another vote for text menus. if you want buttons, you can make 'em... there's no reason a button can't have text in it though. it makes it better for screen readers, text searches, search engine spiders, etc. and one can click background colors. you just need to be a bit more creative with your css :)
Generally speaking, your menu system also depends on your content. I like a left nav menu, and a quick-links top-side menu bar for the most common things - just the way Drupal does it. I have, however, noticed a recent turn from navigation menus (usually on the left side, sometimes on the right), especially for sites with high graphical content. Youtube has just top and bottom links. This may be a good idea for graphical content - more screen real-estate for the pictures and videos.
<http://justinhileman.info/tag> illustrates a couple of different but equally viable navigation paradigms. or something like that. at the top, we have primary links. choose these wisely. they should represent the major divisions in your site content. there should only be a couple of them. honest. all of your important site content should be reachable from these primary navigation links. these are the links that can be styled to look like buttons, if you so desire. please don't style them to look like folder tabs, that visual metaphor has been all used up*. in the middle of the page, we have a tag cloud. this is useful for some types of content, but not for others. note that free taxonomies, etc are becoming more prevalent. i.e. several people actually know what that page means. i likes 'em, but they're not useful for navigation on most sites. at the bottom we have service type links. copyright notices, privacy policy, TOS, validation links, etc all belong here. they don't really need to be in your primary navigation menu, since most people will look here for them anyway. if you're going to put other things here (which i'm not opposed to) keep in mind that people won't look here for most links. they'll look here for the afore mentioned legal type stuff, but not for "log out" or "home". it's almost 5 am, so i hope this made a bit of sense. i hope it was relevant too. i'm going to bed. justin -- http://justinhileman.info *note: apple just bailed on the tabs. amazon's down to just a couple, but can't seem to get rid of them completely. byu apparently missed the memo, since their new template has more tabs than ever before... _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
