As far as graphical navbars go, well... designers and possibly clients are gonna argue that the custom font is upholding the brand/style. Which is true. Even though my dept. argues against them here for the same reasons mentioned below, some designers won't give in. Your job then becomes making the nav graphics as light as possible. To the contrary of many people on this list and others, graphics are not evil. If you are frugal with them, include alt info or maybe even image replacement code, you'll be fine. You can't please all the people all of the time. If I need to use your site, or need/want info from it, I'm not gonna leave just because your nav is graphical.
But the bottom line is, the client's paying the bills. They want graphics in the nav, they get graphics in the nav.
G'day
1. They want to use a full page graphic Splash Screen, which displays the brand in all its glory before the user can enter the site.
My opinion:
* Waste of space
* Waste of bandwidth (at the server and user's end)
* Annoying.
I don't have stats on it, but know many people who get annoyed by them (myself included). If there's a "click-through" and I'm still interested after the annoyance, I click on it immediately. If not, I leave.
Here's some links you might show the client:
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/splash/ concludes:
"Splash pages can backfire with users. Rather than enticing them to explore further you repel them clicking and screaming. Splash pages decrease performance, credibility, traffic, and search engine rankings. Bailout rates up to 71% have been reported with some splash pages. If you must use a splash page, make sure it loads quickly, provides bypass links and keywords, and optionally uses cookies to display it just once."
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/amazon.html "Would Amazon.com use that design element on its site?"
2. They want to use images in the Navigation bar to give tight control over the fonts, instead of text.
* They have no control over me turning the images off * The site will take longer to load * Poor eyesight? Can't read the buttons? Can't increase the text size, so I leave
They talk about "old school". Using images for links, just to show a fancy font, is about as old school as it gets. I can't remember the last site I did this on - must be years ago.
Regards -- Bert Doorn, Web Developer Better Web Design http://www.betterwebdesign.com.au/ Fast-loading, user-friendly websites
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