Four Types Of Navigation

The following information comes from: http://www.oreilly.com As web designers, we need to consider the importance that navigation has on a webpage. A website must flow together, and similar content should be placed together in a way that is easy for your user to navigate. For example, the image below shows an example of a bad navigation design. There are too many links, and makes it hard to find what you are looking for. to fix this, the web designer should utilize sub links and organize things that make sense together. For example, there are multiple tabs on car parts that would make more sense if they were grouped together instead of next to lightbulbs. The author of this article explains that there are five ways to distinguish navigation. They are: type of content, links and transitions to other pages, tasks of seeking the mechanisms, visual layout, and position of navigation on a page. All of these aspects help viewers of your site determine what the main navigation is. There are also three categories of navigation. Structural, Associative, and Utility. This website can be described as being in the Utility category for navigations, because there is no hierarchy of pages and each page connect and help users use the site. Other websites may have a structural or associative navigation system, which is when one page connects to another based on hierarchy or pages are connected based on similar content.