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Related Articles + Define a site in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Related Links |
Build your own website from scratch. 5. Define Navigation Style / Features (Frames / Navigation Menu / Links / Navigation Bar). Once the content is nearly finished it comes in the issue of inside web navigation. This meaning: how are my visitors going to browse my site? There are several options, from plain text links to complex Dynamic HTML navigation menus and buttons. Here is also where the choice of Frames or No frames is made. Either choice will need you to decide if you want to have the navigation links on the left or the right, at the top or at the bottom. The top and the bottom are better for fewer, more general links; while the left is better for nested links or a bigger quantity of them. Nonetheless with the addition of dropdown menus, the number of links is no longer an issue. For the frames issue, my advice would be NOT using them, because it is better for you in the long run. The support for frames is not available for all browsers and the search engines will not recognize some pages because of them too. And finally, frames can easily be substituted with layers and server-side scripting. Nevertheless, there are some reasons to use frames. These are, first, because there can be nested frames, which allow complex layouts that can be easily done; second, they can save you many headaches from server-side scripting and dynamic content generation; third, they allow complex navigation; last but not least, they allow modular programming and code reusability. In the end is a matter of choice, great sites can be done with and without frames. The most common place to put your navigation menu would be the left column of your site, the top area right below the title banner is a very common place too. There are a few key points in the placement and the content of your navigation menu. One is the functionality, this meaning that if you only need to have 2 or 3 links to different pages, then you might be better of with a top navigation menu, but if you need to put 10 or more links, left is better. You need to take in account the flexibility factor, is your menu going to expand? Will there be more links added once the user clicks on one of those links? This is called nested menus, for example, when the user clicks in the "Artists" link in a music site's navigation menu, a list of artists appears right below the clicked link. Usually the left navigation menu is more flexible than the top one, so if flexibility is an issue, take the left. So as you may have already notices, there are many advantages on using the left side of a webpage as the navigation menu, but don't settle down already, there is no rule that prohibits you from using both, top and left, as navigation menus, in fact several sites use that technique, there is a top bar with the most common links and the left panel is used as a page specific menu. |
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