Unit 3 Reading

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Unit 3 Reading

There are so many small details that shouldn’t be small details is what I got out of this weeks reading. Krug says to pay attention to the small details but don’t overblow them…or wait overblow these ones but not others. Like any form of design, there are a number of perfect balances to strive for. Navigation is a beast to work on, but I feel like it’s a good place to start when designing a website. It’s the skeletal structure in my mind for which everything else, the information, to latch on to and grow upon.

So this is a terrible website, clearly, but I bring it here as an example of navigation failure. There is link after link after link, some of them dead and some of them leading to a dead end. I felt like I could go miles and miles deep into website intergalactic space and then there was no hope of return or every finding that again if you did somehow escape.

http://currentmiddleages.org/autocrats/index.php

This may not be the world’s best example, but I love how distinct the tabs are for navigation. The unselected tabs are hard to see if not rolled over, but there is no question which tab you are on.

http://jepcoministorage.com/


This is a good reference link for beginning to design a website's navigation.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/web-design-navigation-showcases/