WK3 Reading

CH6 Street signs and Breadcrumbs

People won’t use your Web site if they can’t find their way around it.
Web navigation system is similar to a mall system but the actual process is a little more complex. Basically, you use the store’s navigation systems (the signs and the organizing hierarchy that the signs embody_ and your ability to scan shelves full of products to find what you are looking for.

You go through the same process when you enter a We site
1.Try to find something
2.Decode whether to ask first or browse first.

Some people almost always look for a search box as soon as they enter a site. For everyone else, the decision whether to start by browsing or searching depends o their current frame of mind, how much of a hurry they are in, and whether the site appears to have decent browsable navigation.
If you chose to browse, you make your way through a hierarchy, using signs to guide you. However, eventually, if you cannot find what you are looking for, you will leave.

The unbearable lightness of browsing
Looking for things on a web site and in the real world have a lot of similarities. Like moving around in a physical space and surfing on the internet.

Website
No sense of scale, direction, and location. So
Bookmarks, and Home pages are so important because they tell the places where we are.

Using tabs for navigation
Tabs are one of the very few cases where using a physical metaphor in a user interface actually works. Like the tab dividers in a three-ring binder or tabs on folders in a file drawer, they divide whatever they are sticking out of into sections. And they make it easy to open a section by reaching for its tab.

Try the trunk test
1. Choose a page anywhere in the site at random, and print it.
2. Hold it at arm's length or squint so you cannot really study it closely.
3. As quickly as possible, try to find and circle each item in the list below.
How it is done; Site ID, Page name, Sections, Local navigation, indicators, and search.


Three Links of websites

Describe seven steps to easier web navigation system. it might help you
when you create a website.
http://www.smartisans.com/articles/web_navigation.aspx

Here is the website where describe about tabs when and how to use them.
http://www.ainda.info/pestanas_tabs_en.html


You can have search box on your website.
http://www.ixquick.com/eng/link-instructions.html