University Web Services
Best Practices
Navigation
University-Wide Navigation
Unless there are overriding reasons, the top navigation on any university page will have the standard university navigation bar. This bar consists of links to Index, Search, Directories, and Maps.
This is an important element in establishing a sense of being "at" Boise State. Also, these are the areas of the main university that get used most frequently by visitors. Providing these links will increase the sense your visitors have of being able to find what they need.
If the standard university navigation bar is used, those four words must be used, used in that order, and all four links must be included.
The words must be linked to the following urls:
- http://www.boisestate.edu/index/
- http://www.boisestate.edu/search/
- http://www.boisestate.edu/directory/
- http://www.boisestate.edu/maps/
Primary Navigation
Primary navigation should be on the left of the page.
This convention is widely practiced and is endorsed by major designers around the world. For example: http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/bestwebdev.html. Top navigation is less favorable, as it doesn't work well with varying browser widths.
Links in the primary navigation area should be specific to the department. Outbound links (see Glossary) should not be placed the primary navigation. If they do, they must be identified as such.
The underlying concept is something called "affordance," which has to do with how humans process information. Basically it means that once we set expectations, people tend to, well, expect them. Department-specific navigation will go into the left menu (there's no place else for it to go), but if one of seven goes outbound, then the expectations aren't met. Do this enough and users start to report frustration and confusion.
Primary navigation should never link to a non-HTML file, for similar reasons. If the main point of the link is a pdf (or whatever), the link should go to an intermediary page that contains explanatory text, the link to the PDF, plus a link to download the reader.
Secondary Navigation
If required, secondary navigation belongs in a box flush right on the page. Secondary navigation is useful when a portion of a website contains a set of related pages. An example would be this Best Practices document, which needs its own navigation, but which navigation is not needed elsewhere at the UWS site.
Secondary navigation is useful when a portion of a website contains a set of related pages. An example would be this Best Practices document, which needs its own navigation, but which navigation is not needed elsewhere at the UWS site.