20. April 2011

Creative Navigation Menus

Ich denke, man kann nicht früh genug anfangen sich ein paar Oster-Lektüren zur Seite zu legen. Ich habe beispielsweise das hier für Euch: Showcase of Creative Navigation Menus: Good and Bad Examples.

Good navigation is the main cornerstone of an effective website. In practice, however, it’s often a tough challenge to come up with a meaningful, unambiguous way to organize, arrange, and display content to users; and it’s often not much easier to find a visually interesting solution either. The wide adaption of JavaScript libraries like jQuery is making it increasingly easy to add various kinds of sleek animations to navigation design. For instance, many recent promo websites are essentially single page websites with an array of animation effects used to make navigation a smoother and richer user experience. We need to be very careful and cautious when using these dynamic effects in our designs. A simple, calm navigation is usually much more user-friendly than an evolved, dynamic one. Users want to use the website, not be baffled by the weird and hardly usable navigation. But that’s not to say that a creative navigation should be avoided at all costs; in some contexts, an interactive menu does make sense, especially when it comes to promotional websites such as online campaigns, portfolios or advertising — on these sites, interactive navigation can lend some dynamics to an otherwise dull and boring experience.

Die nächsten Tage werden wir alle zu viel essen, lange im Stau stehen und kurz im Regen dem Osterfeuer zusehen. Da hilft es Abends wenigstens einen guten Artikel zu haben, wenn man aus dem Fesnter schaut und vom Büro träumt.