Making AJAX navigation optional
I just put up a proof of concept for the AJAX chapter of my book. For years I have ranted about DHTML multi level menus simply assuming that every user wants to have every page in the sitemap as an item in the navigation.
My idea was to make the enhanced navigation optional and allowing the user to decide initially.
Check out the example:
It uses PHP to only provide a chunk of the full navigation automatically replacing the current link with a strong when JS is unavailable and when JavaScript is available it offers a link that turns the navigation into a multi level tree menu loading the main page content via XHR.
What do you think? Helpful? I think it is a lot less obtrusive than a lot of fancy menu systems out there while offering the same options.
April 10th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
I think it’s too much. It works very well and I understand how it works, and I’m interested as a developer.
But I doubt it will be really helpful to users who just want to find their way on a site. The “average” user thinks (that’s my opinion) that the site offers by default the best navigation they could come up with.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:53 am
“Don’t mention the mechanics.”
You cannot possibly expect the everyday user to guess or know the difference between a “regular” and an “advanced” navigation. And you wouldn’t stand a chance explaining it.
I am absolutely positive that users would consider such a choice irritating (“What’s this choice for?”), confusing (“Where’s the difference?”), maybe even offensive (“Am I not good enough to start with the advanced mode in the first place?”). Heck, even I would be confused, and I make my living with this.
While integrating good examples of how to gracefully downgrade an AJAX navigation, in my opinion this particular method is not applicable in real life.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hmm, maybe. However, the same concept works with “Advanced search”, doesn’t it?
It won’t be a problem turning the option around, as in giving the AJAX navigation and offering a “reduce options” link.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Just wanted to say HI, and to give my 2 cents about this. I think that the concept is great, but sometimes it takes too much time from the developer to think about those 1% guys who whould actualy use such an option. Sometimes it’s best to think about those 99% who don’t want to care about selection. Nevertheless the concept seems usable…
Erol/HIT
April 11th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
This is hardly the same concept. An “advanced search”, while the wording might be similar, is self-explainatory. It offers a means to do a more thorough search, it offers more options. It offers more.
“Advanced navigation” is not what it claims to be: it is not “advanced” to the user. To him, it simply is another kind of navigation. It looks different, it responds differently, but in the end it does the exact same thing the “simple” navigation does, it does not offer any more options. It doesn’t offer more.
The customizing aspect is way too overrated. If your concept is complex, users will try to adopt to it or stop bothering and leave. Hardly a user will really try to customize a common website to his needs, and if so most of the time just to fiddle around without a real goal. In the past ten years, I have seen the customizing concept fail so (i.e. Dr. Cox’ “SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”) often I would only recommend it in web sites which are highly personalised in the first place.
If your concept is too complex for the targetted user: change the concept.
April 14th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
hmm, it has an odd behavior in some situations, IE, click on advanced navigation, then products, then cms then products again things start acting in a weird way.
As previously said I don’t really find this to be a necessary improvement.
May 19th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
I think the concept is good — but would offer it as a “low-bandwidth” aspect. IOW: at the entry of the site, the user can choose a “high/broadband” or “low/dial-up” bandwidth. This menu could be one of several different aspects of the bandwidth-related customization. The non-ajax version of the menu will load much faster for a dial-up user — and they’ll appreciate that. (Yes, some of us still have a wide user base that uses dial-up, unfortunately.)
January 12th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Hi,
I was looking at your ajax navigation sample and wanted to point out a few limitations to you.
1. There is no back/forward button support
2. There is no way to directly navigate/add to favorites to a page
That’s it, but those are to big issues. I am experiencing the same problems with my site also!