Comments on: Making AJAX navigation optional

By: Alex Egg

Alex Egg — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:18:12 +0000

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!

By: Kip

Kip — Fri, 19 May 2006 13:11:51 +0000

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.)

By: Madness

Madness — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:24:47 +0000

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.

By: dreamer

dreamer — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 18:42:53 +0000

However, the same concept works with â��Advanced searchâ��, doesnâ��t it?

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.

It wonâ��t be a problem turning the option around, as in giving the AJAX navigation and offering a â��reduce optionsâ�� link.

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.

By: Erol

Erol — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 12:11:55 +0000

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