Spotlight: Navigation

Here’s a snippet from a very good, very concise article at A List Apart titled Where Am I?:

Any good global navigation scheme should, at a glance, answer the top three questions every user has at the back of their mind on any page:

1. Where am I? (Present)
2. Where can I go? (Future)
3. Where have I been? (Past)

The article talks about the lack of good navigation in websites, and offers a solution for header navigation that provides a simple means for visually determining your location within a website at a glance. I’ve worked hard to incorporate things like ZenPhoto into this website and force the header to reveal your location even when in an external part of the site like the gallery. But this article has inspired me to take my next design a step further and to think one step further about navigation in the sites that I design. As always, proper markup and creative use of CSS really can make the web a better place to be! Be sure to check it out.