One of my favorite articles about web design isn’t really about web design. Entitled Flywheels, Kinetic Energy, and Friction, is about creating a frictionless interaction for folks visiting your site, in this case applying to getting through a transaction, though it can be applied to nearly any process.
Less steps is a mantra of mine when I develop a navigation tree. I cringe when a site needs more than six links, but I stick to my guns and keep in mind that site visitors won’t want to memorize all the URIs on the site. When one looks at it like that, I think it is pretty easy to make a simple and intuitive navigation system.
This post isn’t really about good practices as much as it is about me making fun of my friends. A few weeks ago I was chatting with Brian about blogging platforms and noticed that his links were funky. He had pages that existed to link to another page. An extra step, a whole page taking the role of a link in the menu. I pestered him about it for a few minutes, but it didn’t really bother me, so I let him off the hook with a promise to bug him about it at a later date…
So, I was reading Tim’s blog and noticed a link I had paid attention to before. On his nav bar there is the following link: My Gallery. My sensibilities were once again offended when I clicked through and found—not a gallery—a non-sensical blurb and the actual link to the gallery.
You think you know a person…
So instead of just bitching about it, I am going to offer my help, as well as my completely unsolicited opinion/advice. I am going to connect with folks, get them updated, re-structured, and good, um, practicing.
If you make it to my blogroll you are fair game! I am coming for you and your site! I am chewing gum and checking off my sensible navigation and semantic web checklist!
And I am all out of gum.
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