Fresh navigation

In Web design it's easy to allow yourself to be dragged along by purely aesthetic concerns, leaving navigation until last or assuming that a standard navigation bar will do.

There are some techniques that you will see employed in sites again and again, though equally you'll see mistakes being made repeatedly, even in some commercial sites.

The number-one rule is that your navigation system should be intuitive to use. The perennial problem is how to make it interesting as well. Ideally, your navigation should form a continuation of the design ethic applied to your site. So if it's deliberately cutting-edge in look and feel, shouldn't the navigation system reflect that? Well, yes and no. If you can do that and still ensure that users don't get lost in a minefield of random clicks and hyperlinks then great, otherwise go for something simple.

Perhaps the best solution is a system that's unobtrusive and disappears when it's no longer required - which is exactly what we're serving up for you here.

Download the tutorial pdf here. You'll also need the accompanying work file below.

tutorialsite.zip