Designing Web Navigation

QUESTIONS

1. Using the Web, find out about the following technologies. Indicate their possible implications for rich web applications. What do they enable beyond conventional HTML page design and construction? How do these possibilities affect the design of navigation? How do they extend or eliminate the page metaphor inherent to the Web?

   1. XForms

   2. ActiveX

   3. Java Applets

   4. Adobe Flex

   5. Adobe Apollo

2. Open a common software program on your computer, such as a word processor or email program. Then find the home page for the web site of the manufacturer of that software. Compare the navigation between the two and answer the following questions:

   1. What are the main navigational mechanisms that appear in each?

   2. What are differences in approaches to labeling in each?

   3. What role does branding (e.g. logo, colors, etc.) play in each of the navigations?

   4. What role does location or knowing your location within the product's structure play in each?

   5. What are the assumed learning curves of each? How much time would you invest in learning the navigation of the web site? Of the software program?

3. Create a document in an online word processor or spreadsheet application such as Google Docs & Spreadsheets (http://docs.google.com) or NumSum (www.numsum.com).

   1. How does the application handle the following:

      • Back button

      • Scrolling

      • Capturing and saving information

      • Navigating away from the page

      • Pop-up windows

      • URLs and bookmarking

      • Retaining different states of the application

   2. What types of actions can you take to cause errors? How are the error messages ...