Web Design All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 13. Constructing Navigation Systems

In This Chapter

• Considering the site's organization and target audience

• Finding out about navigation systems

• Creating text navigation menus

• Developing rollover button graphic navigation menus

• Building multitier Spry menus in Dreamweaver

• Creating CSS list navigation menus

Architecturally, the single most important element of a Web site is its navigation system because it is the one unifying feature of a site that enables visitors to quickly survey a site's structure and access the desired information. Think about your own habits when you go to a new site. Most visitors, unconsciously or not, expect to be able to find what they are seeking within one to three clicks. If they can't find what they are looking for — or worse yet, if the links they do click mislead them in some way — they will promptly leave that site and go search somewhere else, unless of course they know that it's the only online resource that has what they're looking for. For these reasons alone, a site's navigation system must be easy to find and easy to use. Better yet, make it visually appealing too, and you have yourself a great navigation system.

In this chapter, you find out how to choose and then create the right navigation system for a Web site. You start by discovering some basics about matching a site to the right navigation system based on its target audience. Then you ...