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This navigational aid, sometimes
called a navigation bar or site menu , will
often be a series of text links or linked images along the
left or top of every page. Often, one of these buttons or
links will take you back to the site's homepage.
Our Support Center (the Web
site you're now visiting), for example, has a grey
navigation bar along the top that will take you to E-List's
main Web sites. No matter which link you click, you'll find
that same grey bar, allowing you to move back and forth
between the sites.
The Support Center also has
a secondary navigation bar, that links to the various
sections of this site, no matter which page you visit on
this site, you'll find those links.
Most Web sites are organized in
one of three ways:
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Tree structure—Arranges
information hierarchically, moving from general to
specific information.
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Linear structure—One page leads
to the next, which leads to the next, and so on.
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Random structure—Pages are
connected to each other at random, with no apparent order.
If you picture these pages floating in space with all
their links, up and down and across, you can see why they
call this "the Web."
It's up to the site designer to
choose a structure that fits the purpose and content of the
site, and to organize that content on each page. It's a
daunting task, and a relatively new one that mixes the
traditional skills of page layout with completely new
requirements, like hyperlinks and animation. To make it even
more complex, how you receive that content, and how it's
presented to you, is in the hands of your Web browser.
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