Top Menu Vs Side Menu

[Steven1976a]

What are peoples views on menu bars. I always believed that products would go down the left menu bar and information, contact, about us etc.... would be in the top and bottom menu bars.

A friend in the UK who runs a silver mail order company have been advised the opposite after running usabiltiy tests.

What are your views?

[davebarnes]

Real data (from the USA) is at http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/u...web_object.htm

Personally, at this point, I think top or left is OK. I tell graphic designers working for my clients that they can chose either.

,dave

[bj]

Why would you want the navigation to be the very first thing the person, the spider, or the screen reader sees? They're there because they're looking for information, so that information should be as close to the top left as you can place it, both in page positioning and in source code.

[bj]

BTW, Dave, that usability information is five years out of date.

[okparrothead]

It's more of a style issue really.

If the navigation needs to be split, I tend to put navigation for all the pages at the top and sub menus on the side.

For a short list I tend to put it on the left. Ad space runs down both sides, so navigation is easy in the left gutter.

I agree with bj though that we tend to read from top left to bottom right so the top left corner is prime real estate. Might not want to waste it on menubars.

As to source code, the navigation can be anywhere in the source and placed at the top with styling so the page content can be at the top for search engines.

Google "holy grail stylesheet" for more on that

Peace

[PARoss]

BJ,

The order of the various columns can come in any order -- http://www.fu2k.org/alex/css/onetrue...le/interactive. So it isn't necessary that the spiders see the menu first, even when people do.

Generally speaking, it seems to me that menus ought to be obvious, simple and available -- wherever you put them.

Phil

[DrTandem1]

In the western world, people read from left to right and from top to bottom. Navigation should be easy to find and easy to understand. Generally, the navigational links for the site's interior pages are the headings for the major portions of the site.

If the page is long, not something I recommend, you may also consider a line of navigational links at the bottom of the page.

The reason you do not want to put them on the right side, is there is a greater chance that they won't be seen. People aren't used to looking to the right for an index and they may have more things open that force the browser to crop the right side from view.

Browsers prioritize the top-left of the page. In other words, you will always see the top-left of the page when opened as a whole.

Also, there is no reason you can't have them both along the left and across the top.

[edhan]

A combination of both should be fine. I usually look at the top navigation to see if any topic I am looking for to click or move my eyes on the left side to check for more options. So, if you have lot of links, then having both on top and left side should be okay. The main thing is that the link must tell what I am going to get when it is clicked.

Hope this helps.
Cheers!

[DrTandem1]

Here's an article I wrote about three years ago:

http://www.drtandem.com/links-and-navigation-1.htm

[okparrothead]

Thanks DoctorT!

You're right about the "In the Western World". Other alphabets run right to left and even top to bottom. I'd forgotten to specify.

Peace