Design your way

Monday, October 20, 2014

Navigation bars in a site are more of a visual guide on what that particular site is offering and some of the responses it expects from you, the user. In another sense, it can be viewed as a road with many destinations which reaches out to all the new people who visit a site.

Without navigation, websites would be plain difficult to use as navigation is always the key to guiding readers through a website’s contents. Navigation also helps readers to easily find what they were looking for much faster as compared to if they had to skim the whole website.

However, navigation may not be all that simple to use since most websites require that the user scrolls back to the top of the website before navigating to a different page.

Thus, fixed navigation bars come to the rescue. These can scroll down a page with you an even collapse and reappear just at the click of a button. They also automatically interact with with a user by adjusting themselves as the user browses. The versatility they offer ultimately add to the overall attraction of the site.

Long websites that are filled with lots of content like blogs would greatly benefit from fixed navigation systems. This is because the fixed elements in this website are placed relative to the user’s browser rather than to the page. Therefore, as a user scrolls down, the fixed elements maintain their positions while the actual content moves.

Additionally, fixed navigation doesn’t make a user to scroll all the way back whenever they are in need of navigating to other pages in the website. The only tricky situation with fixed navigation is that it requires designers to sacrifice a permanent spot on the screen whereby there will be no content shown on this area, and this eats up space that would otherwise be filled with content.

They are a great addition to a site in terms of usability

The benefits of fixed navigation bars are glaring since they make it much easier to browse a website. The placement of the navigation bar on a permanent portion of the screen gives you all the options at an arm’s length, and this is particularly useful for users who are impatient. This navigation bar also reduces a user’s workload since he/she won’t have to scroll through tons of content so that he/she can access the main menu.

For many reasons, this is particularly important. However, the main reason behind this kind of navigation is speed. Easy flow through a website is crucial as it allows readers to get information fast. As such, site owners have little to worry about users getting lost in the website’s content.