Shedding light — OZONE Asylum, home of the Mad Scientists

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Your Text: Insert Slimies » Insert UBB Code » Close Last Tag \| All Tags UBB Help	Just a few general comments here... I think the navigation needs some work. In its current location at the bottom right of the page, most Western readers will take a little while to get there (traditionally, it's one of the last places we look on a page). Granted response times here are measured in milliseconds, but I think you could make the user experience a lot smoother but making the navigation more prominent, both in terms of placement and in terms of presentation. To dig a little deeper into this issue, I think the drop shadows you have on either side of the main content area contribute to this effect. They make the content area pop out, which is good for the content, but the downside is that everything else appears to be in the background and thus secondary. That might be OK for language options and maybe even the search box, but not the main navigation--especially when it is below (again, an indication of "secondariness") these other secondary elements. Basically, everything I see on that first page tells me that the navigation is the least important element there, but it should be quite the opposite. What would I do to fix this? Well, if you're going to keep the "raised" content area, I would move the navigation onto the content area--a horizontal menu at the top, below the header, would work very nicely, I think. If you're concerned about the menu being too long horizontally, the items could probably be reduced to one word each: About, Library, Feeds, History, News, Solutions, Tutorials, Media, XML (the last four are the same, of course). Another note on the navigation: I completely missed the fact that the feed aggregator menu item had sub-items beneath it--I took the arrow to be an indicator of the current page, and couldn't figure out why it wasn't pointing at About Us. I think the fact there is only one arrow helped foster this confusion--when I see one menu item that looks different from all other menu items, I assume that it is being distinguished for some reason. Maybe it's just me. In the sub-sub-menu beneath feed aggregator, there is a section entitled "World News." It appears to be different from the first-level menu item with the same title, but I cannot figure out why or how. The hierarchy of information here is not that clear--why is "World News" a separate first-level menu item? Also, very minor, but the symbols up at the top right of the header are too tempting--I keep expecting them to respond when I click on them, and find myself disappointed when they don't. You think I would learn after a while. Well, I guess I'll just go with that for now. Basically, just a bunch of nit-picking about the navigation. :) [img]http://www.liminality.org/asylum/sigs/quickie.gif[/img] ___________________________ Suho: [url=http://www.liminality.org]www.liminality.org[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/4837]Cell 270[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/5689]Sig Rotator[/url] \| [url=http://www.ozoneasylum.com/22173]the Fellowship of Sup[/url] Loading...
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