PROVIDING NAVIGATION AIDS FOR YOUR USERS

Although most of your viewers will know how to use the BACK and FORWARD buttons in their browsers, other navigation aids can be helpful, particularly if your website is large and has several sections.

Examples of Typical Text Aids at the Bottom of a Page
 

OR

Back to the Outline
Home

Examples of Text Aids (Links) with a Vertical Background

Text aids are often used with images. They can be placed to use the specific design features of some background images. Click here to see an example of section links aligned vertically on a vertical background.

Notice that one of these buttons has an unneeded (and tacky) border around it.  That border is showing a followed link.  (Followed links in text are indicated by a change of color; followed links related to an image are indicated by a border.)  To remove this border, rightclick the image and select PICTURE PROPERTIES.  Set the border thickness to 0.
 

NOTE: The HOME button on a browser's toolbar does not direct the viewer to the homepage of the current website; instead, it jumps the viewer to the particular homepage specified in the browser's settings.

Many websites use a navigation bar at the bottom (or side) of each page. The user can immediately go to any section in that website.
 

Example of a Text Navigation Bar (The Home link is the only valid link in this illustration.)

Home | Mission | Classes | Staff | Resources

Instructional Technology Center - Muscogee County School District - Columbus, Georgia

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Example of an Image Map

 

An image map is a graphic image that has clickable areas identified by mathematical coordinates. (Only the Home link is active in this particular image map.) The code for that link is <AREA HREF="outline.htm" SHAPE="rect" COORDS="13, 14, 56, 33">.  Here's another reason a good HTML editor is particularly handy: FrontPage will determine these coordinates for you! 

 

Such a navigation aid could appear at the bottom of all the pages to assist the user in accessing the different sections of the website. (In addition to this navigation aid, the name of the website is clearly identified for the viewer.)  We will use this graphic later to create an image map in FrontPage.
 

Instructional Technology Center - Muscogee County School District - Columbus, Georgia

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In FrontPage, you can add shared borders to your pages to automate your presentation of navigation aids. 

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Page Changed 09/09/2005

Website Construction

StarkeTech