David John Mead

One navigation list to rule them all?

I’ve been using unordered lists for navigation for some time now, and I remember my excitement when the I first read about the suckerfish method. But one thing that keeps popping into my head recently is using one list for the main and secondary navigation on a page. I can’t recall if I’ve ever seen anyone talk about this or try it for that matter.

The lists

Say we have a site with four main sections and within each section is four pages.  Normally I would code up the following:

Somewhere further down the page, within a section, I’d have:

Another approach

Which normally would be displayed like image 1. Now what was tickling my mind was writing the code out like this:

</li>
<li><a href="#" title="">section 3</a></li>
<li><a href="#" title="">section 4</a></li>
</ul>

Usual position for secondary navigation

Where the correct sections navigation is inserted as the page is called. It could then be positioned absolutely on the page using CSS.  If you’re using skip links for screen readers, then “skip navigation” would only have to skip the one list, and if read out, then it’ll be read in context.

I know I’m not taking into consideration:

• drop down navigation (not a big fan now)
• footer navigation
• problems with certain layout designs and absolute positioning

but I think these could be overcome fairly easily.

I’m not suggesting that this is a be-all-end-all thing to use, more that I haven’t seen it implemented like this and wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the subject. I would love to hear any feedback.

Technorati tags: secondarynavigation, css, lists, html, coding

Strangers in my Twitter feed

Twitter has been going into overdrive recently, updating their online experience to (I assume) catch up with the plethora of apps that make use of the service.

Since the site has become my only way to interact with the service I’ve liked a lot of the subtle improvements. Having the site update with new tweets has been meant I don’t have to continually hit F5. Lists offer a way to organize and share, similar to Facebook’s feeds.

The latest is re-tweeting on the site, something apps like twirl and tweetdeck have offered for sometime.  Even on those apps I prefer to pass the tweet along with a little tinkering instead of just hitting the re-tweet button – that’s just me.  But the way Twitter is implementing it on the site doesn’t sit great with me (see screenshot). It feels like strangers are popping up in my feed. Names and faces that I don’t know and my initial reaction is “I’m getting SPAM” until I’ve looked a little closer.

I applaud the efforts that developers are doing, and maybe I’ll get used to it, but for now I’d like a way to turn it off.