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Navigation

For ease of navigation, all webpages in your website should link back to the top page.   It is also important that the position of this link to the "home" page will not change on each webpage and that movement between the pages on your website will take no more than two mouse clicks. 

The layout of your website content should be consistent between pages for easy navigation and to unify the site's look. Tables can be used to help organize your content, but an overuse of tables will slow down the loading time of your site.  It would be helpful to incorporate a navigation "bar" or "menu" - something that allows you to link from a secondary page to other secondary pages as well. By keeping a navigation bar in the same location on each page, viewers will be able to instinctively move about on the site without any unnecessary additional mouse movement. Reducing the amount of scrolling is desired, but where it is not possible, try to use "anchor" links, like those at the top of each  module webpage that contain links to "Lesson, "Assignment," etc.  These anchor links will simply skip to a spot lower down on the page.  The use of arrows are helpful to allow a viewer to return back to the top table of contents easily. For more information on website design, please visit the following resource:

Web Style Guide by Lynch and Horton
http://www.webstyleguide.com/

An ounce of prevention (or in this case planning) is worth a pound of cure (or hours spent fixing your webpages).  Please continue onto the next section on the text of your webpages.

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Copyright © 2001-2002 Valerie Irvine. All rights reserved.
Revised: November 27, 2002.