New Idiom Arriving
I have noticed a new navigation idiom and apparently it seems to work quite nicely, if implemented correctly. When you hover over a main menu, usually at the top, a “drawer” opens, displaying a sort of tree structure or sitemap. I am not sure whether it being used outside of The Netherlands, the 4 examples I have are all Dutch.
A picture or a description doesn’t do it justice though so do yourself a favor and took a look at following sites: KLM.nl, NSHispeed.nl, TNTPost.nl and DE.nl. Interesting note: All of them seem to work quite nicely except the DE.nl one, goes to show that God is in the details.
Tags: UI, idioms, interaction
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5 Responses to “New Idiom Arriving”
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I am currently doing my Masters in Interface Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany. Dutchman living in Berlin, born in South Africa. - Find out more here
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Rogier Says:
It’s indeed a interesting trend to follow. I can see it being derived from the so called doormat pattern: http://www.welie.com/patterns/showPattern.php?patternID=doormat
The bad thing about this idiom is that you can’t see, in the menu, on which page you are. Only by effectively using page titles and breadcrumbs it could become a good idiom.
New Navigation Idiom? « (dis)information architecture Says:
[...] Peter Conradie recently noticed a new type of website navigation idiom that’s been used by a few Dutch [...]
Denns Koks Says:
Here another similair solutioin http://www.bnn.nl/
Also dutch. I’m almost certain i’ve seen it somewhere on a non-dutch site also. I like it very much, especially the way TNT implemented it (how the whole area resizes according to the length of the menu).
Anyway, have you already checked out the new site from adobe? I had to get used to it a little bit, but I absolutely love it!! Great implementation of flash (as always), and all just works sooo well. Such good websites are very rare.
Felipe Says:
I don’t know how usable it is or how accessible it would be if implemented in a correct manner, but for now KLM.nl do nothing when used with a keyboard (focus and tab navigation) and use an obstrusive menu: “Loading menu…” is the only thing appearing when Javascript is disabled. The latter could easily be done in an unobstrusive manner.
Rogier Says:
Another 2 examples of this:
http://www.eur.nl/ – done quite well
http://www.mimoa.eu – done horribly wrong