Web Navigation types

Inline navigation: General links within web page content areas
Site navigation: The primary navigation area of a website, commonly referred to as
a navigation bar
Search-based navigation: A search box that enables you to search a site via terms
you input yourself

Inline navigation
Inline navigation used to be the primary way of navigating the Web, which, many moons
ago, largely consisted of technical documentation. Oddly, inline navigation—links within a
web page’s body copy—is less popular than it once was. Perhaps this is due to the increasing
popularity of visually oriented web design tools, leading designers to concentrate more
on visuals than usability. Maybe it’s because designers have collectively forgotten that links
can be made anywhere and not just in navigation bars. In any case, links—inline links in
particular—are the main thing that differentiates the Web from other media, making it
unique. For instance, you can make specific words within a document link directly to
related content. A great example of this is Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), the free encyclopedia.

 

Site navigation
Wikipedia showcases navigation types other than inline. To the left, underneath the logo,
is a navigation bar that is present on every page of the site, allowing users to quickly access
each section. This kind of thing is essential for most websites—long gone are the days
when users often expected to have to keep returning to a homepage to navigate to new
content.
As Wikipedia proves, just because you have a global navigation bar, that doesn’t mean you
should skimp on inline navigation. In recent times, I’ve seen a rash of sites that say things
like, “Thank you for visiting our website. If you have any questions, you can contact us byclicking the contact details link on our navigation bar.” Quite frankly, this is bizarre. A better
solution is to say, “Thank you for visiting our website. If you have any questions, please
contact us,” and to turn “contact us” into a link to the contact details page. This might
seem like common sense, but not every web designer thinks in this way.

Search-based navigation
Wikipedia has a search box within its navigation sidebar. It’s said there are two types of
web users: those who eschew search boxes and those who head straight for them. The
thing is, search boxes are not always needed, despite the claims of middle managers the
world over. Indeed, most sites get by with well-structured and coherent navigation.
However, sites sometimes grow very large (typically those that are heavy on information
and that have hundreds or thousands of pages, such as technical repositories, review
archives, or large online stores, such as Amazon and eBay). In such cases, it’s often not feasible
to use standard navigation elements to access information. Attempting to do so leads
to users getting lost trying to navigate a huge navigation tree.
Unlike other types of navigation, search boxes aren’t entirely straightforward to set up,
requiring server-side scripting for their functionality. However, a quick trawl through
a search engine provides many options, including Google Custom Search Engine
(www.google.com/coop/cse/) and Yahoo Search Builder (http://builder.search.yahoo.
com/m/promo).