WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

RE: Which should come first - navigation OR content?

for

From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Apr 26, 2006 11:10AM

> zara

> The practice often favoured here by developers is to put
> navigation first for the home page and content first on all
> other pages of the site (with the appropriate skip to links).

Wouldn't that be confusing? You're setting up an expectation on your
homepage (in terms of how your pages are structured), and then
deviating from it straight away on the first level down into the site.

> The reason for this is, as with any user, navigational
> elements can give you a good idea of the general content of
> the site but once you have moved on from the home page, you
> usually have gotten that info and are more interested in content.

That model assumes, though, that visitors always come through the
homepage first...

I don't feel particularly strongly about the issue either way, but
I'm just wondering about consistency between homepage and internal
pages.

P
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
________________________________