Operation Manual

64 Working with Hyperlinks and Interactivity
Navigation buttons
As we’ve mentioned, a navigation bar is a valuable basic layout
element. Besides using hyperlinked text, you can employ buttons
created as hypergraphics: images with hyperlinks or hotspots applied.
If your site adheres to the basic section/level model (as detailed in the
“Web Design from Scratch” chapter), then you’ll want to provide links
to the Home page as well as to the various section menu pages. If
you’re just starting to develop your site, make sure the overall structure
is clear before you design a navigation bar. Decide what your sections
will be, then choose a concise button label for each section. Sketch
some designs on paper. If there’s a chance you may add more sections
in the future, allow room for the navbar to accommodate a new button
or two.
Resist the temptation to design individual icons for the various buttons.
You might purloin some decent clip art, but developing a set of
original, decipherable icons is a fine art in itself, and a supreme time-
waster.
As for the buttons themselves, they needn’t look rectangular and
beveled, like lozenges. Artistic text works fine. Remember that
whenever the browser’s mouse pointer rolls over a hyperlink, it will
change to a hand. If the assemblage looks anything like a navigation
bar, users will find it and know what to do with it. You can accentuate
button labels by separating them from each other (e.g. with lines or
borders); adding bullets or triangles; or using a filter effect on the text,
such as a drop shadow or emboss. Of course, if you like, you can create
more traditional box or oval buttons using QuickShapes.
Another option for buttons is to use rollover graphics—objects whose
appearance changes through image-swapping in response to mouse
events. Adding rollovers in WebPlus is simply a matter of deciding
which rollover state(s) you’ll want to define for a particular object, then
specifying an image for each state, and a hyperlink target for the
button. The necessary event-trapping code is generated for you
automatically.
Users should perceive the navigation bar as a fixed component of the
page background throughout the site. The simplest solution is to
position the bar on the master page so it appears on every page.