Menu and Link Designs
Menus and navigation buttons can really "make or break" the appearance of a web site. There are several ways to navigate around the web site with buttons, menu bars, tabs, image links, or just plain text links. While some of these are more flashy than others, they each have their place in a web site. We will look at these linking methods individually and point out the pros and cons of each. |
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| Text Link. | You see this type of link all the time right? Not very attractive but they serve their function. These can be used when you have a lot of sub links that do not link to your main pages, and are often found in the body of a page or at the bottom of a page. One thing about these links is that they are small and very quick to load upon opening a page, which is very important. These links should generally remain a blue color because that is the normal appearance and very recognized as a link. |
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This is referred to as an "image link". These are kind of neat to use and are a unique way of linking. They should however, be used sparingly because too many of them can confuse the user and they can slow up load time of your pages. |
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This is called a "rollover image" or a "button". These are actually made up of 2 images. The first as you see it alone, the second as you put your mouse over top. When you "roll over" the image it changes slightly to let you know that it is a link to somewhere. These are totally made from scratch and can be made into anything you can think of. Colors, text style, size, shape, or whatever. These are great for main navigation as you can see on this web site! |
This is Called a "menu bar", horizontal, that is. This can also be made vertically. These are very handy when you have a lot of links in the same category. They can be customized also with the color, font, size, and borders. They can be tricky to design and may cost a little more but they are worth it. The code behind these is complex and can be cumbersome to create, but only if it is extremely large. |
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This Thing is called a "Tabbed Panel". It's like stacking pages with tabs to identify the contents of that page. Pretty self explanatory really, so try it out. This form of linking is also customizable. Its advantage is that you can have several pages on one page without linking to all of them separately. Of course the drawback is that the pages can not be too large in file size (photos and sound etc.) which will slow down the page load because your computer will have to load all of the pages before it will work.
Contents for "This" tab. Contents for "That" tab. Contents for"Those" tab. Contents for "Them" tab. |
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Click here for more ways to display your content!
Hello! This gadget is called a "Collapsible Panel". A pretty neat way to hide some things on your web page! Not very hard to design but the appearance can be limited to maybe a little color and font style, and... a border. And of course it should not be jam packed with large files so it loads nice and quick.As you are checking out these different ways of linking to other pages, keep in mind that you should choose what best fits your needs and looks good. Choose what you think will be the easiest and most sensible for your customers to use. Oh, and by the way, did you notice the common potential drawback of these gadgets? Of course! Make sure not to put too heavy of a load on these things with large files and you will be good to go. It's all about page load time and not irritating your customers by waiting for time consuming page loads. Web Design Port Huron |
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