Website Navigation

Being able to navigate easily through a website is a very important thing. Without good navigation, a website can become very frustrating to use, and the end user will leave your website in disgust.

The type of navigation, that I was thinking of having on my website, would be some sort of horizontal bar near the top. Maybe with a simple roll-over effect, but not much more than that. I don't want the navigation to system to be any more advanced that it has to be.

Here are some sample screen captures of what I had in mind:

Source: http://www.psdgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/glossy-navigation-menu-preview.jpg

If my website grows and ends up having many pages, then I would consider putting in some sort of "fly-out" secondary navigation, but this is relatively easy to do using CSS. I am not proposing anything fancy here.

A sample of "fly-out" navigation system

Source: http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/navigation-design-patterns/

Links:

Web Design Navigation Showcases | Smashing Magazine

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/web-design-navigation-showcases/

Website Navigation - Web Page Mistakes
http://www.webpagemistakes.ca/website-navigation/

Guide to Website Navigation Design Patterns - Six Revisions
http://sixrevisions.com/user-interface/navigation-design-patterns/

Some CSS code for drop down navigation bars
http://css3menu.com/