What contents should be located in the browsing bars?
Although contents depend on each site, in web sites it is
possible to generalize their location. As a matter of fact, this generalization
has been applied to all of ARTech's sites as well as to the company's intranet.
These concepts may be also extrapolated beyond web sites and taken into
consideration when developing web applications.
Corporate sites
In general, the two browsing bars are used in corporate
sites; the top and left menus are located here.
The top menu has the site's general browsing options that,
independent from the site's content, are sought regardless of whether the site
is known or not.
The options more frequently included in the top menu are:
- Link to a home page
- Link
to a contact page where you can find: phone numbers, addresses, e-mail
addresses, etc. When applicable, you may also include a contact form. We
recommend that this particular link target a page containing all the information
instead of being just an e-mail address.
- Site's
map
- About us: here, the company's objective is
described and its members presented. Sometimes, this information may be found
under one of the left menu options. In case the site does not have an area for
this purpose, it is located in the top menu.
More than one menu may be found in the upper part. Many
times, an "area-menu" is included in order to classify the information displayed
in the site, per product, department, etc.
The left menu depends on the content of the site, and in
general it shows the way to go in order to get to know the company and/or
product, access the different services, etc. (downloads, support, etc.) In large
corporate sites, the left menu changes depending on the area/product that a
person is visiting, and it is generally classified by an area-menu located in
the upper browsing bar.
Intranets
The same concepts applied in the corporate sites may be applied for
the intranets in spite of the fact that the left menu is not always used.
However, locating a content-dependent menu in some other place inside the page
is common. This menu expands the options found in this particular area or has
links to other areas related to the current page.