Navigation on WAP sites
28 Feb 2007 - 1:37am
2 replies
626 reads
Soo Basu
2005
Hi
Is it better to give a deeper navigation structure on a WAP screen? Is it
good practice to put all all the links (that are there on the Home page) on
all the inside pages - shallow navigation; as compared to putting only the
link 'home' on all the inside pages, so a user has to come back to the home
page to select other activities - deeper navigation?
Considering that a mobile screen has limited real estate, is a deeper
navigation better?
Thanks
Soo
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Comments
Soo,
For certainly, the infrastructure of your content will be driven by
display capabilities. While flat is clearly better in some regards
(see recent postings to 1, 2, 3 clicks) going deep optimizes real
estate... but likely at a cost.
If I am not mistaken Barbara Ballard is working pretty heavily in
this area. Her site [ http://www.littlespringsdesign.com ] includes
some dialog, technical info, a developing taxonomy, and a few papers.
She also has a book coming. Additionally, Luke published a recent
blog of topical books [ http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?450 ].
Mark
On Feb 28, 2007, at 1:37 AM, Sunandini Basu wrote:
> Hi
>
> Is it better to give a deeper navigation structure on a WAP screen?
> Is it
> good practice to put all all the links (that are there on the Home
> page) on
> all the inside pages - shallow navigation; as compared to putting
> only the
> link 'home' on all the inside pages, so a user has to come back to
> the home
> page to select other activities - deeper navigation?
>
> Considering that a mobile screen has limited real estate, is a deeper
> navigation better?
> Thanks
> Soo
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On 2/28/07, Sunandini Basu <sunandinibasu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it better to give a deeper navigation structure on a WAP screen? Is it good practice to put all all the links (that are there on the Home page) on all the inside pages - shallow navigation; as compared to putting only the link 'home' on all the inside pages, so a user has to come back to the home page to select other activities - deeper navigation?
>
The answer, as is usually the case, is "it depends". The information
itself will likely have native groupings.
Issues to consider:
- some phones have a limit to the size of the page that can be downloaded
- many phones do not cache CSS or image files, so an extra page means
several extra requests
- some phones do not handle complex pages quickly (example: use a RAZR
to navigate from the main Cingular site onto the content store, which
looks the same. Once you are in the store, the device slows to an
unacceptably slow pace)
- there are three major components of a connection: establishing the
connection (could be 5 seconds), starting a fetch (could be 1 second),
and downloading the file (at the network's connection speed). With
faster networks, that last bit is the easiest.
- scrolling is very easy ... on some phones/browsers. Opera Mini
(roughly 10% of mobile browser hits) scrolls vertically very easily,
by clicking the right arrow. Blackberries are designed around
scrolling, as are some Nokias. On other phones, scrolling is harder.
- users are accustomed to scrolling, but the screen must be designed
to suggest that more information is "below the fold".
- phones do not handle cookies well, so if your site requires a
session cookie, larger pages are preferred
After all of those issues ... I usually don't worry about the screen
size too much. Instead I figure out what I would like to be on the
screen, then optimize for load speed and full task speed.
--
Barbara Ballard
barbara at littlespringsdesign.com 1-785-838-3003