I recommend that you try to do two things when investigating one of these case studies:
- Analyse the navigation: Note down simple lists of where you can get to from each page using the primary navigation, what location information is provided on each page, and what secondary navigation is provided.
- Evaluate the navigation: Are there too many options or too few from each page? Are the links as clear as possible? Is secondary navigation sufficient? Any general praise or criticism?
As usual, my brief answers (which are obviously not perfect) are included by each site, so you may prefer to jump to the site before you read my comments.
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon's top bar of navigation is available everywhere, linking to different areas of the site (books, music, etc.) and to general options (shopping basket, help). Once within the site (for example, looking at a book description), a left bar provides a small amount more primary navigation within the section (to reviews or customer comments for a book, for example). Secondary navigation, apart from the search facility, includes some "highlighted" bestsellers or books "recommended" for a specific user, as well as category links; these are provided on the front page and on section contents pages.
The Java Tutorial
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
This tutorial site contains lots of secondary navigation. A front page links to all lessons, a lesson contents page links to sections within a lesson (sometimes there are subsections with their own contents pages), there is a table of contents for the entire lesson including all subsections etc., and there is a search facility.
Primary navigation contains buttons to the next and previous sections and TOC, links upward in the hierarchy, and a link to the search and feedback facilities.
Larabie Fonts
This site only really has primary navigation. There is a sidebar at the left with links to all sections of the site, which is always visible. Within the alphabetical sections, there are also "back" and "next" buttons to go through the site.
Location information is somewhat nonexistent, partly because the site uses frames.
dmoz open directory project
Primary navigation includes links to information about the site, etc. Location shows you where you are within their hierarchy, and this also works as navigation controls. The front page contains secondary navigation - links to all their major sections and some often-used pages within those sections, a good technique - and all the section pages also contain navigation to subsections etc.
As a directory site, this is basically all navigation, but it's fairly well done.
