HI, all

Newbie here with a question, perhaps an obvious one, but still....


I recently replaced my navigation bar with a shockwave navigation bar
created through Flashvortex- now the buttons are animated. I can see
it on my computer, I can see it at computers in the library - so I had
assumed all was well.

But now I'm not so sure.

So I'm wondering...if someone does not have a shockwave player already
downloaded onto their computer, will they be able to see this new nav
bar? WIll they automatically be informed to download a shockwave
player if they don't have one - told that they are missing things on
the site?

Or will they just stare at the landing page, seeing no nav bar at all,
wondering what the heck is going on?

My hits have indeed been down since I put in this new navbar, but I
had attributed it to the last weeks of summer vacation...

Thanks for any .

On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:57:11 -0000, TimeTraveller put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>HI, all
>
>Newbie here with a question, perhaps an obvious one, but still....
>
>
>I recently replaced my navigation bar with a shockwave navigation bar
>created through Flashvortex- now the buttons are animated. I can see
>it on my computer, I can see it at computers in the library - so I had
>assumed all was well.
>
>But now I'm not so sure.
>
>So I'm wondering...if someone does not have a shockwave player already
>downloaded onto their computer, will they be able to see this new nav
>bar?

No.

>WIll they automatically be informed to download a shockwave
>player if they don't have one - told that they are missing things on
>the site?

That depends on their browser settings. But even if they're told
aboput it, they're unlikely to install a browser component just to be
able to view your site.

>Or will they just stare at the landing page, seeing no nav bar at all,
>wondering what the heck is going on?

Probably. Then they'll leave, never to return. So will the search
engine spiders, since they don't follow shockwave links either, so
your indexing in Google et al will also drop.

>My hits have indeed been down since I put in this new navbar, but I
>had attributed it to the last weeks of summer vacation...

The new navigation system is by far the more likely cause.

Mark
--
Blog: http://Mark.Goodge.co.uk Photos: http://www.goodge.co.uk
"I'm so tired of acting tough"

>>So will the search engine spiders, since they don't follow shockwave links either, so
your indexing in Google et al will also drop.

Well...damn! That's not good.

Wish I'd researched this before I changed the nav bar, but I confessed
it didn't occur to me that there' d be problem.

It's a pity, though, because this shockwave stuff looks nice!

But, I'm losing money, so I'll go back to the old way.

On 2007-09-02, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:
> The purpose of navigation is not to look nice. The purpose of
> navigation is to make it easy for users to navigate! Some basic visual
> enhancements, such as CSS hover attributes, will both make it look
> nicer and add usability, but excessive styling on your primary
> navigation should be avoided.

Why not just add regular hyperlinks somewhere on the page?


--
Steve Sobol, Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
"Drench yourself in words unspoken / Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins / The rest is still unwritten"
- Natasha Beddingfield

On Sun, 02 Sep 2007 19:22:15 -0000, TimeTraveller put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>>>So will the search engine spiders, since they don't follow shockwave links either, so
>your indexing in Google et al will also drop.
>
>Well...damn! That's not good.
>
>Wish I'd researched this before I changed the nav bar, but I confessed
>it didn't occur to me that there' d be problem.
>
>It's a pity, though, because this shockwave stuff looks nice!

The purpose of navigation is not to look nice. The purpose of
navigation is to make it easy for users to navigate! Some basic visual
enhancements, such as CSS hover attributes, will both make it look
nicer and add usability, but excessive styling on your primary
navigation should be avoided.

Mark
--
http://www.BritishSurnames.co.uk - What does your surname say about you?
"Lose yourself in the music, the moment, you own it, you better never let it go"

> Why not just add regular hyperlinks somewhere on the page?

I am putting my old navbar back, but on the bottom of each page. So
people will -hopefully - see the animated navbar at the top, but if
they don't, will scroll down to see if there is one - and see the
hyperlink one at the bottom.

My site is an ezine full of articles, so people will be reading the
pages from top to bottom anyway and so should be able to see that
bottom nav bar if they can't see the top one. Of course some of the
articles are very long, but....

I'll give that solution two weeks ... if my hits continue to go down,
will move the old bar back to the top and ditch the shockwave thing.

Thanks all for your responses.

On Sun, 2 Sep 2007 19:45:44 +0000 (UTC), Steve Sobol put finger to
keyboard and typed:

>On 2007-09-02, Mark Goodge <usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:
>> The purpose of navigation is not to look nice. The purpose of
>> navigation is to make it easy for users to navigate! Some basic visual
>> enhancements, such as CSS hover attributes, will both make it look
>> nicer and add usability, but excessive styling on your primary
>> navigation should be avoided.
>
>Why not just add regular hyperlinks somewhere on the page?

That's a partial solution, and it's certainly the right one if the
primary navigation uses Javascript. But the single most important
factor in the design of your primary navigation is that it is easy and
intuitive to use. Flash-based navigation almost always breaks that, as
it presents the links and menu in a way that is visually different to
how most people expect websites to look. In other words, it's not just
bad for people (and SE spiders) that can't view Flash, it's also bad
for those who can, as it's less intuitive to use than HTML/CSS links.
Even when well-designed, it often lacks several of the common visual
clues that are present in HTML links, such as the destination of the
link showing in the status bar. When badly designed (and most Flash
navigation bars are badly designed, from a usability perspective!), it
becomes almost counter-intuitive and off-putting to the casual user.

Mark
--
http://www.MotorwayServices.info - read and share comments and opinons
"So rock and roll, so corporate suit"

"TimeTraveller" <GastropodGraphics@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1188791210.390626.262390@y42g2000hsy.googlegr oups.com...
>
>> Why not just add regular hyperlinks somewhere on the page?
>
> I am putting my old navbar back, but on the bottom of each page. So
> people will -hopefully - see the animated navbar at the top, but if
> they don't, will scroll down to see if there is one - and see the
> hyperlink one at the bottom.

If I went to a site where I could see no navigation, it's very unlikely that
I would scroll to the bottom.