WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

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The killer feature
Admit it. You want it. You know, the killer feature on your
website that makes the blogosphere say “aaaaaaahhhhhh.”
The one that wins you the reboot award. The one
that makes your website stand out from the rest. OK, forget
that. What about the one that makes life easier for
your visitors by providing them with easier access to
information and links?
We’re talking about today’s replacement for the old-school
Dynamic HTML menu systems that provided access to all of
your categorized and subcategorized links in a few easy
mouseovers and a click. This replacement is the sliding
navigation system, which displays nicely categorized links.
Shaun Inman’s blog (www.shauninman.com) showcased
this technique in his 2005 redesign, complete with a single
sliding navigation and search tab that hides and
exposes the details of his site. His blog categories, recent
posts, search box, and other goodies remain tucked away
until called into action by some dutiful JavaScript.
Another recent trend in website design is the information-rich
footer. Derek Powazek “embraced his bottom”
(www.powazek.com/2005/09/000540.html) in his 2005
redesign, making the footer of his site very prominent
and useful, rather than obscure and filled solely with a
copyright statement (see Figure 10-1). He has one of the
best bottoms—er, footers—in the business. It is designed
with purpose and intent to motivate, provide more information,
and give context for visitors.
In this chapter, we’ll implement a site that combines sliding
navigation with the information-rich footer into a
system that adds detail and usability enhancements to the
traditional “tabbed” navigation found on many of today’s
websites. And, as you should expect, it will take accessibility
into account from the beginning.
Figure 10-1. The footer from Derek Powazek’s blog. More than your average footer, Derek’s is designed to be useful and provide the
visitor with more context and blog-related functionality.