Site Design:Consider Inner Pages

STEP TEN: ROUGH OUT INNER PAGE DESIGN AND NAVIGATION

Generally speaking, a site should have two designs: one for the main page and one for the inner pages. It's important that these styles invoke each other; that is, when someone leaves the main page for an inner page she or he should still know that it's the same site. Also, all the inner pages should have the same design, which also creates that sense of place through unity. Now, you may choose to use subtle accents of color to mark inner pages, but they should still have the same basic layout and navigation.

To create an inner page, you want to repeat the last few steps. I generally go back to storyboarding, and work out a design that builds off the main page but has a lot more room for content. I might also, at this stage, make decisions about additional colors I want to use for accent, like the primary colors that designate the different pages of this site.

It's also time for you to make decisions about navigation. The simplest form of navigation on inner pages is to have nothing more than a "home" button. This style works for a very small site, where there are essentially only two levels: the main page and the subpage. There are countless other styles of navigation, and you should pay attention to these in your surfing for design inspiration. Some common forms of navigation include:

• left side link list
• top and or bottom link list (like on this page)
• drop-down or jump menus
• DHTML menus

These are just a few. Each has particular design impacts. For example, a left side link list is going to privilege vertical space and calls for some sort of balance for the right side of the page (which may be achieved with content). The top or bottom lists, similarly, utilize horizontal space. DHTML and jump menus economize space, allowing you to get a LOT of links into a given area without using a lot of browser real estate.

I recommend you consider navigation carefully as you design your inner pages. Left side links, for example, are widely used. That's good, because people know what they are and how to use them. But that's also bad, because they're a stale cliché. DHTML may be more innovative, but implementation is tricky and it's not very cross-browser. Experiment and find something that works for you, in terms of both usability and design.

Once you've storyboarded the inner page design, and then roughed out the table layout, and then defined any new styles you need, and then roughed out an actual inner page, it's time to do more tweaking and testing.