March 20, 2012 — When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what’s new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding … Read More…

July 27, 2011 — Games are becoming more Web-like, and the Web is becoming more game-like. If you need proof of this, you have only to look at Yahoo Answers. Random questions are posed, the top answer is chosen, and credibility points are given to the winner. It’s a ranking system that … Read More…

June 6, 2011 — The thing that makes navigation difficult to work with in Web design is that it can be so versatile. Navigation can be simple or complex: a few main pages or a multi-level architecture; one set of content for logged-in users and another for logged-out users; and so on. … Read More…

May 18, 2011 — In this article I’ll be reviewing a few techniques that will help Web designers and UI professionals to improve their error pages in order to engage visitors and improve overall website experience. As C. S. Lewis once said, “Failures are finger posts on the road to … Read More…

April 19, 2011 — Good navigation is the main cornerstone of an effective website. In practice, however, it’s often a tough challenge to come up with a meaningful, unambiguous way to organize, arrange, and display content to users; and it’s often not much easier to find a visually … Read More…

September 17, 2010 — In the previous part of this tutorial we’ve discussed how to create an animated sliding menu with Javascript using the jQuery framework. In this tutorial, we’ll continue to develop our application by enhancing the sliding effect in various ways and make it even … Read More…

September 7, 2010 — Everyone is always looking for interesting and effective ways to organize their website and allow users to move about and find things. But there’s a fine line between unexpected and unusable. Three points to consider in any navigation scheme are consistency, user … Read More…

September 5, 2010 — One of the great advantages of creating interactive websites is being able to dynamically hide and reveal parts of your content. Not only does it make for a more interesting user experience, but it allows you to stuff more onto a single page than would otherwise be possible, … Read More…

April 19, 2010 — Go to any website and you’re guaranteed to find one thing: a navigation menu. Navigation menus enable visitors to move from page to page; without them, we would have no way to conveniently explore websites. Perhaps this is why designers, information architects, … Read More…

January 11, 2010 — In a recent article about unusable and superficial beer and alcohol websites, I made the claim that using left-hand vertical navigation is an out-of-date method in modern web design. In the comments, a few people wondered why I said this. I was surprised that it got any … Read More…