Martin's BCIM Website Blog

I came across Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library recently. It's really interesting to see a set of high level web-page-oriented designs like this, each with a clear explanation. I particularly like the Navigation Tabs and the Breadcrumbs patterns, not leat because they mirror what we now have within the BCIM website.

In fact I'm gratified to see that the details they suggest for breadcrums is EXACTLY what I decided on when re-designing the BCIM website...

• "Include the title of the current page as the last label in the breadcrumb."
  ...I've seen other sites in which the last label corresponds to the page one level up in the hierarchy, and I did consider this option originally.
   
• "Do not use the label 'Home' for the topmost page. Instead use the specific name for the topmost page (e.g. 'Travel' or 'Weather' rather than 'Home'.)"
  ...I've seen other sites in which the first label corresponds to the home page, and I did consider this option originally.

(These are just two of their guidelines relating to breadcrumbs.)

Yahoo! have also posted their User Interface (Code) Library. I haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet, but hope to over the summer. I particularly like their TreeView component.

Horizontal vs Vertical Navigation (added 1/5/06)
Today I came across this blog post which discusses the "Challenges of Moving to Horizontal Navigation". It focusses on CNN.com's recent move from vertical to horizontal navigation. From my point of view this is another vote of confidence in the way the BCIM website has been designed!