designing menus

should the sub nav menu repeat what the main nav holds?

[IPfreely]

hello,

i've been wondering about this one for a while. I have a main navigation menu where one of the items is "training & conferences." when you click it you are taken to the training & conferences section where there is a sub menu on the side:
- member academy (this is one of our member things)
- earning credits
- degree of certification
- programs available
- program registration
- program cancellation
- directions to programs
- ... etc..

the person requesting this section to the website wants me to put the sub-navigation as a dropdown from the main nav menu. so it would actually be on all pages 2x's when in the "training & conferences" section.

how do you guys treat navigation? i mean do you try and not have redundant menus or is it ok? i feel like i should cut down on the main nav menu to generalize it all or something like combining all the "programs" options into one link..

any suggestions?
thanks! - IPfreely

[monkeythumpa]

Here are some things I have learned about navigation to keep confusion to a minimum:

Try not to duplicate entries

Try to keep contents of a group to 7 or less

Do not have more than one level of dropdowns below the main level

If it feels like you are "cramming" stuff into the navigation, leave it general and let page 2, where you have the space, do the explaining.

Of course there are always exceptions (like site maps) but 99% of the time if you are breaking convention your desgin needs revising.

[IPfreely]

Here are some things I have learned about navigation to keep confusion to a minimum:

Try not to duplicate entries

Try to keep contents of a group to 7 or less

Do not have more than one level of dropdowns below the main level

Of course there are always exceptions (like site maps) but 99% of the time if you are breaking convention your desgin needs revising.

hi monkeythumpa,
i've definitely run into the groups of 7 or less rule quite a few times and i try to stick with it. it's just that i can't help feeling like there's something wrong with the navigation if there are even duplicate words in the menu -notice how the word "program" is in most of the menu titles. i'm hesitant to make any change now because of the huge argument it'll cause and i'm going to have to back up my reasoning. it almost makes me want to do away with the drop down menu system completely to better categorize things...

If it feels like you are "cramming" stuff into the navigation, leave it general and let page 2, where you have the space, do the explaining.

i am starting to like the sound of that more and more.

[rocknbil]

Point one: redundancy is always good, even at the risk of being . . well . . . redundant. The few purists that will whine and complain about having a link twice are a likely to be a minority. A much larger group will miss your link even if you put it 4 or 5 times on the same page. So I don't see the link repeat as that intrusive.

Point two: May I guess at how these dropdowns are implemented? Javascript? CSS?

Most are using Javascript, and if it's disabled you will never see those links. Even with CSS it's possible to disable them (browser preferences, use my style sheets, not the ones on the site.) So again, having the link in both places is not a bad thing IMO.