Comments on: Navigation Matrix

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:01:15 +0000

Oh, and I think Blogger uses it too (on the CMS part where users edit their weblog), I was really confused when I saw their matrix, but now I understand how it works!

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 23:59:14 +0000

I’ll be trying this for sure. Tabstrips with overlapping tabs can be seriously confusing. But, I am building a serverside scripted app (php), so I’m not about the matrix. Should i just include all possible tabs in the matrix, even though users might not even see some of the tabs (due to the rightsmanagement). Anyway, I’ll see if I can get it to work.

By: stan

stan — Fri, 21 May 2004 17:07:03 +0000

I hate to be a harebringer of bad news but overall there are still problems with this solution in ie 5.x for mac. The nav does not line up.

ie does funny things when you try to line things up lots of times.

sorry.

By: esz

esz — Mon, 10 May 2004 21:48:54 +0000

very interesting idea ~~~!

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 10 May 2004 05:32:34 +0000

This is a great idea and method. It allows for the opportunity to create a similar flash navigation where you don’t have to worry about preloading the image rollovers. I just created an example that would be something like what I would see in a flash navigation. Anyways, let me know what you guys think. Its just an animated gif.

http://www.btkdesigns.com/matrix/index.html

Bryan

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 09 May 2004 21:34:55 +0000

I picked up on this method after reading Dave Shea’s article ‘CSS Sprites’ over at ALA.

By: Bob Easton

Bob Easton — Sun, 09 May 2004 04:12:49 +0000

Regarding accessibility by screen readers: both Jaws 5 and Home Page Reader 4 do just fine with this experiment. Confirmed by actual testing. They both read the text links exactly as presented in the HTML. The images are completely irrelevant as they are background images, and the screen readers don’t even know they exist.

Unlike the image replacement techniques which often use display:none to hide the text, this technique leaves the text available to screen readers.The technique is much more accessible than some image replacement methods.

Very nice job Didier!

By: Didier Hilhorst

Didier Hilhorst — Sat, 08 May 2004 14:23:25 +0000

Kris — You are absolutely right, and I noted exactly this in my reply to Nicks\'s comment. But personally I find that the possibility of users browsing with images turned off and CSS turned on is rather an exception. However I do not have any data to back this statement up. It would be interesting to know what percentage is using these particular settings. I know it is usually done to improve download speeds etc. I think CSS-IR has its place in real world web design, and I don\'t think we should avoid this method just because there\'s a possibility of it not working properly. As far as IE/Mac is concerned I think my updated version solved some issues, but I did not check that myself. James — Please see Navigation Matrix Reloaded for an updated version of this method, which effectively solves the flickering issue in IE6.

By: James Holbeach

James Holbeach — Sat, 08 May 2004 07:46:58 +0000

Hi DH, firstly a very clever solution to a problem I’ve been thinking about for some time. However, as with Jon, the flicker in IE makes it unacceptable (note in Moz it works BEAUTIFULLY!).

I tried changing my settings back to automatically, reloaded the browser, but the flicker was still there, no matter what I did?

By: Kris

Kris — Thu, 06 May 2004 10:43:00 +0000

Didier, I recall an article on ALA, possibly written by Douglas Bowman, in which a floating bug in IE/mac is addressed; when both the element and the content of that element are floated, IE/Mac suddenly behaves properly on adjusting the width of the element. I don't remember which article it was, but I am sure it is easy enough to find.