Navigation Features in Netscape 1.1
(Sidebar to Jakob Nielsen's column on
browser navigation features)
Netscape 1.1 provides these nine navigation support mechanisms:
- Go To an absolute address (type in its URL)
- Hypertext links (click on underlined text or an ISMAP)
- Breadcrumbs (underlined text changes color if you have seen the destination node it points to)
- Landmarks (directory buttons like "What's Cool")
- Backtrack
- History list
- Bookmarks, including bookmark annotation and structuring
- Prospective view (supported by showing a URL with path and filename in the footer before the user has made the jump - our studies indicate that many users use this information to guess at what they would find if they activated the link)
- Anti-homogeneity visual cues (background patterns can in principle be used to increase the user's navigational understanding though they are mostly used in ways that have no meaning)