SecondStory.com
Second Story is the website of a design firm located in Portland Oregon. The webpage for this group is amazing. The site uses a combination of traditional scrolling on the “news” page as well as x-axis jquery to continue through the information. The sites navigation is beautifully laid out. The viewer has a couple options. For the first option one can simply click on the links located on the left hand side of the page and watch as the site smooth scrolls to the side to reveal the clicked on section of content. The other option is to press arrow buttons on the right hand side to continue through the content sections. Obviously, this is a brilliant way to guide viewers through the site to view the content in the order desired by the designers. Someone visiting the site must move through each section of information in order to arrive at the next. Everything is on the same page and the order never changes but the site is very easy to use and with the addition of quick links on the left a visitor to the page can get to the information that they need quickly as well, for example the “contact” page.
Morethan20.com
More Than 20 is a website for a husband and wife photography team in Buffalo, NY. This website is also pretty amazing. The site is at it’s core a one page site that uses both jquery and self-scrolling to achieve the final goal of being taken through the content. Again, the use of jquery to scroll for the viewer allows designers to have nearly total control over how the site is viewed and in what order. The site shifts to multiple pages once the “galleries” section is reached. When the viewer clicks on a photo it moves to a separate page full of photos from the session indicated by the thumbnail. Just because this is a separate page doesn’t mean that it is difficult to return to the single page sections. The links at the top remain no matter what page is currently displayed and when clicked on return the visitor to the main sections. The site has a reasonable and logical flow to it. There is an illustrated logo followed by an about section, galleries, FAQs and finally a contact form.
DucttapeandGlitter.com
Duct tape and Glitter is yet another website for a graphic design company. This website is simple and on multiple pages. When a visitor first arrives at the site it is on a simple homepage with links at the top of the page as well as linked photos near the bottom of the page. The navigation is simple and not too cluttered there are only 4 navigation options at this point. There is some bread-crumbing on the site. There is a large arrow pointing to the top nav bar which is in a specific order which leads the viewer to believe that is the order in which they should be viewed. Again a logical order is used in which the work, about, blog and contact information are viewed in that order.
pulpfingers.com
Pulp Fingers is a group that creates apps for smart phones. The website for Pulp Fingers has a beautiful texture. The entire site feels like cut out construction paper. That being said their navigation leaves something to be desired. The site is rather simple and there are few navigation options but they are near the top of the page and somewhat difficult to see. The link that stands out the most is the “blog” link on the right hand side of the page that stays in the same position with the site as it is scrolled. This link is the most important feeling and seems to take away a lot of focus from the main nav. It may be that the designers wanted the site to have an emphasis on the blog but with other important information like what apps the team is working on, it seems an oversite to make those links less important and hardly noticeable.
TrailerParkTruck.com
Trailer Park Truck is a website for a restaurant in California. This site is very simple, easy to use and the navigation and bread-crumbing are spot on. This website like many others that are nicely laid out used smooth scrolling jquery to guide the viewer through the content areas. The site has a simple nav bar at the top that has very limited options. Once the visitor clicks on a link the site scrolls to the section of information and from there traditional scrolling takes over. Logically, most viewers would no doubt click the first link and then simply scroll through the rest of the sections which are intelligently laid out to give out the information needed in a precise order. There is however always the option at the right side of the page for the viewer to return to the top and click on other links from there. Sites like this one that use jquery links and single pages are clearly the most precise bread-crumbing sites. A visitor almost has no options as to the order of the informations presented which gives the designers and company owners the ability to ensure the information presented is done so in a very particular way.