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FacebookUsing Ajax Shelf to Help Users Find Pages on Suncoast Site
January 29th, 2007 | Posted in Web 2.0, WordPress 3 Comments »
I’ve been experimenting with an “Ajax shelf” to help users find pages better on the Suncoast chapter site. The Ajax shelf is like a web component that slides up and down when you click a button. I think it’s pretty cool. Here’s an example:
Shelf is hidden:
When the user clicks the View Pages link, the shelf expands:
When the shelf expands, it has the effect of sliding down. When you click the View Pages link again, the shelf slides back up.
I’ve decided to store all my pages on the Ajax shelf. Because I’m using the Suncoast chapter site as a little CMS, I’m hoping that this way of organizing the pages will make it easier for users to find information.
I’m still tweaking the Suncoast site, but what do you think of the Ajax shelf part?
The theme I am using has the Ajax shelf functionality, but you can apparently add a shelf to your blog manually by following this tutorial. (I haven’t tried the tutorial.)
Ajax, by the way, is just javascript, and stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Keith Hoffman wrote more about Ajax in his Intercom article on Web 2.0. Hoffman mostly talks about the collaboration functionality that AJAX provides with online word processing programs. He says Ajax allows multiple authors to simultaneously work on a document and have each person’s changes saved instantaneously. So Ajax has many different applications — the shelf is just one.
I quite like it, but I think there are usability/accessibility issues with it:
* If you are not using the mouse, it takes 11 TAB key presses to get to the link to open/close the shelf – there is no access/shortcut key to jump straight there. And if you are further down the page, then it takes even more SHIFT+TAB key presses to get back.
* “Shelf” is not a familiar term in this context. While it may be what the developers called it, I think users won’t intuitively know what it means. Working on Steve Krug’s “Don’t make me think!” principle, if it was called “menu” or “site menu” or similar, it would have more meaning and not make the user go “Huh? What’s that?”
* Once open it stays open – for that page only. As soon as you navigate to another page, it closes, and you have to open it again. If I wanted to see it all the time, I can’t – I have to click it to open it on each page, and in a fairly short time that would p*** me off. With DHTML-type menus, at least the top navigation layer is always visible when you visit a new page.
* I know you have probably styled it this way, but the double lines surrounding each menu/shelf item are overkill to my eyes, as is the white on black text. With the blue (and the bright yellow hover colour), the white on black becomes even more harsh. For consistency with the rest of the site and for reducing eye strain, the softer grey used in the very top navigation area may be better as the background colour. And maybe you could use small blue bullets (sqaure?) instead of the over- and underlines.
Thanks for the comments on the Ajax shelf, Rhonda. I agree with what you say. I will have to get in there and do some tweaking. I can change the word “Shelf” easily enough, as well as alter the stylesheet tags, but getting the shelf to stay open will require research. Thanks again for giving me your thoughts on it.
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