Re: Site Map

I'm going to have to side with the view that the site map is inevitably dated. 
Jesper touched a good point where the site map seemed like the best solution to explain to users the semantic structure of a website but to add another tag to to the mix does not seem to make any sense.
I use Semantic maps to show the layout in full to clients but thats it, normal users do not visualise their position in the layout of a website rather they just feel like they are making their own natural progression through a text.
 When a table of contents is the standard in all other literary texts why make another one for the web? After all the purpose of web accessibility is to create universal standards. 

>
>I haven't seen one to the extent that when I see the term site map I think
>of a cleanly formatted list of (nearly) all the pages on the site.  This
>differs from my concept of a table of contents in its level of completeness
>and its like design obfuscation. 
>
>What I understand by site map is desirable.  It is not needed for small sites
>designed by people who respect accessibility, but I think it might be
>undesirable to remove the requirement, as it is often the only way of
>navigating typical commercial sites, and establishing a precedent for its
>removal in some cases may well cause it to be dropped in cases where it
>is valuable (even now it is typically a small print link at the bottom of
>the page and is probably there because they want search engines to be able
>to navigate the site, even if humans can't).
>
>  
>


-- 
Kevin McDonagh
Apple Tv Design

info@appletv.co.uk
http://www.appletv.co.uk

Received on Monday, 9 February 2004 03:36:00 UTC