providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world

Quote of the Week:

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.
-Gaston Bachelard

Notes from Notchcode

1.26.2007

"nl" does not stand for the Netherlands

I am currently working on a client website's information architecture. They have a lot of info, and much of it is topics nested within broader topical areas, e.g. "About Us: People:Stakeholders."

In the good old days of using rollovers and other JavaScripted menu handlers, creating a tiered navigation structure would be fairly straightforward. But I want to keep this site lean and mean, and make it as accessible as possible. So I am trying to limit my dependence on JS, and avoiding rollovers altogether (to say nothing of tabular layout). Currently, you would just create a list within a list, using the 
<ul>
 <li>Topic Here
  <li>Subtopic Here
  </li>
 </li>
</ul>
structure.


The current XHTML 2.0 working specification takes note of this list within a list usage, specifically devoted to navigation, and has a nifty little tag, specified as the "nl" tag. Referring to a Nested List, the nl tag will allow a developer to create a nested list, or, indeed, series of nested lists, that would let one have an extremely dense navigation area. One could imagine a scenario where you could create a nested list that would show you a direct path from the home page to a specific page buried five levels down in the navigation. Not for the faint of heart, but it would allow for some very compact information presentation. Worth considering.

Now only if nl was enabled now, I could develop this hierarchy easily, and head off to the pub. Alas, I guess I'll be cracking at it for a bit longer. Have one for me, will you.

posted at 7:42 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

Leave your comments here: 0 comments


Business Blog Top Sites
Subscribe with Bloglines
View Alan Bucknam's profile on LinkedIn

Add to Technorati Favorites