Introduction
You can navigate through the site intuitional and fast in many different ways! I created this tutorial for new users on the internet to help them recognise the useful features as much as for more experienced users, as this site has a lot of optional features.
During creation, I tried to find as much ways as possible to enhance the "usabilityty" The Website has four hierarchical Layers:
- Hierarchical Layer 0: The Homepage. Layer zero isnīt a real hierarchical layer. It describes the main chaper overview and has three links which refer to the legal notice, the version overview and the german website (RochelleSwanson.de).
- Hierarchical layer 1: The chapters (about, forum, info, news, pics, links). Each chapter treats an own topic with multiple sections except for the Linklist and the forum. The Link-page has only one section and the forum has subforums and Threads instead of sections and subsections. Youīll find a chapter overview on the Top of each chapter, section and subsection and a direct link to the homepage and the german Website (this button is always grey). The chapter in which you actual are, is accentuated in the chapter overview and has its own fav-icon, containing the initial letter of the current chapter. Besides this, you can use the site-navigation-toolbar of your browser, if you use Mozilla, Firefox or Opera. Details can be found below. The home page of a chapter is itīs index
- Hierarchical layer 2: The sections, means the topics of a chapter. Besides the section-overview at the left side of each page you can use accesskey-navigation and the site-navigation-toolbar. The actual section is accentuated in the menu and the menu-top contains the chapter name.
- Hierarchical Layer 3: The subsections. Only a few sections have subsections. Subsections contain additional stuff like details at great length or additional pictures and information. The subsections arenīt shown in the section-menu until you are in the superior section.
alternative navigation via webbrowser
Some webbrowsers (Mozilla, Firefox, Opera and a few others) come with a feature called "site-navigation-toolbar" and offer an alternative navigation using the controls/elements of your browser. The chief attraction here is, that you can use this feature with all websites that contain the additional code, so you donīt have to accustom yourself to the navigation of every website. This feature is result of the HTML-standard and is part of it since version 2 (current version is 4.01), so more and more webdesigner implement the additional code in their webpages - I also did as itīs an official element of the HTML-standard! You can verify that by using the Markup-Validator of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Unfortunately, the Internet Explorer is one of the Browsers that donīt support this useful feature. This is the fault of microsoft. In my humble opinion, the Internet Explorer is not a quite good browser anyway, but i is your decision how much comfort and usability you want.
Okay, back to topic: You have to change the settings of your browser to use the site-navigation-toolbar:
- Mozilla: View > Show/Hide > Site Navigation Bar > Show only as needed
- Firefox: You have to install an extension called "cmSiteNavigation Toolbar". When the installation is done, the feature should work properly - otherwise tick "cmSiteNavigation-Toolbar" at View > Toolbars.
- Opera: View > Toolbars > Navigation Bar
Navigation by using "Access-Keys"
An additional way to navigate through the website is to use so-called Access-Keys. With the Access-Key-Navigation, you can move within the site in seconds - if you are a fan of controlling a computer primary by keyboard, youīll like that! Usage: Hold the Alt-Key pressed and tap the respective Access-Key. You can identificate the Access-Keys with a coloured letter in each entry in the section-menu. The Access-Keys of a chapter is itīs initial letter, for example "i" for the chapter "info", to change to the german website, use the "g" (back with "e" for the english website).
Although the function is useful, you may get into trouble, if you have used hot-keys which are associated with your browser, for example Alt+f for expanding the file-menu: Now this hot-key is used as Access-Key to enter the discussion-board (forum). The workaround for solving this problem is simply easy: First press the Alt-key, but donīt hold it! Then press f (or another key) to use the browser-associated function.
Text-links...
...are (almost) ever marked with dashed underlines, which turn into a solid line, if you move the pointer above the link. On the one hand I think, that thatīs a more creative way to mark links than simply use solid lines - on the other hand, by using this method to mark links, solid underlines can be used to accent text - the original purpose of them.