Opera developers published a report (first of a series) summarizing the results of the project MAMA - Metadata Analysis and Mining Application. MAMA is a search engine designed to find results containing full description of site’s structure, including information about used scripts. This is a completely new approach for web search - instead of content it goes through scripts and provides information of high-usability for browser programmers, standard bodies and webmasters.

Report contains MAMA’s results considering markup validation. Authors also gave some figures and quite basic and obvious comments. More interesting things about MAMA we can read at Opera Developer Community’s site “Opera wants to share it with everyone“, unfortunately no further details are known. Presumably access to it is going to be free.

According to Brian Wilson MAMA can provide such detailed information as answer to the question “What is 18th most popular element”. Except for being source of such an in-depth information MAMA can be used a tool in standardisation of web most popular technology, identification of bugs at web pages and for measurement of adoption of particular technologies.

Supposedely MAMA will turn out to be great help for webmasters who will be able to explain using particulat technologies to their clients and persuade them why their ideas are not always the best ones.

You can read more here.

-mw

Have You ever wondered about how the information on websites is organised? How is it connected to make it easier finding what we want on particular pages? Most of us are not even aware that navigation is most crucial part of design for page’s usefulness. Most typical navigation types are: vertical and horizontal menus, but recently, mainly thanks to flash technology it became possible to design navigation that brakes this convention.

I’ve selected few pages characterizing with unconventional navigation, the choice was made basing on the bestwebgallery.com, which presents fresh ideas in web design. Common features of chosen pages are technical advancement and navigation far different from classic one.

Navigation at most of them is commonly defined as an act of directing the way of something. In the web it is an act of directing a way for ourselves and to move around the information. Designing unconventional navigation is a risky task, it has to be intuitive (many different users have to act in the same way to find information we want them to). That seems to be most important thing in designing non-linear navigation - prognostication of intuitiveness among page’s target group.

One of my former lecturers said that Internet is a cluster of technologies, which are the adaptation of technologies existing in the past. He meant mainly the map and telegraph. I will focus on the example with the map. Map is a copy of the real surface, it presents two-dimensional projection of reality by educing it from its surrounding.

Simcityds.ea.com and Betaclan.net - this examples give the most simple illustration of that process. It is also visible in the case of Agencynet.com and Creaktif.com, where designers replaced the open-area map with plans of buildings.

"Flying islands" at Rakugaki.iekaki.jp

Other example of such a map-alike projection is given by designers of Rakugaki.iekaki.jp. This is more advanced and very innovative method of data presentation. It worth adding, that this site is a poll results presentation. Flying islands suspended in three-dimensional space can serve us as an very inspiring example of breaking convention of navigation design.

We can find something similar at Javierferrervidal.com, where we can preview the photos, which seem to be spread in 3D, their configuration is chaotic and irregular, but we can randomize them even more. Before we got to the portfolio, we can navigate moving towards unexpected and random directions, what can be also considered as one of characteristics of unconventional navigation.

Please note, that in case of Rakugaki.iekaki.jp the navigation is doubled, below the content we can find images of particular islands, we can switch between.

"Board game" at Problemplayground.com

Sort of projection of map was implemented by designers of the site Problemplayground.com, whole content is interactive, its graphic presentation looks like a board game, we can switch between sections. Navigation is also doubled, we have classic horizontal menu in the left-upper corner and we can navigate by clicking on the content or the arrows, that display on the edges after moving the cursor.

The other innovative form of navigation are interactive videos. It was implemented on Theovenreinvented.com. Users can interact with the virtual characters, representing the organizations by clicking on items in the video. User gets the opportunity to choose between few different scenarios, which is also a characteristic for non-linear navigation, it is more individualised.

"Chaotic" portfolio in 3D at Javierferrervidal.com

Unfortunately common feature for most websites with untypical navigation is the lack of two-sided communication between the users and admin. In 2.0 era simple e-mail form may look like a step back,  as far as design is concerned. As far unconventional navigation is lonely one not social. It seems to be the result of destination of particular services. Their nature does not require implementing all new forms of communication - most of them were designed to be presentation of product, portfolio or idea. The exception is site Rakugaki.iekaki.jp, which is a very advanced poll result presentation where we can add our comments and opinion.

Non-linear navigation is predominantly supported by using the classical navigation forms, but also some technical tricks can be helpful, I mean - lightening clickable elements, or sound effects after moving the cursor on them. This can vastly improve the intuitiveness of navigation. Also leaving the space between particular elements of design increases the comfortableness in browsing the site.

It seems that significant thing for intuitiveness and user’s confidence while browsing with unconventional navigation is using popular-culture references in the design, they can efficiently amplify the message.

It looks like it is a popular idea among non-linear navigation designers to secure themselves by introducing double navigation - classical and unconventional one. It should, at least in some part, prevent outflow of users, who cannot find themselves using such an innovative service.