Millions of people are on the Internet to search for information and many more are discovering the usefulness of this new technology every day. People all over the world can reach out to find almost anything with a click of the button but that information is not always that easy to find. Many times, a person must navigate through a number of links on a single site to find the specific information they are looking for. At a large site, navigating can be a time-consuming task. Different ways of setting up the navigation of a web site have been used. A popular style of menu involves frames.
Many web guides and manuals are currently available and most of them do say, frames provide a convenient and organized way of presenting a constant menu bar. (Chan) Although when designing the layout of frames, the designer must keep in mind the usability and functionality of the frames. Jakob Nielson, has a couple basic guidelines taken from Tim Berners-Lee's original design of "web unification," for designers describe the essential components of web page to keep in mind
In order for a web page to be an efficient source of information the developer should design it to work well with the user and the browser. The main complaint in regards to frames is that some browsers do not support them. When formatting in frames, HTML allows the browser to read the frames or divide them in to separate pages. Also when inserting links within frames, there is an to remove the frame from the view, so the user will only see the linked page.
Frames tend to break up the "unified model." They introduce a new way of viewing information, that unfortunately have not been intergrated well. Users do not always like their web pages broken in to sections. User's also do not like to scroll. (Shneiderman) Often frames are set up so the user has to scroll down the menu frame. However the frame must be selected before the user may scroll, frustrating the user.(Sullivan)
The usual frame location is on the left. This is where the the user has to scroll. Studies show that the user would not mind frame and actually prefer them if the did not have to scroll. (Sullivan) Some of the factors involved with the user having scroll are:
We wanted to eliminate the scrolling factor our experiment. This took away one "realistic" aspect of the experiment. Since studies have found scrolling to be the largest draw back to frames.
Web sites are primarily designed to convey information to the user. Designers find hiarchial information is the best way to organize a web page. An advantage of frames is that they proved the user with a grouping of information. That is if the frame is designed to be a table of contents for the web page. Few users have time to browse through each page in search of the information. (Lynch)
Users do like consistency and simplicity. Frame definitely provide consistency, however simple they are not, usually. When listing information in an organized manner, it is an asset to a web page. Although when unorganized, large, dominating frames are applied, the users may find themselves disoriented and will be more prone to leave a site.
In general, it seems that most lists are usually displayed vertically than in horizontal form. Since the majority of lists are in column form, one may assume that this arrangement is superior to lists in a horizontal line. In cases where a pointing device is used, it is unclear which style is more beneficial. (Norman, 138) A study of menu preferences by Norman (1987) found that students in computer science preferred listing of commands in rows rather that in columns while non-computer science majors preferred a vertical listing. We hope that our experiment can be beneficial in providing more data to answer the question of menu orientation.
Our experiment's focus is on optimally placing the menu frame for navigation through a web site. Part of the task in selecting choices from the menu is cognitive while the other is physical. The cognitive aspect is composed of recognition, judgment, and making a decision. The physical aspect is in the motion of the pointing device to make a selection. The cognitive part of our experiment involves the simple task of recognizing a number and realizing the interval in which it belongs. The physical part is in the movement of the mouse to the correct interval and pressing the mouse button. Fitts' Law is one factor that can be applied when discussing web site navigation. Paul Fitts developed a function for discerning the time it takes to use a pointing device. This function goes by the principle that the distance to and the width of the target are directly related to pointing time. In our experiment, the width of the targets are uniform for all treatments. Therefore, the average distance would be the important variable in determining pointing time according to Fitts' Law.
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Frame Placement for Optimal Web Navigation