1.3.2. Thematic Navigation for Web Pages
Thematic navigation is the most important navigation type for Internet
applications and has become a must-have for web pages.
As we already
told you, sequential navigation is hardly used anymore for web pages. Therefore,
we want to deepen the non-sequential navigation structure.
The non-sequential structure can be subdivided into three subgroups. Basically, one can distinguish between:
- Hierarchic Data Structures
- Graphs
- Network Data Structures.
Hierarchic
Hierarchic data structures are often visualised using interactive trees where one interactively opens and collapses sub-hierarchies. A typical example for such a tree structure is the file-browser (NEUMANN 2005).
The navigation of the Cartouche e-learning lessons have the same hierarchy as the mentioned file-browser. The navigation on the left, which you can explore by your own, allows you to open and collapse sub-hierarchies (in our case the different units with their learning objects). |
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You find lots of other web pages or multimedia applications which use a hierarchic data structure, because persons who work with the computer are already used to this method.
Another example that features a hierarchic navigation is the E-Cartouche Web Page.

We will not list more applications with hierarchic data structure, because the Internet is full of them.
Graph
A special form of a hierarchic tree is the hyperbolic
browser developed and propagated by the company Inxight. (NEUMANN 2005)The software enables you to link files, documents and
Web pages across applications and network boundaries. It provides a visual
context for information, showing at-a-glance hierarchical or network
relationships. (Inxight)Within the hierarchic tree, items
can be interactively moved to the center of the visualisation. Objects farther
away from the visualisation center are perspectively scaled down and later
hidden. (NEUMANN 2005)
There are a
few examples on the Inxight
webpage which demonstrate the use of the hierarchical Inxight
StarTree. Explore one of those examples! You can reach them by clicking on one
of the following thumbnails that are listed to the right on the Inxight webpage:

Network
Search engines such as Grokker or Kartoo use another
technology:
As soon as you launch a search, the search engine analyses
your request, questions the most relevant engines, selects the best sites and
places them on a map (Kartoo). In this map, the results are
represented depending on their relevance; important objects appear first, less
important ones only after zooming into the information space. Objects that are
closer to each other are often grouped in "galaxies", in which
the user can dig into deeper, gradually revealing more details. (NEUMANN 2005)
In both search engines, you get additional
information about the located sites.
Kartoo: when you move the mouse cursor over the located pages, the concerned keywords are illuminated and a brief description of the site appears on the left side of the screen. ![]() |
Grokker: when you move the mouse cursor over the located pages, additional information of the page appears in a tool tip and the link to the pages appear on the left side of the screen. ![]() |
Explore the two presented search engines: type in a few search terms and study the results. You reach the engines by clicking on the two thumbnails above. Within the Grokker Search engine you have to click on "Map View" to reach the map view of your search.
Exercise
Setup Information for Tutors: The Tutor has to install a discussion board with the title "Navigation Structure". Everything else is exmplained below
Study the navigation structure of five of your most preferred web pages that you visit very often. Define the structure of their navigation and give reasons about your decision. Put the links to these sites and your results on the discussion board "Navigation Structure". Pick five of the web pages that your colleagues put on the discussion board (mustn't be the same as your web pages) and study their navigation structure. Comment on five entries of your colleagues. Do you agree with the result of your computer or do you have another opinion of the web page's navigation structure?