Norbert Dentressangle: Disorientating users

A rollover primary navigation system gives site users unnecessarily disjointed journeys.

The Site

Norbert Dentressangle, a major European road haulier, has a rollover primary navigation system that gives site users unnecessarily disjointed journeys.

The site template has the primary navigation menu in a left-hand panel in which each section heading is preceded by three direction arrows pointing to it. Rolling over a heading highlights the name and opens a horizontal bar containing the sub-sections. This runs from the left-hand panel across the main content area on the same level as the section heading; the lower down the page the heading is the lower the sub-section bar. Once within a sub-section the horizontal menu bar disappears; to move between sub-sections requires going back to the left-hand panel and re-rolling over the section heading, which is no longer highlighted.

The Takeaway

The drive to improve the accessibility of websites for disabled users and the inherent instability of rollovers have combined to make them something a liability and downright unfashionable. So it is a surprise to find a company the size of Norbert Dentressangle still using such a system.

Navigation should never be dependent on rollovers, both because devices used by the visually impaired may get confused and because people with shaky hands cannot easily use them. The deployment here makes navigation tricky even for people without these problems. When navigating within the site, it is not possible to move back to the secondary (sub-section) menu, only to the primary and tertiary ones, And the lack of highlighting makes it difficult to see what section you are in. All in all, Norbert Dentressangle is trying to be too clever for its users’ good.

First published on 11 October, 2007