Tom Tom — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:27 GMT

Actually, any navigation with an inpenetrable border is going to be effective. It is the then width that makes it even easier to navigate.
According to the research article, “Width guidelines for rectangular objects with penetrable and impenetrable borders” found in the journal, Behaviour & Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 1, January-February 2006.

It is due to the fact that the right hand nav was against the edge. However, if it had been floating (if the browser window wasn’t full size) it would actually be slower and not as easy to navigate. Therefore, the right hand nav only becomes as effective as a left hand nav when it has an inpenetrable border.

Height of the buttons play a factor as well, but a more dramatic change in speed is found with the width of the buttons.

I think that the Audi site is a nice attempt, but I feel it has a poor layout. When the menu isn’t expanded to a sub menu it creates an awkward empty trapped white space. The other fact of the matter is, you need it full screen to view it. Personally, I rarely view web pages in full size because I like being able to see multiple windows and my resolution is often too large for things anyway. This of course creates NO inpenetrable borders for me so the nav wouldn’t matter so much for speed in my case. Just for aestethics. Which I then will have to agree with a previous comment about reading from left to right.

We are accustom to reading left to right, top to bottom. So having a nav way out on the right is quite awkward. Also, one final thing to note—If you are like me and use smaller windows, then you occasionally have to scroll to the right. It’s not so bad when you’re scrolling to the right to read some content (because you see the paragraph continues, when your eye follows a line you know it continues), but in this case you can’t see the navigation menu at all. If you aren’t sharp enough to realize your window is too small, then you’ll miss the nav. Of course you’ll realize this…just it will take time. Therefore reducing the effectivness of the navigation.

Bottom line. In Western culture, a right hand navigation is NOT more effective (I think the study done here, while interesting, didn’t account for some variables) than a left hand nav due to the way we read and how we are used to things. AND it can assumed that it is far less effective if the browser window isn’t full screen creating an inpenetrable border.

Solutions/ideas to make the right hand nav even more effective: increase the size of the buttons – in particular, the width of them.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Tom Tom