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Use Standard Conventions

Always try to follow standard conventions. One standard convention that has been developed on the Internet is having the navigation bar at the top or left side of the page.

If you think about it, it actually makes more sense to have the main navigational hyperlinks on the right side of the page next to the scroll bar. This way, we wouldn't have to play tennis with our mouse cursor!

But somebody had the bright idea of adding the main navigation links to the left side of the page. Other Web site designers had an even brighter idea of copying it! Now enough Internet users have seen it in enough Web pages that it needs no explanation.

If you tried to buck this convention by placing the main navigational links anywhere else, it could easily confuse most users.

Other standard Internet conventions include:

• Blue underlined hyperlinks
• Breadcrumb trails
• Bottom of page navigation text links

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