On 8 September a new style left nav will replace the existing version on all CMS sites

New Style Left Navigation

The Web Team have improved the appearance, functionality and performance of the 'left nav' (site navigation tree) feature to take advantage of recent advances in technology and to give a better experience for users of CMS sites.

You can see the new left nav on the ICT Home Page http://www.imperial.ac.uk/ict. Note that other pages within ICT will still have the current left nav until 8 September.

We plan to add the new left nav to the standard page templates tomorrow (Friday 8 September) so wherever CMS sites have used the left nav on their pages, they will get the new version automatically. The options set in Configure Navigation for show/hide pages and page ordering will still apply.

The main features users will see are:

• improved appearance of text and graphics. We have enclosed text in tabs which are indented in line with the site structure
• colour coding of page levels within the site structure. The colour schemes will match those used for the site.
• the left nav will always have your site home page as the first item
• the left nav will include the parent page of the current page plus 'sibling' level pages i.e. pages on the same level as the current page. Currently the left nav only shows pages BELOW the current page.

Other improvements are:

• use of a new technology called AJAX to speed page rendering times so your pages will load much faster
• the navigation minimises the requests to the servers and so the load on the servers is reduced making them perform better
• the navigation degrades naturally with all browsers so complies better with accessibility

The Web Team would appreciate feedback on this change, so please let Theresa Nichols have any comments