Not a Website - jQuery Plugin Review

[Webnerd]

I have been working on a new concept for navigating websites. It uses some ideas that I have seen with some bonus features. It is still in "beta" and has some resize issues that I need to fix.

Please check it out:
http://code.google.com/p/jquery-panel-magic

And feel free to leave comments or provide some input. Note that the code has not been optimized but is functional.

Should work in IE 6,7,8, Firefox 3 and Safari 3,4

Thanks

[Webnerd]

115 people look but no comments?

[Webnerd]

214 views and no comments. I guess people don't like the idea of checking out via SVN.

[aj_nsc]

Why don't you show us how it works instead of making us build an entire page ourselves that uses it so we can see it?

After some searching I found an HTML page with a demo, but it gets served as text and, I'm not interested enough to go through the trouble of setting it up to view it....although I'd be more than interested if you could give me a link that shows me how it works.

[Webnerd]

You don't need to build a page, just checkout the project, it's all there.

If you are a Web Developer and don't know SVN, get some skills.

Modern developers (scientists) are so lazy:
http://code.google.com/p/jquery-panel-magic/ (link on page)

[Webnerd]

Ok, seeing as though nobody want to provide input, I guess I need to cater to the masses with a direct link to the demo:

http://standardscompliance.com/development/jquery-panel-magic/panels.html

[Webnerd]

417 lookie loo's and no comments...anyone?

[crh3675]

Cool plugin!

[Webnerd]

Thanks for the reply! It's not colorful right now. The idea is to grasp the functions. What a lot of people may not realize is that it is not just a bunch of <div> containers loading in the window. It uses some cool CSS properties for Safari, Firefox, and IE to literally "transform" the content view. For the sake of other readers, "real" content previews of what is in each panel.

[crh3675]

I get it, that's pretty cool! Great alternative to Flash! I guess SEO would have to be managed through alternate means although I did see you can load a panel through the location hash. I look forward to using it!

[Jarrod1937]

Got to love jquery, really helps with development :-)
I think the initial idea is cool... however from a usability standpoint it may not be that intuitive for the masses. All good navigation has one thing in common, it relates to something we've seen and understood before. A metaphor is needed to bridge reality to the virtual navigation. As one example, proper tab navigation uses a single active tab that connects to the base, which is just a virtual way of extending the folder tab function we have in real life.
If you want your idea to take flight i think you need to find a way to also extend a metaphor to your "panelized" system. What does this idea relate to in real life, if anything at all?
And i know you're probably just getting the base functionality down, but you may want to start looking into how to make such a navigation scalable, if it is intended for serious use. Currently, it would be a tad difficult to implement it into the design of a website with more than a few pages.

[Webnerd]

Thanks for the response. The navigation grid scales with the number of panels you have defined. Which means it scales with your site. Granted, the solution may not be not optimal for a site with 100 pages. It could be used most effective in a presentation style on large monitors.

The goal is to actually change the concept of navigation a bit. Coming from a highly interactive firm that uses Flash for a lot of websites, I felt this bridged a necessary gap between ease of update and usability.

I originally saw this as a doable concept based on Safari 4's features that show you all recent/favorite websites in a grid layout upon load. So, I felt, "someone has done some research on the effectiveness of this method, so I can make it work in a similar way".

In life, it most relates to the idea of consolidation and simplicity. Simplified navigation within a consolidated single page.