The Navigation-Panel user interface pattern describes a methodology for easily switching between separate functionalities of your application.
| When: | You are designing an application with several separate functionalities, and users are allowed to easily switch between functionalities. |
| Why: | A collection of buttons make the highest-order structure of the application functionalities visible to your users. It gives them an overview of the separate functionalities and allows to easily switch between them. |
| How: |
Most important is to identify a well defined collection of application functionalities which are acting independently to each other. You should only use a small collection for displaying it in the available space and for not confusing the user. Then name every section with a meaningful name so that it can be easily identified.
For the navigation pane, construct a single panel for displaying the available functionalities, e.g. you could use a toolbar with larger buttons (including its name and tool tip for easily finding the right functionality). The navigation pane then must contain all identified functionalities, and should provide easy access to each of them. For keeping track where the use is you could toggle buttons for identifying the current area or display the name in the application window or title bar. For displaying the available actions construct a panel for the functionalities which will be displayed in the main window. |
| Examples: |
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| Related Patterns: | n/a |
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