Hi,
I'm involved in a redesign at this point of a site that has capitalised its primary navigation and button text as part of the UI. I have looked around at the competitors in the market and found no one else does this. The business still likes the idea at the moment and I wanted to see what opinions are out there for and against this approach?
Thanks Denis
Hi there, I don't see the programming question in this, but your question seems more like a design question?
There are not strick rules regarding how to do these, but regarding userfriendliness - stick with what looks most readable I would say.
I've seen navigations with :: infront of the menuitems... totally nonsense, but some graphicartist just couldnt live without them.
All caps is generally frowned upon because it's viewed as shouting in normal email/IM usage. But I can't tell you not to do it because like with any design decision, it depends on how it works in an overall sense. I've seen all lowercase work really well in some cases and look unprofessional in others.
So my general stance is to not do all caps but if the overall theme works then go for it.
What your user should be looking at is up to you, the Web designer, to figure out.
To achieve precedence you have many tools at your disposal:
* Position — Where something is on a page clearly influences in whatorder the user sees it.
* Color — Using bold and subtle colors is a simple way to tell youruser where to look.
* Contrast — Being different makes things stand out, while being the samemakes them secondary.
* Size — Big takes precedence over little (unless everything is big, inwhich case little might stand out thanks to Contrast)
* Design Elements — if there is a gigantic arrow pointing at something,guess where the user will look?
Read
Don't ask us, ask your users... maybe they don't even care, which mean you shouldn't either (or at least not so much)
(hallway) usability tests work and are pretty cheap, you can find many ressources that will tell you how to run them :