Right-Justified Navigation Menus Impede Scannability

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6 pointschaostheory4 comments

What about usability though? If the navigation was on the right side, it would make it much more convenient to select menu items since the user's mouse pointer is (most likely) on the right side anyway for scrolling purposes. This is what makes blog design themes so popular. But I agree that each has its own place for the type of website (business, education, etc.)

If the entire width of the element is clickable, not just where the text is, then the targets will be larger which would address your concerns I assume.

Nielsen talks about eye tracking studies and appears to make the argument that the menu should be on the left because of the way we (westerners) read. So what about languages like Arabic and Hebrew? As I understand, these are right to left written languages. Would his study find people tracking on the right?

From the article:

(Of course, the left-alignment guideline is for languages that read left-to-right. For languages that read in the opposite direction, the guideline is reversed: you should right-justify the menu. In either case, the point is to make it easier for users to scan down the side on which they start reading.)

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