Guidelines for Designing Web Navigation    

As Web sites grow larger and more complex, the challenge of designing effective user navigation increases. We offer designers (as well as those evaluating existing Web sites) a set of 12 guidelines encompassing that attempt to cover the most important and broadly relevant navigation issues. These guidelines are grouped under four topics: (1) Designing an effective link, (2) Managing large numbers of links, (3) Providing orientation information, and (4) Augmenting link-to-link navigation. With each guideline there is an example and a synthesis of the most relevant and compelling research, theory, and expert opinion. These guidelines apply to what can be broadly termed informational Web sites rather than sites for game-players, art sites, and sites intended for whimsy and fun.

Farkas, David K. and Jean B. Farkas. Technical Communication Online (2000). Design>Web Design>Hypertext