This tutorial illustrates how you can use Macromedia FreeHand 10 to create preliminary sketches of your site’s navigation scheme.

Plan the site navigation

Once you have determined your site’s goals, target audience, and data requirements, you are ready to begin conceptualizing the site’s navigation scheme. The site navigation is a “map” that depicts how your web pages relate to one another. Specifically, it shows how users will travel through your site as they click links and interact with application interfaces. A site’s navigation scheme is normally reflected in the navigation bars used on web pages.

During the early planning phase of the project, the people who contracted you to develop the site for The Wildlife Project requested an easy-to-use navigation scheme that would enable their users to find information about the group’s conferences, educational programs, and publications. Your clients would also like the site to focus on current information about the world’s endangered species, and provide a search application that will let users search for a wildlife group in their area of the country.

You decide on a simple navigation scheme that will consist of eight links, all centralized on an index page. At the top of the index page, you’ll create a Macromedia Fireworks MX navigation bar that will link to separate pages for news, conferences, education, publications, links, and contact information. Elsewhere on the page, you’ll create a link to a special page that provides the most current information about a particular endangered species. You’ll also create a link to a results page that will display the results of the search application.

Once you have determined your site’s goals, target audience, and data requirements, you are ready to begin conceptualizing the site’s navigation scheme. The site navigation is a “map” that depicts how your web pages relate to one another. Specifically, it shows how users will travel through your site as they click links and interact with application interfaces. A site’s navigation scheme is normally reflected in the navigation bars used on web pages.

During the early planning phase of the project, the people who contracted you to develop the site for The Wildlife Project requested an easy-to-use navigation scheme that would enable their users to find information about the group’s conferences, educational programs, and publications. Your clients would also like the site to focus on current information about the world’s endangered species, and provide a search application that will let users search for a wildlife group in their area of the country.

You decide on a simple navigation scheme that will consist of eight links, all centralized on an index page. At the top of the index page, you’ll create a Macromedia Fireworks MX navigation bar that will link to separate pages for news, conferences, education, publications, links, and contact information. Elsewhere on the page, you’ll create a link to a special page that provides the most current information about a particular endangered species. You’ll also create a link to a results page that will display the results of the search application.