Unified Navigation Tree, UI Paradigm

As you read this blog, or use any application, notice how much of the screen’s area is used for navigation (around 50%, I’d guess). From the top edge of the monitor, row after row of navigation elements occludes your view of useful data. On a Mac, there’s the Finder, the Window titlebar, the browser’s location bar, a row of tab headers, and that’s just the beginning. Every site you visit provides adds further navigation rows.

These navigation elements are not unified in look&feel, and make up a crazy quilt draped over the top half of your screen. The supposed convenience of being able to navigate to an earlier branch of navigation is more than outweighed by sacrificing half your screen.

A way around might be a Unified Navigation Tree which is displayed fullscreen. The actual content of the web page would be displayed in fullscreen mode as well. The Navigation Tree would be accessed with one keystroke or mouse gesture.

The Operating System provides the main trunk of this tree. The current application ( say, browser ) adds a sub-tree at a strategic location, determined by the OS. The current web page adds a subtree to the browser’s subtree, and so on.

The trade-off is this — give up the convenience of navigating to any layer of your work with one click, and gain 50% more useful screen space. In this paradigm, everything is two ( instead of one ) keystrokes/clicks away.

The benefits of this paradigm:

1. Significantly increased screen space for actual content.
2. Less distracting visual noise. Fewer options contend for your attention.
3. A unified, consistent navigation system.

The Navigation Tree View could be a Dashboard-like, self-scaling, translucent overlay.