Going back to the roots of site architecture, we have to take by default that:
“Every information should be accessible“.
In this case all the navigation should be:
- Be easy to learn.
- Be consistent throughout the website.
- Provide feedback.
- Use the minimum number of clicks to arrive at the next destination.
- Use clear and intuitive labels.
- Support user tasks.
- Have each link be distinct from other links.
- Group navigation into logical units.
- Avoid making the user scroll to get to important navigation or submit buttons.
Tabs
One of classical ways of arranging a good website navigation is - tabbing: logical division of the data among the directories, and subdirectories, would be a comprehensive solution for an end-user. The most viewed tab menus:
These tabs give a clear, logically simple,site navigation so the user will be able to track website architecture, and navigate through the content.
Footer Navigation
With the appearance of sitemaps, or well designed header tab navigation, footer became more less used for storing less important links of the main page.
Therefore, those “scroll-till-death” sites like Flickr partially duplicate their header links and move them to the footer section.
Summarizing all the examples mentioned, the developer should be very careful on the content aspect of the website, and according to it base its navigation. Some of the basic ideas of Accessibility can be found on Web Accessibility initiative from W3.Org