Further, some sets of pages have their own unique nav bars, such as those that make up Communication 's and the Academic and Administrative Computing group's web sites. By the way, it's essential that the textual elements of the nav bar be actual text, not graphics. If the nav bar's vital elements are text, the text loads almost instantly on slower computers, making it useable even before the graphical elements finish loading. We occasionally use this space for what I call a billboard , another graphic meant to call attention to a special event or other important information. The multi-column design of the table that comprises most of this layout helps keep a generous amount of white space on the page.
White space makes a page easier on the eyes.
Less is more. One more thing about page design. It has been suggested that our site might work well with frames. Make the nav bar into its own frame, for example. Frames seem to work best only when you can be sure your reader has a larger monitor, and I'm not willing to make that assumption.