Functional Footers
They say you can learn a lot about a person by their shoes. What can you learn from a website by its footer?
When I was getting started with freelancing, many of my clients would emphasize that their pages have as little scrolling as possible. If the page had to be long, they would request “Back to Top” links interlaced in the content mostly because the navigation was at the header of the page.
At the time, the footer (like shoes and feet) was ignored.
I started to notice footers when Apple launched its current version of its website with the launch of Mac OS X Leopard. Apple was not the first to do the fancy footer but it is one of the most functional that I have seen.
The footer is valuable screen real estate and can actually form a kind of grounding for a website visually and from a design perspective too. This is an area that can open out a site and channel the user to relevant areas that would be difficult to link to in a header or that would clutter a sidebar.
For the sake of illustration check out the footers on:
As you can see, a functional footer makes a fine finish.