Another example of a nice classic left nav implementation can be found at Dawdle.

Microsoft Research is working on faceted search for cell phones.

ebay motors

Cool concept for all refinements in one interface, but I worry about over-steering to zero results all in one step.

Faith just sent me a link to endless, pointing to their faceted navigation. It’s a classical implementation in a left nav bar, but you can see that they put thought into each navigator specifically, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach. I haven’t used the site extensively yet, but it seems like it would work nicely.

Category navigator:

Brand navigator (multiple select as well as keyword search), color family, and shoe size:

Heel height and price:

One thing i’m not sure works well is their search state breadcrumbs. They are in the left nav, where you selected them instead of somewhere more visible.

Nice font, visually pleasing. I like the two-column solution for some of the navigators. Their search state messaging is not very visible though, I wonder how well it’s working out for them.

kayak

trulia

A faceted browsing classic. NCSU Libraries search, powered by Endeca (via Findability.org)

Pretty, space-efficient, and easy to use navigation. Volkswagen UK (via Findability.org)

If you need a tooltip explaining the main navigational element on your site, you either don’t trust your users’ intelligence or didn’t do a very good job of designing it. Also, if you need that many words to explain it, you’re in even bigger trouble.

search state is on top of results, the place to undo is in the left nav, where you selected it (see way at the bottom). wigix.