I had the misfortune of finding myself on the Bombay Sapphire Gin site the other day. If you go there, be prepared for a frustrating visit.

Like far too many sites on the web, Bombay Sapphire employ the single most annoying navigation gimmick on the web - ‘School Dinner navigation’.

School Dinner navigation is not only the bane of good, usable design, but also the best named usability mishap. Quite simply, you have to ’stick your fork in the item’ (roll your mouse over the item) in order to see what it is.

School dinner navigation is the epitome of arrogant site design, a belief that the user will want to spend endless precious seconds inspecting the navigation to find out where they need to go on the web site.

This sort of thing drives me nuts. “An Interactive Experience Like No Other” the site proudly boasts. Sadly not. Far too many sites use school dinner navigation to add that ‘edge of dynamism’ to proceedings. My advice? Don’t. Let your content add the dynamism and leave any mention of school dinners back in your childhood.