I’m sure this isn’t new, but I just saw it and thought it was worth noting: The VW Phaeton’s UK site has an interesting 3D Flash sitemap where the pages are viewed in slices, with different coloured dots representing different kinds of content (in this case factory or car):
Clicking on a particular page will highlight it; moving the mouse over a blob will bring up a particular item which you can then access by double clicking on it.
Strictly speaking this layout is too fancy, and the content too specific, for general use, but it’s intuitive enough to be a great way to show navigational information in three dimensional form. It might be a nice way to navigate back through old blog material, for example, with different colours for different categories?
Or does this go against the idea of trying to improve content and reduce complexity in design and layout?