While most sites don’t need incredibly deep page navigation there are situations that justify a hierarchy beyond the typical 2 – 3 levels. Unfortunately that can be cumbersome for top navigation drop-downs (more than 1 level of drop down is too much IMHO) so another solution needs to be found. I ran into just such a situation for a client and while I”m also not a fan of left hand navigation it was the decision of the client to utilize it in conjunction with their top navigation, and in retrospect it made sense for them. To keep things easily navigable we also implemented breadcrumbs.