We're looking for a way to cut down on pogosticking - users popping back and forth between a summary view and various detail views. One pattern we're experimenting with is pager arrows, for when users just want to page through each location's view, complete a task, and move on to the next location.
At the same time, the user might know which location they want to view next, and a dropdown list of all locations would be useful.
I haven't seen this pattern before, but it would be nice to have something compact. A left-hand nav would be ideal but we don't have room (the view uses wide, heavy data tables.)
Is there a pattern that would accomplish something similar to this, that might have more user familiarity?