[thelist] Amazon redesign (those darn tabs)

[Matthew Walker]

> Good god! I thought tacky tabbed designs went out of fashion
> years ago!

I think the problem most sites face is confusing navigation. *If* tabs make
this clearer then they are a good idea, tacky or not. Amazon is in the
business of selling books, not looking beautiful. However, I sort of feel
Amazon is using tabs in lieu of actually thinking about how to structure its
content. And they *are* ugly ones. There was (is?) a funny spoof at
dack.com. I think it is a good use though -- choose different types of shop.
I used them at akaroa.com to choose different types of experience.

I seem to recall reading an Alertbox column where Jakob natters about tabs
not being used the right way (i.e. his way). He said they should be used for
different views on the same content. Where do they get used like that? Only
place I can think of is HomeSite and CF Studio. Everywhere else they are
used for multipage forms (Windows Control Panel) or for multiple sheets
(Excel) etc.

I think tabs should be a built-in HTML Forms element!

Matthew Walker.