[thelist] Site check please....

[Jay Blanchard]

[snip]
Nitpicking perhaps, but the academic point here is that conventions are 
- more or less by definition - not the subject of debate, agreement or 
declaration, but simply are the established way of doing something. 
Given that yardstick, I think yes, there is a UI convention for tabs 
that appear in the way I described.
[/snip]

I know that we might another usability holy war here, but just because
something is an established way of doing things doesn't necessarily make
it the right thing to do. Sure, it may be better than some alternative,
but it is not necessarily right. And I agree with your assessment about
tabs, we normally see them at the top of the folder, pointing up.

In many IDE's you can put the tabs on the top, bottom, or side....so
convention has certainly been thrown out out there in the face of making
the user comfortable with his or her configuration. 

Of interest here would be the little colored boxes behind the words. If
I remove those little colored boxes they no longer appear as tabs, and
therefore would be the standard top nav links familiar on so many sites.

[snip]
It is, of course, your prerogative to follow or flout those conventions,

and of course to question whether the convention is flawed. Personally, 
I think it's a damn useful one. In UI terms, using a widget for 
something other than its normal use is a mistake. In UI terms, making a 
widget look other than its normal appearance is a mistake.
[/snip]

Hair splitting, I know....but isn't a tab (regardless of up down left
right) a navigation item? What if the header changed with the text below
(the god-forsaken tab in the middle of the page faux' pas)?

[snip]
But this is academic, and a relatively minor niggle.
[/snip]

Agreed, but great conversation and learning experience!