[Sigia-l] Tab Navigation Structures

[Dan Saffer]

Leaving aside Jacob Nielsen's dictum about tabs only being for showing
different views of the same data, we're exploring using a navigation
structure that includes tabs for a large project I'm on. However, unlike
Amazon or Apple, we're toying with the idea of the tab (when clicked)
opening the first/top item in the secondary navigation. Clicking on,
say, a tab marked Research wouldn't bring you to a main page called
Research, but rather to the first area under the Research umbrella
(News). Rolling over the tab (which you would obviously have to do
before clicking it) would reveal all the secondary navigation, so it
wouldn't be as if the user was dropped blindly onto a page that had no
relation to what she just clicked on.

Has anyone seen this done before, and if so, how successful was it?

dan saffer
sr. interaction designer, ameritrade
http://www.odannyboy.com

"there's a lot of things 
 if I could I'd rearrange." -U2