[Sigia-l] Tab Navigation Structures

[Jim Kauffman]

Horizontal tabs are pretty well established as sub-divisions of a higher
level set of information.

Vertical tabs, however, are fair game, because there are no established
expectations. Because the tabs are vertical and (usually) on the left side
of the window, users will probably associate them with navigation anyway.

You also get the added bonus of being able to reserve your horizontal tabs
for sub-dividing your content once the users have navigated to it.

-Jim K.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> Dan Saffer
> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 10:03 AM
> To: SIGIA
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Tab Navigation Structures
>
>
> 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