I'm working on a heavily tabbed system myself right now. Most of them make sense. I'm trying to keep reducing the number and merging them into the areas that they make sense to be in.
The first thing we did was break them up into several major groups, like meta-apps, and styled them differently but consistently. Each group has its own set of tabs, but it works because people who work in one area rarely, if ever, venture outside of that area. Next, we merged adding content, editing content, previews of content and so on into a single tab. Again, a kind of small mode within the larger app that is content management, that is in the larger suite that is website management and strategy. Don't be afraid to segment out your app. Websites are getting more and more complicated with more and more goals they try to meet. They are all trying to snatch a chance at the all-in-one webOS pie before it is baked. Many will fail, because they cram it all into one space. Filling their page with dropdowns and flyouts. Hiding things in a sea of unwanted. Tabs have the happy side effect of making it very obvious when you are trying to cram in too much to one area. This is one of the reasons they are becoming popular. They are easy for a designer to point at and say "We can't fit anymore, sir." But they don't work miracles. And they can be very confusing. Especially when the items in the tabbed section do unexpected things. One of the major reasons to lose a "Add Content" tab is that new content wouldn't be accessible from that tab if the user clicked a different tab and then clicked the add tab again. It would add a whole new piece of content yet again. However. Space willing, it might make sense to add a tab for an 'open' piece of content when a user adds a new content in the content section. For easy access. Might. It didn't for us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42699 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
