Approaches for the too-many-tabs problem
I’ve seen various, slightly differing solutions to the too-many-tabs-to-fit problem recently. Amazon does a “more tabs” thing at the right, the new AOL has an embedded tab scrolling thing (the tabs that are not embedded don’t scroll, thus allowing for a selection of more important tabs that are always visible), and SAP has a scrolling tab solution without the tabs that stay (couldn’t find a screenshot…). Point to other solutions in the comments and I’ll add screenshots.
It seems like the too-many-tabs problem is slowly coalescing towards a standard solution for websites.
I’ve seen the Mac solution below being used on a weblog at one point, but I can’t find it anymore. Anyone?
December 1st, 2003 at 4:34 pm
Here’s an SAP screenshot of a tab implementation - notice how the extra tabs seem to fade off to the left. I’ve never actually seen a working version of this, but I’m interested in finding out how well it scales. Do the 2 tabs hidden on the left actually represent 2 hidden tabs, or 2+ hidden tabs? Does hovering over these tabs scroll them into position, or (as it seems to appear in the screenshot) do we use the arrows to move the hidden tabs into view?
http://wwwext.sapdesignguild.org/resources/images_hist/screen1_entryapp.gif
The OS X Dock is certainly wins on autistics, but (as has been pointed out by many others) it has its issues also. Chasing a moving target takes some getting used to, and then there’s the problem of scaling.
In fact, scaling is the main problem with all tabbed navigation. At some point, there are just too many tabs (options) and an alternative navigation scheme should have been employed.
December 2nd, 2003 at 1:09 am
Thanks - good points! That screenshot doesn’t show SAP tabs though, it shows an SAP GUI screen with icons. The tabs I was refering to are used in the portal product… (still can’t find a screenshot)