Back in the late 90s, it seems like using a tab format for organizing information was the hot thing. Every site seemed to be an Amazon.com copycat or they were using tabs as an attempt to mimic how physical papers might be organized into folders.

I’m not sure why the trend faded out, but tabs are definitely making a comeback. Not necessarily for primary navigation design, but as a way to consolidate a high quantity of information on one page without requiring a lot of click-through effort.

Because the new Yahoo.com and many news oriented sites are utilizing tabs, users are becoming more comfortable with this form of navigation. The exposure from these highly visible sites has started an upward swing again. In the last few wireframes our team has developed, we’ve utilized tabbing systems for:

Exposing Content on Home Pages - Content that is typically buried on back pages and represents information that users are seeking can be brought forward, exposing awareness of it without creating clutter. This gives the home page better “scent” (coined by Jared Spool) and alleviates the burden on the user to try and learn the site’s taxonomy and nomenclature to figure to find content.

Exposing Widgets & Functions – Bringing small forms and functionality that represent common tasks users will want to immediately initiate from the home page is HUGE in improving the user experience. Delta.com has done a great job of this by consolidating these functions into modules that include tabbing systems.

Product/Service Detail Pages – Consolidating detailed information about a product or service is another great use of tabs. It is a very fast and simple way to browse and scan information without having to expend the physical effort of clicking and waiting for a page refresh.

So, while tabs seem cool right now, our newest designs haven’t gone through usability tests yet. I’ll post some updates when we get some reactions from users.