Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web that Works for Everyone

Chapter Nine. Tabs

Tabs neatly organize content into a set of logical sections, and save space in a layout by showing only one section at a time. The tab metaphor is instantly recognizable and intuitive because it mimics the appearance and behavior of models in the physical world, like tabbed manila file folders, or the tabbed sections of an address book.

There are numerous ways to use tabs in a website or application interface, including:

• Presenting a compact content module, like a set of most-emailed/popular/discussed stories on a news site or a set of features that cycle like a slideshow

• Acting as the local navigation or primary view switcher where each tab swaps out large portions of a page, like edit and preview modes in a publishing ...