Using Tabs

[Murder he Wrote]

Apparaently, in terms of usability and "good practices" using Tabs is the way forward when it comes to Website design. Although I'm not 100% convinced.

No doubt there are some tidy Tab Scripts out there, whether it be pure CSS, JavaScript, ajax, PHP or jQuery. However my concern is, are they actually worth adding? Do they effect SEO and are they likely to annoy the end user?

Anybody fancy sharing their experiences from a Designer / End user point of view?

 

[Creativebot]

Define tabs for me. Do you mean for a menu?

If so then its just a menu coded with a background and either blocky or rounded corners. I don't see how it would effect SEO or anything. But honestly I have never incorporated tabs in my designs.

 

[Murder he Wrote]

No I don't mean a menu, I would have said "Tabbed Menu" otherwise ~wink~

What I meant was using Tabs to hide / show actual page content. Rather than having 3 headers with 3 paragraphs, some people use a set of 3 tabs to display the information.

For example -> http://stilbuero.de/jquery/tabs/

 

[Jaloko]

Do you mean like this forum?

http://newgamingera.com

 

[Subz]

Do you mean like this forum?

http://newgamingera.com

Yeah,

I've never seen a forum anything like that, looks very unique

 

[JamesD31]

Apparaently, in terms of usability and "good practices" using Tabs is the way forward when it comes to Website design. Although I'm not 100% convinced.

No doubt there are some tidy Tab Scripts out there, whether it be pure CSS, JavaScript, ajax, PHP or jQuery. However my concern is, are they actually worth adding? Do they effect SEO and are they likely to annoy the end user?

Anybody fancy sharing their experiences from a Designer / End user point of view?

It can effect the SEO if it allows you to add more content than your limited to. I believe the reason for doing a tabbed look is because people HATE scrolling and/or your limited to space. This will allow you to show only content that the viewer/member is looking for, all while having it all on one page rather than having to reload the page imo.

So, it all depends I guess.

 

[ℓєσ gнσѕт]

I think they're great when used in tutorials (rather than splitting it into pages), when used to showcase a gallery, or when doing things of the sort. On forums like the above example, I find it tacky that I can't get to all the forums with scrolling (i'm attached to my mouse wheel ~lol~ )

In terms of SEO, I honestly have no idea so i'll keep my mouth shut there until I get an idea of how a search engine would see the page in strict html.

 

[gqgk]

I also can't comment on SEO but i can say i think the appearance is much better. i hate scrolling through an entire forum to see what they offer. with tabs you can see what is in front of you right away. easy 🙂

 

[FilmFoo]

Personally I don't like tabs because they stop members seeing a lot of things that they might miss through the use of them. I just don't like the feel of them either,

that's just my opinion though 😛

 

[spyka]

it depends how the cotent of the tabs is put there in regards to SEO.

if the content is there on page load, and you use javascript to hide/show content then that's fine as the crawler will just all the tab content

but if you use ajax to the load the content of the tabs then it's bad for SEO as the crawler will only see what is originally there when the page loads

 

[GKS]

There are some good tab scripts in DynamicDrive.com

 

[JakJak]

I have a good tab system but it's only for Joomla 🙁

 

[Taz]

Where is it?