Alex Rivera | Logout

Are tabbed interfaces confusing?

Asked 2009-04-07T00:39:51.350
12

We are designing a web site and have run into some UI challenges that would be neatly solved with a tabbed interface. Users will interact with different elements of the site (there are some basic view/edit/copy/paste functions available) and having only one object in one tab visible at a time simplifies things quite a bit.

We are, of course, completely comfortable with tabbed interfaces but what about novice users? I've searched the web for guidance and I haven't found anything definitive. Do you have experience presenting a tabbed interface to novice users and did they have trouble with it? Or, have we reached the point where everyone is comfortable with tabs and we can use them without reservation?

Usability is important-- more so for this project than most. If naive users are confused by a tabbed interface it just won't work and we'll have to find another way.

html user-interface tabs tabbed-interface
Edit
Report

3 Answers

3

I think as long as the tabs are visible as such it's understandable by the user. I have seen websites where they present a vertical bar with links that act like tabs but it's not immediately visible to the user and found that very confusing.

answered 2009-04-07T00:45:15.143
1

I tend to agree with lothar and ricebowl - people seem pretty familiar with it these days. The most important thing with any GUI element is clarity - the user must innately know what will happen when they press something (they know that clicking an inactive tab will make it active); and in navigation - it must be very clear exactly which tab they are currently on. As lothar said, if it's not immediately visible to the user, it's very confusing. If you address those issues, then it should be fine.

answered 2009-04-07T00:51:31.090
0

A well implemented Tab interface should not confuse users.

In line with what others have said one of the most ipmortant things to consider with Tabs, or any other navigation interface is for it to be obvious where they currently are in the navigation scheme.

Another important point is not to break the browser! Many AJAX or javascript implemtations break the back button. This is a minor annoyance to some and a major inconvieniece to others. Make sure to consider your target audience here.

Personaly I prefer the oldschool method of not preloading all of the tabs but having each tab as its own page and using a templating methodology to manage the navigation interface, be it tabbled or otherwise. This maintains the browser history and works fine with or without javascipt.

answered 2009-04-07T01:05:17.327

Your Answer