Adding Ajax

Tabbed Pages

While writing this book, Yahoo! came out with a redesigned web site for its popular Yahoo! TV. My, wasn't the redesign an unpopular decision among regular users.

One of the bigger complaints I heard about the new site was the use of Ajax pagination, which I'll briefly discuss later. Additionally, the use of tabbed pages in the full TV listing was roundly criticized because it was slow and had unnecessary Ajax effects. For instance, if you clicked a day to see the listings for that date, the tab indicator would slowly move over to that day and then the listings would be displayed. This was not typical behavior for tabbed pages, and I think the unfamiliar use of animation caused at least some of the pushback.

Tabbed pages have a very strong behavioral identity; data or content is split between different "pages," each of which is displayed when the page tab is clicked. What's contained within the page can differ—it could be pieces of a long form, different types of content for a portal, television listings by day, even coordinated data—each page reflecting what's chosen on the page proceeding. One thing they all have in common, though, is click the tab, display the page. Compared to the accordion, it's actually the easier effect to implement.

A Straightforward Look at Tabbed Content

"Tabbed pages" is a bit of a misnomer, as they don't have to be page-size; they can be tabbed content fitted into a small corner, or on a larger scale, even a page of tabbed content with each page ...