Amazon recently redesigned their product page with tab like divisions of all the info on the page. Their discrete chunking of information seemed to make the page slightly more organized and easier to navigate tons of info associated with the product.

Lots of discussion on the SIGIA list about the tabs and more discussion on

Elegant Hack about whether or not this was a good solution to the problem of tons of content. And whether or not the tabs were anb appropriate metaphor for the chunking.

My own opinion is that the tabs within tabs, with different behavior (one set at the top is like file folders - different info within each bucket, while the lower set is a chunking of info all related to the single topic - the product page) can be confusing to end users. But because the tabs in this case are very differently realized - the top are tabs, the inner ones look more like tabby buttons - I think they probably are ok. We dealt with this issue a lot with the AV 2.0 redesign in 2000. We used tabs for discrete navigation of areas in the network, but there were mini tabs on the search box (like Google) that actually performed searches in different databases on the same query in the field. Confused? Imagine how our users felt.

In that case, our tabs were very close together and in some cases had similar names. I think the Amazon solution is different. Distance separates them, the top ones scroll off before the inner tabs are seen and the names are clear.

Well - they have reverted back to the old design. Despite tons of conversation in the industry about the proposed new design, I am not sure going back was better.

Here is the Amazon Tabs in Tabs (99k jpg at full size)