Tabbed Notebooks

A tabbed notebook control is a convenient way of presenting related information in the same window, without having to display it all at the same time. It is analagous to the divider tabs in a ring binder or a file cabinet.

Figure 6.23. A typical notebook control with four tabs

Picture of notebook control with four tabs

Guidelines

If you have more than about six tabs in a notebook, use a list control instead of tabs to switch between the pages of controls. For example:

Figure 6.25. Use of list control where there would be too many tabs to fit comfortably in a notebook

Part of a window including a list control with 7 items, each
          item representing a category of settings such as
          "Appearance" and "Navigation". The controls in the
          rest of the window change depending on which item is selected in the
          list.

As in this example, place the list control on the left-hand side of the window, with the dynamic portion of the window immediately to its right.

Status Indicators

In some tabbed windows, such as preference windows, it might be desirable to indicate the status of a particular tab. This can be used to notify the user that a web page that is still loading or has been loaded, a new message is waiting in a particular instant messasing conversation, or that a document has not been saved. Such a status indicator should be an icon that is placed directly to the left of the tab label. Additionally, the tab label's color might be changed to indicate a certain status. Do not simply rely on a different coloring scheme for status indication.