Why, Blog, Why?

I was a bit shocked today to land on an Amazon.com product page and not recognize their new layout. Gone are the ubiquitous "tabs". Here's what I sent to them via their feedback form. (See the Functioning Form blog for a history of Amazon.com designs, including the new tab-less design.)

Every web design book that I've come across uses the Amazon "Tabbed Interface" as an example of "what works". It's ubiquitous as a design element that is simple, useful and compact. Certainly it has its limits as tabs are added (My Firefox browser is averaging upwards of 30 tabs and its difficult to wade through), but I would certainly argue that tabs are more user friendly than drop down lists (specifically non-UI-native, script based [JavaScript/CSS/whatever] drop-down lists) which are not always immediately intuitive and often quirky between browsers. I would prefer tabs - in fact I thought you had it right with the hybrid interface of most-often-used tabs with a drop-down overlay of other services. It allowed for easy access to (what I felt are) the most important sections, and everything beyond that was as close as a single click.

If the drop-down list must stay, please make it stay open on click (rather than a hover effect) with an explicit close/cancel button, otherwise I find myself chasing the menu with an over-zealous mouse. Older users may find the required precision difficult to master as well. Additionally, the target for showing the list should be bigger than the arrow graphic for the same reasons.

From Amazon's Q/A article on the design change it sounds like this has been something they've worked on for a while, so chances of them rolling back to the old design are slim. Still, given how often the tabs are cited as good design elements its sad to see them retired. I've yet to find a user interface that's as easy to use as virtual tabs.