Tabs & Tab Naming

Your tabs are the main navigation for your site. It is the categories for your content, so your tabs should be named clearly and be representitive. However, they should not be too wordy.

Tab names that are too long, or using too many tabs, will cause layout issues. They might look ok at first, but as you may have noticed, the header stays with the page as you scroll down. What fits at first, might not fit on the scroll. 

If we go back to the example in the site/directory structure example, let's say we have the following organization: About your program, how to apply to the program, and current program members. In this case, we might want to name our tabs "About Us, Apply, Current Students." They are short and represent what will be found in each directory. 

 

508 Compliancy Tip

If you link to another tab from within your text (for example, on the benefits of our program page in About Us, you might link to Apply), the text for that link must be the same as the tab. Your tabs are on every one of your pages, and you are not allowed to have two links, going to the same page, with different text. See our 508 Tips page for more information.

TIP: Each tab should link to a folder on your site. Folders must be created with lowercase letters and no spaces. For the example above, your folders might be named "about, apply, current (or current_students)." 

TIP #2: DO NOT name your folders with an underscore (_about, _apply, etc.). We name our folders with an underscore so that you can keep them separated from your file structure. Think of the folders with and underscore as system files.  

Feel free to use an underscore if you want to bump a file folder up and not have it mixed with general content folders.