Mini-Tabs: I Sense a Trend

In June 2003, Dan Cederholm inspired many with his creation of the CSS mini-tab, a simple yet very stylish twist on the standard unordered list. Now, only two months later, he has created a simple and creative way to jazz up the famous mini-tabs: mini-tab shapes.

“I simply can not help putting the fun little buggers to use.”

The technique simply centers a small background image at the bottom of each list item. Dan’s examples include a rounded block, a pyramid, a semi-circle, and a SimpleBits-esque square. With a little imagination, the mini-tab shapes technique can easily be expanded on, from different shapes, to different placements of the images, and so on. With so much flexibility, mini-tabs and mini-tab shapes are bound to become the new trend across the web. I for one am already incorporating mini-tabs into my current client project. I simply can not help putting the fun little buggers to use.

The Sun Report’s “Sunny” has already experimented with the mini-tab shapes and developed a vertical version of Dan’s horizontal tabs. They look really great, and would work perfectly in a sidebar. Nice goin’ Dan and Sunny!