LinkedIn launched a redesign of their site today. It incorporates a new navigation structure and looks more like a social site that before. Something significant to notice is the tabbed structure which has been replaced with a left navigation. I blogged about how Amazon made this change with their redesign as well.

LinkedIn Before

LinkedIn After

The tab metaphor seems to be going away in contemporary web design. Perhaps because tabbed navigation doesn’t make good usability sense. According to Jakob Nielsen:

Tabs should be used to alternate between views within the same context not to navigate to different areas

Overall I prefer the new design. I think it’s a clean interface that “borrows” layout geography from Facebook (which is good for user’s of both sites but not so much for the Facebook design team)

One think that does seem to bother me though is the shadow on the left navigation

If there is a shadow left and right at the bottom shouldn’t there also be a shadow in the valley?

I recently upgraded to Windows Vista. Something I noticed is it’s use of transparent elements within it’s UI.

Here’s an example of the corner of a Vista window:

Another common Web 2.0 method is the lightbox which is essentially a pop-up using JavaScript but rather than creating a new window within the browser it keeps the user on the same screen. It can be a powerful tool in the user experience design.

In this example the user is able to select a single date and view the details without leaving the page. There is no additional browser windows allowing the user to focus on a singe action. In addition to opening a window the lightbox method “shades” the window below to reduce the level of noise on the screen.

Being informed of new technologies and innovation on the web not only makes you a complete geek but also helps you think of problems in different ways. Seeing how new ideas explode onto the scene and watching their influence forces you to approach problem solving from “outside the box” (one of the most overused terms to which few know the origin). Here’s a list of sites I use to keep current with new technologies:

Digg
Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted by users.

Del.icio.us
A social bookmarking tool that lets you see what are the most popular things being bookmarked. Also if you use the networking feature you can tap into your friends and family to share new cool sites.

Bloglines – Really any news reader will do but it’s a great way to ingest loads of content with very little commitment to reading absolutely everything. I equate it to reading the headlines of the paper and only taking a deeper look at those articles which interest you.

Below are a list of blogs which are in my account which I find particularly timely with new ideas:

Boston Business Journal (I live in the Boston area)
Techcrunch
The official Google blog