CSS-Tricks

Amazon.com Redesign, Sticks with Tables

*   October 7th, 2007   *

by: Chris Coyier

Amazon.com has been flogged a few times for it’s weird use of “tabs” in it’s design that don’t really act like tabs. Well now we can start flogging it for all new reasons. They have gone with a really busy, really blocky design with a flyout pop-up menu for the main navigation. Seems like a questionable move to me, but we’ll see how the rest of the world reacts.

amazonredesign.png

Perhaps most questionable is their sticking with table based design. What is this, 1997?


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Responses


  1. Gravatar

    Jermayn Parker
    October 7, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    You say tables?? What a joke…

  2. Gravatar

    Chris Coyier
    October 8, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    Is it just me, or have they rolled back to the old design now (Monday late morning?)

    I can’t image how stressful it would be as a designer/developer at Amazon rolling out a change like this, only to have it result in disaster and having to revert back. I bet there are heads flying.

  3. Gravatar

    John Schires
    October 9, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    If you look at the source code you’ll see the tell-tale signs of the site going through a portal system.

    I’ve been working on several big sites that use the Plumtree portal system and the system places un-necessary, inaccessible tables (no id’s but hard coded widths & heights) all over the place. About the only way to get a layout to come out right is to use tables to force sizes.

    Granted not the best way to do it but most clients only cares about the finished product, not how it was done.

  4. Gravatar

    Chris Coyier
    October 9, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    Oh yeah I’m sure they have what they consider to be a very good reason to use tables.

    But here is the thing, if any site in the world has the money and resources to implement a better, lighter-weight, more modern design it’s Amazon.com.

    I would think they could save money in bandwidth alone over time.

  5. Gravatar

    Beau
    October 9, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    I love how Amazon still doesn’t declaree a doctype….

  6. Gravatar

    Chris Coyier
    October 9, 2007
    [ permalink ]

    My god, yeah, I didn’t even notice that. I guess it doesn’t even matter if they trigger quirks mode or lose default behavior since pretty much every page element is styled inline.

    Maybe they do it on purpose so you can’t even try to validate the code =)

  7. Gravatar

    Charlie
    April 29, 2008
    [ permalink ]

    Amazon’s US redesign has been rolled out in the UK this month, six months after this article was posted. Still no doctype, still largely table-based design, still hard to believe from a company as big as Amazon!


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December 3, 2008