[Discuss] Alternative to Tabs

For anyone who has seen the character sheets I have made, you know I love tabs.  So, while looking for my next project, I began to consider my approch to character sheets, and wondered if tabs was the way to go or not. There are a couple ways I go about it:  If I am trying to go directly off a .pdf character sheet, I make each tab to hold about the same information as one page of the character sheet. If not, I try to keep relevant information in the same area; Armor class and hit points in the combat tab, all skill together, etc. When it is thematically/rules appropriate, I set one section outside the tabs so it can be viewed with any tab open (the universal roll for the Mydrid Song sheet, for example) But, just because its the way its always be done or (more importantly) its the way I learned, doesn't mean its the best way.  So I ask you, people/robots/illegal-Artificial-Intelligences/alien-hackers-bent-on-world-domination of Roll20, are there other methods for displaying data as useful as tabs?  Are there better ways of displaying a character sheet to make gaming better?   Some ideas I have seen : tooltips (like in one of the Exalted sheets); mouse over to bring up a hidden area. One page sheets; no tabs, just scroll to what you need NPC check/radio box (depending on what you select, the sheet only displays the relevant data; usually used with tabs, but can be useful for one page sheets) What other methods for displaying data in a useful manner is available?  What do you suggest?

How about a fly-out index/navigational menu, always available from the side of the sheet,fixed and floated above the sheet.  Just mouse-over to have it "fly-out", and select your section.  The sheet could be one long sheet with anchors for each section or tabs, or hidden pages off-page.  Choose something from the fly-out and the sheet would scroll to the section, or switch to a tab or hidden page.  Possible? 

This could be done with tooltips.  Not at all how I imagined them, but it could be done.  Neat!

I suppose if tabs can be done then accordions can also be done. On the Pathfinder sheet we have little arrows to hide/unhide sections. That's all accordions really are, each page can be an accordion leaf.

I think the 5e sheet uses some cool accordion stuff, but who wants to copy Kryx's sheet...?  ;-P

Another consideration for anything you plan to have show/hide such as with a checkbox, you can omit the name attribute on the input, and the checkbox's state won't be saved. You can click the checkbox to un-hide an area, close the sheet, open the sheet, and it will be re-hidden. This is best for areas you want to be hidden the majority of the time, but still have access to. I came up with it as an alternative for the Crafting sub-abilities hover that I created for the Exalted 2e sheet, and it's something I'm planning to use on my implementation of the Exalted 3e sheet.

Brian said: I came up with it as an alternative for the Crafting sub-abilities hover that I created for the Exalted 2e sheet, and it's something I'm planning to use on my implementation of the Exalted 3e sheet. I saw (because you showed me) that, and thought it was quite clever.  I was actually thinking of that when I mentioned the Exalted sheet.

I did? I don't remember sharing my Ex3 code... It's in a pretty unfinished state ATM...

I was asking about  tabs on roll templates .  You were helpful, but in the end, I could find a way to do tooltips or tabs on roll templates. 

I use show/hide to pretty good effect on my repeating groups.  At the end of the group, there is a little checkbox that replaced with a rotating gear icon. When player hits the icon, extra information flops out. Basic information about an action is available, and it only fills one row of text and then when expanded, it shows a ton more.