I'm a bit skeptical of this. If you need horizontal space, how do you structure your navigation? A horizontal list of elements such as the ones news.yc use's could be considered tabs, no? How else _could_ that navigation even be structured? I'm stumped.
New rule, if you're going to tell people they can't use something, or aren't using it correctly, at least offer thoughts as to the correct way.
Getting the right navigation element and having it look good is sometimes tricky. For the upcoming new look of ourdoings.com, I hired a rock-star designer and asked, among other things, if she could figure out how to replace the incorrectly-used tabs in my current design.
She was able to deliver on everything else I asked for, but she couldn't find an alternative that looked as good as tabs. The new design will still have them.
I'm not entirely convinced about the "view" thing... Amazon might be big enough to "create their own weather"... Add in LinkedIn and the pile of other sites that use tabs as primary nav, I don't see this as a major sin...
New rule, if you're going to tell people they can't use something, or aren't using it correctly, at least offer thoughts as to the correct way.