I am a developer and this is the design (a mock of the design) that my designer gave me:
Basically clicking on a tab opens an entirely new view and looses the tab bar altogether. I am trying to convince my designer that this is a bad design philosophy. Any designers here who can comment on whether tabs should be used this way?
It is breaking the tab interaction metaphor, so that should be all you need to push back.
The tabs must persist at all times, and should display one active tab and the other tabs will be inactive. The active tab content will be in view. In this way the user can easily select one of the inactive tabs if needed, which will make it the new active tab.
The whole point of the tab metaphor is to make it easy for the user to learn your interaction, because this is how files in a filing cabinet work in the real world.
If you break this interaction metaphor you risk causing confusion. Confusion should not be mistaken with complexity - often it is confusion that causes usability problems.
