I was asked to implement a layout into our current design. The original design contained 5 tabs/radio buttons that would specify what type of form to display. What the "tabs" do is basically change which form fields are visible.
But what used to be 5 radio buttons now became a set of 13 tabs (see scary diagram below). This made my head hurt. I don't believe tabs are the best approach to this problem. What the "tabs" do is change which form fields are visible. I was also instructed that the tabs should be displayed in two lines. I dislike tabs, even more so if they are in two lines. Multi-line tab sets are very confusing.
What would be the most friendly way of allowing the user to chose the type of form to display? Dropdown/select is a possibility, but all choices should be visible at all times.
The horror:
The horror in two rows: