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Hyatt Discusses Tabs
Llywelyn writes "Über Geek David Hyatt (who, among other browser projects, works on Safari) has posted an interesting discussion about tabs, what he prefers, what works, and what doesn't."
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I've had the same issue. One way of solving it is to enable exit confirmation. That way, when you hit the main exit button, it will ask if you really want to close or not. Kind of a trade off since that can get annoying too, but at least you won't lose all the browser tabs you have open.
Tabs can be bad.
I've been wondering how I could get Mozilla to open a tab in the background. From reading the article, now I know, you use Shift button 2. Great.
Now if I could figure out how to rearrange the tabs.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Even better idea: What if cou could undo that accidental close?
You mean like Galeon's concept of a session? Galeon remembers what tabs you had open when you exit, and they appear next time you load the app. Great feature that's missing (IIRC) from Mozilla, Phoenix, and many of the other tabbed browsers.
What's up with Ctrl+Pg{Up,Dn}? ;)
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Repeat after me: "command-~ is your friend"
Try it, you'll like it.
Now, this is one of my apple gripes. Mac os has some great keyboard commands, and some great features that blow everybody away. But... the only way I learn these things is when somebody tells me. There's no documentation saying "to switch between windows of one app, hit command tilde". No.
You learn because some fat, sarcastic apple geek looks down his nose at you because you're doing something crudely and as such, he feels he has the right to scorn you. It pains me that that's the ONLY way to learn how to use a mac properly.
Of course, I've just earned my fat sarcastic apple geek prize for this snarky post. But hell, I'm skinny. So pttth.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Here's some good research about pagination versus scrolling:
5 1/paging_scrolling.htm
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/
There's tons more research on web usability that you should also check out at that site.
Actually Konqueror asks you if you really want to close the window if (and only if) there are more than one tabs open.
KDE/Konqueror is also the only browser overall that can remember the pages between login/logouts, btw.
Not only that, but if you try and close a window with multiple tabs open it will show a popup (which you can disable, iirc) asking for confirmation. This has saved me once or twice, because I always display tabs even when there's only one tab to display. So I'll sometimes forget that I was doing something in another tab, try to close the window (though usually I just leave Galeon open most of the time), and be thankfully reminded of the other thing I had to do.
but, like many others, it can get lost because there are so many new features that users aren't used to. Once they get used to them, it's hard (or impossible) to go back.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
You mean like Galeon [sourceforge.net]'s concept of a session? Galeon remembers what tabs you had open when you exit, and they appear next time you load the app.
Yes, exactly like Opera does as well.
indeed there is, albeit with dhtml - in this case i refer to the International Herald Tribune's pagination scheme which implements a very cute way of getting past the unavailability of the any <MULTICOL> tag in today's browsers.
:)
it also offers the option to reformat the page in a varity of ways, but the default layout (for applicable browsers) is that of a columned, page by page setup.
newspapers work in columns because they are easier to scan and digest. most people dislike scrolling, as it means the reading material moves - as opposed to one's eyes moving. QED.
<B>note to self:</B> <I>post as html</I>
Please take a moment to vote for that bug in Bugzilla. ie, Moz has no confirmation on CTRL-Q for 'close browser', and it's right next to CTRL-W for 'close tab'. The bug's here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52821
(can't make a link cos bugzilla doesn't allow direct slashdot links)
While I do agree with the AC, you deserve an explenation.
You see, Netscape 4.7 has poor support for Cascading Style Sheets. Cascading Style Sheets are a technology we webdesigners use to exercise greater control over the look and feel of a website. Sadly, during the first browser war, CSS and other standards were ignored. Companies thought they could win the war by providing proprietary functionality. Netscape 4.7 was the last version of Netscape before standards became their priority.
If you're looking for a similar browser, download Netscape 7, If you have not upgraded due to concern of CPU load and memory, you'll probably like Phoenix. Of course, there are other browsers out there. I just tend to ignore anything that isn't based on mozilla (which the new netscape and phoenix are).
Note that not all MS Office tools work properly with tab like features? You open two excel files at the same time you get two listings on the taskbar, while the close button on top of each document window is for entire excel?
Go to the view tab in Excel/Word's Options (Tools Menu) and uncheck the box marked "Windows in Taskbar". Viola! All is back to normal with multiple documents contained within 1 window again.
All the abilities you're describing (open in background, open multiple URLs) are just as feasible with real browser windows. The debate is only whether every major app ought to have its own half-assed window manager.
actually that was the subject of an Adobe Macromedia law suit a few years ago. Adobe seemingly has patented the dragging of tabs from one palette to another.
info can be found here, and here as well as the standard google search
...though it is incredibly hard to resist the urge to accidentally just close the Opera window ... accidentally closing all 30 tabs I have open...
If you're on Windows, try Crazy Browser. It's kind of a shell on top of IE which adds tabbed browsing, popup blocking, etc.
One of the cool things it does is remember all the tabs you had open when it quits. When you start it again, all the tabs you had open are still there. It's very handy and there's no danger in quiting the browser (accidental or not).
i want to be able to drag and drop my tabs either to arrange them within one window, or to move them between windows. i think they should worry less about the order of opened tabs and allow users to move them.
Galeon handles this very well. Drag a tab outside of the browser window, and it detaches into a new browser. Drag a browser window into the tab-bar of another window, and it "docks" and becomes a tab. Going along with this, galeon also lets you re-order tabs within a window easily and intuitively.
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
1. Closing a tab takes you onto the previous tab you were viewing, not the physically next tab. (Logical tab stack)
2. You can drag and drop tabs to rearrange them.
Random is the New Order.
Well you only mentioned things that are trivial to do with multiple windows, which is why you got the response you did. How about letting us in on the "much much more" you talk about - is there anything of note that you can do with tabs that you can't do with multiple windows?
Huh? What is the difference between a set of clickable things inside the browser window, and a set of clickable things outside the browser window, apart from with the former I can't use my usual interface to manipulate them?
I try tabs every now and then. The only time I found it useful is when I was stuck on windows at work. It allowed me to group sets of browser windows. Ordinarily, I would use virtual desktops to do this, which isn't limited to a single application.