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."

Comments

Tabs seem to...

[Joe the Lesser]

...Help the flow of a web application.

Many applications involve the user going through a set of steps, and tabs can help the user understand where he is in the process, and allow him to skip forward or jump backwards if necessary. I think tabs are generally accepted in most applications nowadays as way of controlling and guiding program flow.

What is more of a debate where I work is if pagination is better than scrolling.
(I vote scrolling for CTRl+F purposes)

Re:Tabs seem to...

[Yort]

Paginated texts, you have to first have to notice that they ARE paginated, and then go through and open each individual one, and then pay attention to actually read the in order. Much more of a hassle.

YES. My recent experience is shopping for new tires. I went to Discount Tires, and after clicking through a few simple questions they displayed all the tires for my car on a simple page (which, incidentally, I then used tabbed browsing to open the "more info" button on the ones I was interested in).

Then, being the price checker I am, I also visited Tires Plus. After clicking a few simple questions, they told me that there were 86 tires to choose from - and started listing them at six per page.

Well, there was no freaking way I was going to click through 15 pages of tires. That and the fact that they wouldn't tell me the price, but had to email me a quote, got Discount Tires my business.

Dave hit the nail on the head

[octover]

I think he really has hit the nail on the head. Tabs aren't for everyone, but its stupid for someone building a browser to not implement them. If I were to hypothetically speaking gotten my hands on v64 build of Safari, I would hypothetically know that tabs are being implemented like Dave describes. I've already adopted Safari as my primary browser, non of its current deficiencies are so glaring that any other browser is better for me overall.

It is nice to see competition in the browser world, cause in the end its the user who wins.

Re:Dave hit the nail on the head

[Spoing]

I thought the same thing about the mouse scroll wheel. Tabs make a browser so much more valuable, though -- like the mouse wheel -- you won't 'get it' unless you use it.

Here are just a few examples;

1. Less use of the back button and no page reloading caused by the use of that button . When in doubt, open another tab...and switch to it. Close tabs that are no longer needed.

2. Checking on the results from a search engine.

3. Switch to different search engines with one click -- and keep your old search results for reference. If you use Google -- Google.com, news.google.com, and groups.google.com -- and want to see how your search works in different areas, load a new tab. Without tabs, it's just awkward.

4. Saving and reloading multiple tabs later. If you want to return to exactly the same set of web pages, bookmark the group of tabs. Later, select the bookmark and BAM! you're back. Very handy for news sites or checking on posts to forums.

Suggestion: If you have a 3 button mouse or a scroll mouse, change the default behavior to open a new tab on middle button click.

In Mozilla or Netscape, this can be done by going to Edit...Preferences and selecting Navigator...Tabbed_Browsing and checking off Open tabs for "Middle clidk or control-click of links in a web page".

oh, that narrows it down.

[joedoe]

Is it really necessary on /. to qualify anyone as an übergeek?

Tabs Very useful

[ralico]

I use netscape 7 at work, and have multiple instances running with multiple tabs open for each for my api references. I usually have one instance for all my opened Oracle doc pages, and another for Java. I just keep them open and tab between document. Very handy.

Re:Browser Tabs

[maxwell demon]

Well, one could reduce the annoyance by only asking in case there's more than one tab open.

Even better idea: What if cou could undo that accidental close? Maybe the browser, after getting in a "close-ready" state (appearing already closed), would wait, say, 3 seconds before actually terminating, and if during that time you start a new one (which is a sign that you closed it accidentally), it offers you to recover that old state.

This probably should be made an option (some people might mot like the program to still hold ressources 3 seconds after it's apparent close), but I think it would be an useful one. One could also enable customizing the time to wait before really terminating.

Close boxes in individual tabs - a bad idea

[SVDave]

I have to disagree with David Hyatt's opinion about close boxes in tabs. I've used Galeon, and I hate having the close boxes in the individual tabs; a close box in a tab takes up such a large proportion of space that it is very easy to accidentally close a tab just by clicking on it. This happened to me so often that I stopped using Galeon and started using Mozilla.

I suppose having one close box on the right-hand side is conceptually inconsistent, but I find the Mozilla solution to be more usable. It never confused me: Mozilla's "close tab" button on the right balances with the "new tab" button on the left. I hope that Hyatt and Apple, before deciding on a solution for Chimera, do usability research with users and don't rely solely on theories of consistency.

Re:Close boxes in individual tabs - a bad idea

[Polo]

I have to disagree too. Using the X at the right to close all tabs might be good from a consistency standpoint, but I think it would really cause problems. The thing is - I rarely use close all tabs - I use it more by accident (losing a lot of pages) than on purpose.

In mozilla, the X to the right of all the tabs is really useful and I use it ALL THE TIME. I pre-open a whole group of interesting stuff, then I work my way through it with the mouse on the X. Click, next. Useful and efficient (and I don't get confused by the X).

Re:Browser Tabs

[rseuhs]

What you "IE-only" users will never understand is how Goggle was meant to be used:

1. Middle-click on each interesting entry

Instead, the Microsoft way is:

1. Right-click interesting entry
2. choose "open in new window"
3. Go back to main window

This takes not only Much longer, but is also very awkard because you can't organize your windows. I have every Google-search in a different window, while you would end up with 20 different windows from different searches.

Or click through all interesting links and wait everytime for the page to load.

Once you really understand what tabs can do for you, you will never go back.

Re:IE

[MojoRilla]

Now that Microsoft has cornered the browser market, they see no more reason to innovate, er, spend more money, on the product.

When they were playing catch-up, it was all about new features. How many features have been added to IE lately?

At this point, the only changes to IE are going to be things which will make Microsoft money, like DRM.