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)

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".

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.