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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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With Opera 6, I didn't use them (I used multiple windows). With Opera 7, I've started using tabs. They actually do rock, though it is incredibly hard to resist the urge to accidentally just close the Opera window (this is what I'm used to from before... and now MS office uses a multiple document interface also...), accidentally closing all 30 tabs I have open :). Really, IMO though, they're great, aside from that one problem.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
You just offer the user the option of verifying they want to close the window when they have multiple tabs open. (Of course, you make this feature easy to turn off for users who don't want to be bothered.) If you really want to be creative, you offer the user a way to recover last opened tabs at next program launch.
When i surf the internet, it would be a nice feature to have subtabs (ie several tab under the main tab). It would be very useful for a power user.
Other than a few bugs, in my opinion, the only thing Safari needs is autocomplete. Everyone that I do business with fills in internet forms. Personally, I list on eBay; for this, autocomplete is great when listing or when paying for something online.
I deal with 100's of customers a month and not one has wondered why Safari doesn't have tabs. ALL, miss auto complete - some want password/keychain interaction.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Pretty soon, Internet Explorer will be the only browser without tabs. I wonder how long it will be before Microsoft realises that - yes - tabs are good.
And as far as them not being for everybody, I find it quite difficult to explain to people who have never seen them why I like them. Tabs, fo me personally, are close to the "I don't know how I lived without them" category, along with my Tivo. Bot are things that people don't appreciate until they use.
I'm wondering what Microsoft will call them when it comes out. It certainly couldn't be "Tabs" since that name would indicate they were playing catchup.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
is the best tabbed browser I've ever used. True, it's a wrapper for IE and only works on windoze, but still, it's the best. And I love phoenix, but Crazy Browser keeps me coming back for more.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
What is more of a debate where I work is if pagination is better than scrolling.
Scrolling, for practicality reasons.
Many of us who still dial-up for internet access like to open a bunch of pages to read later, off-line (when we're not paying by-the-minute). That's easy to do with scrolling, all-on-one-page texts. 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.
The only benefits I've seen of pagination is that it increases the number of ad viewings (because each page in a pagination can have a new ad). But that only benefits the site, not the user. IS there a user benefit to pagination?
Does anybody know if Galeon style on-tab close buttons are going to come to Mozilla or Phoenix?
Having the close buttons on the tabs themselves is the main reason I use Galeon for my browsing.
Mozilla and Phoenix put the tab close button all the way at the end of the tab bar, so I usually end up right-clicking on a tab to close it, which is a PITA.
when he says novice users don't need or like tabs. everytime a friend is over my place and watching me surf with mozilla, i always get a 'cool' when i show and explain tabs to them. so i think users like tabs. i also think they need them - i think internet savvy has increased to the point where having multiple browsing tabs would be useful to all.
i wouldn't be surprised if the next version of IE has tabbed browsing.
"if you build it, they will come...."
smd4985
On Most browsers I have seen tabs are not defaultly turned on untill you do a ^T or select it in the menu option. I say put the feature in because it is not going to hurt the experence of using the product because it is not like the tabs keep on apearing all over the place. If you want it its there if you dont then dont select the option. Of course I think the X should be placed inside the tab picture and they should have the option to drag the tab out of the desktop to allow for a new window with that tab and the ability to change the order. But still Tabs are nice but they are not the next big thing sience sliced bread.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
i think the current crop of tabbed browsers will adopt this in their second generation of tabs, and i cant wait, it makes the future that much brighter (and yes, i do wear shades).
I want 2D games back.
How does tabbed browsing differ from MDI (which I've used in Opera5) or from simply opening multiple browser windows? As best I can tell it's just the same thing as MDI...
As far as MDI vs multiple windows, it's a tradeoff. With MDI you only need to minimize one app to get it out of the way, and don't have to sequence through a ton of browsers to get to something else - neither of which may be an issue for many people. With multiple windows you can see the titles for everything in the task bar, instead of on a tab bar, so it's a more consistent interface - again, may not be an issue depending on how you do things.
Switching between them is a wash - ctrl-tab vs alt-tab. Opening stuff up in another window/tab is also a wash, although being able to open stuff up in the background is a nice addition for tabs (it's just an additional keypress/mouse action with multiple windows).
I guess I just don't see the wonderfulness of tabs, even having used Opera5 previously. What features am I missing here? And no, I'm not trolling.
I posted a trackback in response to Dave's assertation that tabs are scalable. I simply don't believe that they are, in fact prior to his article about tabs, scalability was one of the main weaknesses I would bring up in discussions about tabs -- it's not the main weakness, just one of them.
I wonder if my PowerMac G3 can take a Slashdot beating...
mbbac
Does anyone know if you can easily (without spending tons of time parsing XUL) assign a keybinding to switch between tabs in mozilla or mozilla-based (NS7) browsers? I'd love to be able to do the alt-tab like thing to switch between my tabs (ok, that just looks weird) but there doesn't seem to be a default way to do this.
I don't consider myself a newbie, but I use almost exclusively maximized browser windows BECAUSE tabs and multiple desktops allow me that in a comfortable manner.
I don't get it: Why would anybody want to not maximize his browser windows?
Does _anyone_ use the sidebar? I find it's the first thing I shut off as it eats up space and serves no real useful purpose. If a novice user has it open I imagine it's only because they don't know how to turn it off.
All the best,
--Bob
That's interesting because the MSDN document browser application is basically a web browser using the IE engine and shares IE bookmarks. And it hints that microsoft isn't entirely opposed to tabbed browsing.
Links have an "open in new window" right menu item and an "open in separate window" right-click menu, just as mozilla.
I've been wondering if this is a signal of things to come.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
You've been rated funny, but I wonder how many people actually got the joke. Even someone from the South of England is unlikely to get the reference, never mind an American.
OK. I'll spill. In the North of England, a Tab is a cigarette, so they do indeed cause cancer.
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
It's just faster. What you can do with Windows in 10 seconds, I can do with tabs in 3.
And it's more organized. While I have no problems using about a dozen browser windows on my 16 desktops with about 5-10 webpages in each windows, I have severe problems managing more than 10 IE windows in MS Windows.
Disclaimer: this isn't my idea, I got this idea off the January'03 MSDN document browser behavior. Also, although I didn't find the option in mozilla, other tabbed browsers may have this.
When I tab is closed mozilla gives focus to the next tab "physically" in the stack. That is, if you have 5 tabs open, and you open then close a sixth, you'll *always* find yourself staring at the 5th tab.
Mozilla could store a "logical" tab order, or stack. So when I open and close a new tab, the last tab I viewed before that gets focus.
What this means is that if you open a article link from your slashdot tab eg. tab 2 of say 5, and the article opens as the 6th tab; after closing the 6th tab, the 2nd tabs regains focus.
This is simple but very useful. It's almost like the tab focus order acts like the "back" button.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
What's wrong with that? Konsole (KDE terminal emulator) has tabs and they are great.
To avoid clutter, I "shade" windows to show only the title bar.
I consider shaded windows as having all the benefits of tabbed browsing with none of its drawbacks.
Here's why:
I use Opera, which (like Netscape) remembers my chosen window size and does not try to impose a "default" window size on me, like some browsers do. The only problem is sites that assume a larger window size than the one you are using. I also wish Opera would let the child window inherit the parent window's history, just in case I would have closed it.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley