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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).
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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