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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?
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.
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.
For me it's precisely the fact that it keeps all the titles out of the task bar. It's not that big of a deal if all I'm doing is browsing, but if I'm switching between multiple apps and browsing at the same time, it's great to have my open web pages separate from my open apps.
Also, as someone who usually keeps their taskbar hidden, it's very convenient to have that little tab bar right beneath my personal toolbar rather than having to pop up my taskbar or ALT-TAB to switch between pages.
Another thing I like better about tabs (in Mozilla at least) is that they fit a longer description then the WinXP taskbar can manage. For instance, two articles on Slashdot opened in both Mozilla (using tabs) and IE (not using tabs):
Mozilla: "Slashdot | Hyatt Discusses Tabs"
IE: "Slashdot | Hyatt..."
Mozilla: "Slashdot | Microsoft to End DLL Conf..."
IE: "Slashdot | Micro..."
In this case even the WinXP taskbar is sufficient to distinguish between the two pages. However, a lot of sites like to include a bunch of redundant crap at the beginning of their title tags, so the more descriptive tab becomes very useful.
Windows are just fine for simple browsing. Tabs really start to come in handy when you have several apps open at once for reference or cut-n-pasting.