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Hyatt Discusses Tabs 504

Posted by michael from the insert-tab-a-in-slot-b dept.
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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Hyatt Discusses Tabs More

Hyatt Discusses Tabs

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  • Browser Tabs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sgs-Cruz ( 526085 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:03PM (#5459153) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:4, Informative)

      by jsonic ( 458317 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:06PM (#5459187)
      I've had the same issue. One way of solving it is to enable exit confirmation. That way, when you hit the main exit button, it will ask if you really want to close or not. Kind of a trade off since that can get annoying too, but at least you won't lose all the browser tabs you have open.

      • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:3, Insightful)

        by maxwell demon ( 590494 )
        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.

        • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:5, Informative)

          by PotPieMan ( 54815 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:34PM (#5459478)
          Even better idea: What if cou could undo that accidental close?

          You mean like Galeon [sourceforge.net]'s concept of a session? Galeon remembers what tabs you had open when you exit, and they appear next time you load the app. Great feature that's missing (IIRC) from Mozilla, Phoenix, and many of the other tabbed browsers.

          • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:2, Informative)

            by Strike ( 220532 )
            Not only that, but if you try and close a window with multiple tabs open it will show a popup (which you can disable, iirc) asking for confirmation. This has saved me once or twice, because I always display tabs even when there's only one tab to display. So I'll sometimes forget that I was doing something in another tab, try to close the window (though usually I just leave Galeon open most of the time), and be thankfully reminded of the other thing I had to do.
          • but, like many others, it can get lost because there are so many new features that users aren't used to. Once they get used to them, it's hard (or impossible) to go back.

          • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:5, Informative)

            by SashaM ( 520334 ) <msasha.gmail@com> on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:57PM (#5459751) Homepage

            You mean like Galeon [sourceforge.net]'s concept of a session? Galeon remembers what tabs you had open when you exit, and they appear next time you load the app.

            Yes, exactly like Opera does as well.

        • I have Opera setup to save my tab session on exit. So if I do accidently close the whole browser, which I do every onece in a while, especially mis-clicking with this crappy mouse at work. Then just loading the browser up again I am back where I left off.

      • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:5, Informative)

        by illtud ( 115152 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:17PM (#5460002)
        I've had the same issue. One way of solving it is to enable exit confirmation. That way, when you hit the main exit button, it will ask if you really want to close or not. Kind of a trade off since that can get annoying too, but at least you won't lose all the browser tabs you have open.

        Please take a moment to vote for that bug in Bugzilla. ie, Moz has no confirmation on CTRL-Q for 'close browser', and it's right next to CTRL-W for 'close tab'. The bug's here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52821

        (can't make a link cos bugzilla doesn't allow direct slashdot links)

    • so that it starts up with the windows that were open when you closed it or so that it prompts you and asks what how you want to start. I had it set (before I finally gave up on its bugs and uninstalled 2 days ago) to automatically open with the pages that were open when I last closed. Sometimes it helped me recover from accidentally closing the whole program, sometimes it recovered my windows from an Opera crash, sometimes I closed it on purpose knowing that I would be able to start where I left off later.
    • Why not have the Mac method of "Quitting" the application instead of relying on the window to quit the application.

      Some folks really don't understand that there is a whole program running under there, not just a window with code inside it. I've always like being able to close a window and not have quit the app. It just makes more sense IMNSHO.

      • The net effect is still the same though, is it not? Closing the window (even without *exiting* the program) still loses all the tabs and open sites. You can just launch a new Window quicker.

    • Re:Browser Tabs (Score:3, Informative)

      by rseuhs ( 322520 )
      accidentally closing all 30 tabs

      Actually Konqueror asks you if you really want to close the window if (and only if) there are more than one tabs open.

      KDE/Konqueror is also the only browser overall that can remember the pages between login/logouts, btw.

      • That wasn't very clear. AFAIK Galeon and Phoenix also remembers some kind of tab-set, but it won't appear automagically and works only with one window. AFAIK Konq is the only browser that opens all windows on the correct desktops, in their correct geometries and with the last used URLs in them.
  • I have never had the opportunity to run a tab at a Hyatt. Maybe if I used my room key or something lioke that, but otherwise they always want me to pay by the drink :(

  • Tabs. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You could have been a tad more specific in the descrption. Yes, we can follow the link, but it would be just as simple to specifically mention you are referring to 'tabbed browser windows' as opposed to, say, tabbed paragraphs in a document, or tabs in other GUI interfaces.

  • Tabs seem to... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:07PM (#5459195) Homepage Journal
    ...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... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by corian ( 34925 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5459283)
      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?
      • One way around this is to load the 'print view', if the web developer had enough insight to include one.

      • Re:Tabs seem to... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Yort ( 555166 )
        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 [tires.com], 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 [tiresplus.com]. 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.

      • indeed there is, albeit with dhtml - in this case i refer to the International Herald Tribune [iht.com]'s pagination scheme which implements a very cute way of getting past the unavailability of the any <MULTICOL> tag in today's browsers.
        it also offers the option to reformat the page in a varity of ways, but the default layout (for applicable browsers) is that of a columned, page by page setup.

        newspapers work in columns because they are easier to scan and digest. most people dislike scrolling, as it means the reading material moves - as opposed to one's eyes moving. QED. :)

      • Re:Tabs seem to... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tim Macinta ( 1052 )
        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?
        There are other benefits. One benefit is that it can save you quite a bit of bandwidth if your content is large or your number of visitors is large. When I first shifted one of my websites from a co-located box to a hosting service the hosting provider pointed out to me that my site was eating up a lot more bandwidth than what I had expected. My content wasn't all that large in size, but I was getting a high number of visitors per day, which drove the total bandwidth up. Even though my content was maybe 25K in size, I ended up saving an enormous amount of bandwidth by redesigning the main page to be 10K and shifting the bulk of the content onto separate pages which have now grown much larger than the original 25K.

        Again, bandwidth savings of that magnitude are of benefit primarily to the site, but pagination does potentially have a side effect which benfits readers as well - it can make the content clearer and easier to comprehend if the pagination is prefaced with a summary guide to all the pages. I know when I read a large web page, I am a lot more likely to read the whole thing if there is a summary up front that gives me an indication that I will find the content interesting. If there is no summary, I might skim the content to see if it's interesting, but I imagine this is less accurate than if the author were to summarize up front why I should care about the content. If the content is paginated with a TOC and intro, the author is generally forced to do this summary, so pagination does benefit readers in that respect in much the same way that intros and TOCs can help you decide whether or not you want to read a particular book.

    • Re:Tabs seem to... (Score:2, Informative)

      by wcbrown ( 184278 )
      Here's some good research about pagination versus scrolling:

      http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/5 1/paging_scrolling.htm [wichita.edu]

      There's tons more research on web usability that you should also check out at that site.

  • How about sub-tabs. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

    • How about sub-sub-tabs. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:09PM (#5459219)
      When I surf the internet, it would be a nice feature to have subsubtabs (ie several subtabs under the main subtabs under the main tab). It would be very useful for a mega power user.
      • It would be even better if you could somehow seperate tabs from each other, so they could be moved around independently and viewed side-by-side. Maybe with a lot of complicated hacking they could get each tab to appear seperately in the task bar.
    • I'd have to disagree... That is the point where I open a new window. I use them both, each window is a subject, and it might have multiple tabs. Like I have one window that just has news tabs, and then I have a general browsing window.
      • I'd have to disagree... That is the point where I open a new window. I use them both, each window is a subject, and it might have multiple tabs. Like I have one window that just has news tabs, and then I have a general browsing window.

        But he's not speaking to your audience, those who like to have multiple windows open, each with their own tabs.

        Me, I like to have one window open and none others. This can get a little daunting once you have around 15+ tabs loaded (which, at any point during the day, is a possibility).

        I'd love to be looking at php.net and then have sub-tabs of different functions I'm using at the time.

        This is a brilliant idea. Don't dimiss it because you wouldn't use it. Now where is the execution?

    • Re:How about sub-tabs. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by binner1 ( 516856 )
      That really wouldn't be a bad idea. It could be a useful thing to have with the 'paginated' pages discussed above. Combine sub-tabs with an auto-load mechanism of some sort for the 'pages' of an article or something.

      Of course smart loading of only the 'next page' links, as opposed to a 'wget -r' approach would be a little trickier...possibly a very useful and worthwhile feature though.

      -Ben

  • Tabs should not be used in code (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:08PM (#5459201)
    Set your editor to indent 4 spaces as God commanded.

  • Dave hit the nail on the head (Score:5, Insightful)

    by octover ( 22078 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:09PM (#5459218) Homepage
    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.
    • 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'm wondering what Microsoft will call them when it comes out.

        What makes you think they ever will? Speaking as a longtime IE/Windows user, I never quite understood the fuss of tabs. I just use multiple browser windows and use the taskbar to flip between them. Why put into an application that which should be part of the OS?

        • Because it's practical [slashdot.org]

          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.

        • Re:Dave hit the nail on the head (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:22PM (#5460050) Homepage
          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 [google.com].

          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".

          • All the abilities you're describing (open in background, open multiple URLs) are just as feasible with real browser windows. The debate is only whether every major app ought to have its own half-assed window manager.
  • It sure wasn't on the end of that link. That article is about as interesting as this http://www.pattiann.com/webcam/paint.html

  • Hm (Score:2)

    by Luke ( 7869 )
    I thought this would be a "spaces" vs. "tabs" war or possibly the ever popular "4 columns" vs. "8 columns" battle.

  • oh, that narrows it down. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joedoe ( 12577 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:13PM (#5459257)
    Is it really necessary on /. to qualify anyone as an übergeek?

  • IE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eadz ( 412417 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:13PM (#5459261) Homepage
    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.
    • IE according to Microsoft is integral to the OS. So Microsoft cannot change it without rewriting the Kernel. So don't wait for tabbed browsing support too soon.
      Note that not all MS Office tools work properly with tab like features? You open two excel files at the same time you get two listings on the taskbar, while the close button on top of each document window is for entire excel?

      • Re:IE (Score:3, Informative)

        by sapped ( 208174 )
        Note that not all MS Office tools work properly with tab like features? You open two excel files at the same time you get two listings on the taskbar, while the close button on top of each document window is for entire excel?

        Go to the view tab in Excel/Word's Options (Tools Menu) and uncheck the box marked "Windows in Taskbar". Viola! All is back to normal with multiple documents contained within 1 window again.

    • New MSDN browser uses tabs (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:00PM (#5459799) Journal
      I'm a mozilla guy myself, but I have the January 2003 Microsoft developer network documentation DVD and it's browser uses tabs.

      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.

    • Re:IE (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MojoRilla ( 591502 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:42PM (#5460287)
      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.

  • Crazy Browser (Score:2, Interesting)

    by asscroft ( 610290 )
    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.

  • Reckless advice... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5459276) Homepage

    Everyone knows that Tabs give you lung-cancer, I'm suprised that in the US people are pushing Tabs onto everyone, even kids, saying they should be the "default". I for one think its dreadful that Mr Hyatt is pushing Tabs and saying "when they are useful", Tabs KILL, simple as that.

    Brought to you by the peoples republic of Barnsley

  • Tabs Very useful (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ralico ( 446325 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5459282) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • So THATS how you do that (Score:3, Informative)

    by emacs_abuser ( 140283 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5459284)
    I've been wondering how I could get Mozilla to open a tab in the background. From reading the article, now I know, you use Shift button 2. Great.

    Now if I could figure out how to rearrange the tabs.
    • Or: Edit->Preferences->[Navigator->Tabbed Browsing]
      [X] Load Links in the Background

      This, of course, reverses the effect of Shift-Clicking to open the tab.

    • Now if I could figure out how to rearrange the tabs.

      I figured that one out. You install Opera 7. It lets you drag and drop tabs to re-arrange them, has better CSS support than any other browser I've used, and a smaller memory footprint than Moz. Oh, and groovy buttons that look Aqua-inspired, without being a blatant rip-off. It's $20 for students (more for real people), but the ad-supported version only ever seems to advertise Opera to me. 7 is out for Windows, and in beta for Linux. 6 is availible on a number of other platforms, including FreeBSD, but it was 7 that made me drop Mozilla.

  • Tabs in Safari (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foo fighter ( 151863 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:15PM (#5459286) Homepage
    Safari desparately needs tabs because moving between open, maximized windows is so clunky in OSX.
    • "Hello.. I've waited here fro you.. everlong.."

      Ok, back on topic. So stop maximizing. The only reason to maximize is if you have "large content". Say you have someone who wrote code that line breaks at, 300 chars. Or you are working on a very large picture. On a 15" monitor, hell yeah, maximize. But if you are on a 21" monitor, you may not need to.

      It's a race between users and "content writers". It's probably the best reason to code to 80 (or 100) char line width. You can have multiple windows on your desktop. Same /w web pages. If everyone designs for 800x600, my 1600x1200 resolution is great. I can view two web pages at once.

      I kinda like OSX for it's clunky maximize features. It stops me from maximizing and using my desktop space as a finite resource. As a coder, I can now restrict myself to 100char width and have, two or three windows open near side-by-side, without having to maximize.
    • Repeat after me: "command-~ is your friend"

      Try it, you'll like it.

      Now, this is one of my apple gripes. Mac os has some great keyboard commands, and some great features that blow everybody away. But... the only way I learn these things is when somebody tells me. There's no documentation saying "to switch between windows of one app, hit command tilde". No.

      You learn because some fat, sarcastic apple geek looks down his nose at you because you're doing something crudely and as such, he feels he has the right to scorn you. It pains me that that's the ONLY way to learn how to use a mac properly.

      Of course, I've just earned my fat sarcastic apple geek prize for this snarky post. But hell, I'm skinny. So pttth.
    • Bullshit. Moving between open windows is a cakewalk on OS X. Simply use Command+` to switch between open windows just as you would use Command+Tab to switch between open applications.

  • he is mistaken.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smd4985 ( 203677 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:20PM (#5459336) Homepage
    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...."
    • My experience is the same, and even my girlfriend, who hadn't ever seen Linux before she moved in with me is now a devoted tab user. She'll often have 20+ tabs open spread over 3-4 Mozilla windows... Thats well above what I'd use...

  • I dont see why Tabbing is such a big issue. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:22PM (#5459359)
    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.

  • geek advice on tabs (Score:3, Funny)

    by StandardDeviant ( 122674 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:31PM (#5459439) Homepage Journal
    "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."

    Well, I don't know about Mr. Hyatt's techniques, but I have found that giving the bartender my card and saying "I'd like to open a tab and start off with a Woodchuck Amber, please." does the job nicely. YMMV. Sometimes I have to employ the Arm Wave or the On-fire Napkin tactics to get the tab started, but these are advanced practices best avoided by beginners. (If you're in austin and are looking for a good place to start a tab, I can heartily recommend the Dog and Duck pub as well as the Crown and Anchor, both close to the UT campus.)

  • drag n drop tabs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by paradesign ( 561561 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:33PM (#5459465) Homepage
    i want to be able to drag and drop my tabs either to arrange them within one window, or to move them between windows. i think they should worry less about the order of opened tabs and allow users to move them. if you have used photoshop 7s 'pallete well' feature, you will know what sort of freedom i want with my tabs.

    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).

    • Re:drag n drop tabs (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Turmio ( 29215 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:52PM (#5460399) Homepage
      Actually, Galeon [sf.net] has exactly these features. Yuo can arrange the order of tabs within a window by dragging. You can drag tabs from a Galeon window to another or you can create a new window out of a tab by dragging the tab outside the window in which it currently is. No wonder Galeon has such advanced tab features since Galeon was the first browser to use tabs (if my memory serves correctly) so it kind of started this whole tab craze (on which we all depend nowadays :)

    • Re:drag n drop tabs (Score:3, Informative)

      by mgaiman ( 151782 )
      actually that was the subject of an Adobe Macromedia law suit a few years ago. Adobe seemingly has patented the dragging of tabs from one palette to another.

      info can be found here [macworld.com], and here [slashdot.org] as well as the standard google search [google.com]

    • Galeon does this (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheFrood ( 163934 )
      i want to be able to drag and drop my tabs either to arrange them within one window, or to move them between windows. i think they should worry less about the order of opened tabs and allow users to move them.

      Galeon handles this very well. Drag a tab outside of the browser window, and it detaches into a new browser. Drag a browser window into the tab-bar of another window, and it "docks" and becomes a tab. Going along with this, galeon also lets you re-order tabs within a window easily and intuitively.

      TheFrood

  • Novice users *love* tabs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Yort ( 555166 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:34PM (#5459475)
    I do not believe that tabs serve any useful purpose for novice users, because novice users don't ever use multiple views of Web data.

    I gotta disagree with him here. I have two main data points that refute his perception:

    • One: my parents. A few weeks ago their computer crashed, and they were forced to reformat and reinstall everything. This left them without Mozilla, which they'd been happily using for months. When I was finally able to come home and install it for them (she wasn't sure which version to use), they said there were two things they really missed about Mozilla vs. EI: no popups and tabbed browsing
    • Two: my coworker. He just recently upgraded to Netscape 7.02 this week, and the one thing that he's mentioned to me several times that he really likes is, you guessed it, tabbed browsing

    So given this sample, I'd say that the everyday novice user, as well as the more experienced user like myself, finds tabs extremely useful.

  • Serious question on tabbed browsing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zathrus ( 232140 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:35PM (#5459489) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:Serious question on tabbed browsing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by G27 Radio ( 78394 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:33PM (#5460185)
      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.

  • My trackback to his article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mbbac ( 568880 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:38PM (#5459520)
    I posted a trackback [dyndns.org] 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...

  • keybinding for tab switching in mozilla/NS7? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wizzy403 ( 303479 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:40PM (#5459534)
    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 read all the time that "newbies use browsers maximized and don't need tabs".

    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?

    • I don't get it: Why would anybody want to not maximize his browser windows?

      On my laptop, I generally have browser windows maximised.

      On my desktop, which has a larger monitor that runs at a higher resolution, at my preferred font size (which isn't all that small) I find that a full-width window is hard to read. There's so much text on a line that it's difficult to locate the start of line n+1 when I'm at the end of line n.

      A narrower browser window fixes this.

      Incidentally, this is the reason newspapers are printed in columns.

  • Sidebar??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bob Abooey ( 224634 ) <bababooey@techie.com> on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:44PM (#5459592) Homepage Journal
    The classic novice user Web setup is to have Windows IE maximized with the sidebar open

    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.

    • If a novice user has it open I imagine it's only because they don't know how to turn it off.
      Completing the circle: that's what makes them a novice.

  • Close boxes in individual tabs - a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SVDave ( 231875 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @12:57PM (#5459744)
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Polo ( 30659 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @02:59PM (#5461148) Homepage
      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).

  • My sister drank a lot of Tabs way back in the 70's. But then the comapny introduced Diet Coke and that was that big "switch campaign." I didn't know theyy were still making the stuff...

    It's a joke...just chuckle and move along...

  • Tabs = MDI = broken (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:11PM (#5459925) Homepage
    Tabbed browsing is useful. But it shouldn't be necessary; tabs should be implemented by the *window manager*, then they would be available with the same interface for all applications.

    Imagine how crazy it would be if each app implemented its own title bar and close button on every window. Now think about the current situation with tabs in Mozilla, tabs in terminal emulators, tabs in XEmacs...

  • simple improvement to tabs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:18PM (#5460021) Journal

    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.

  • Browser Tabs Haiku (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sgs-Cruz ( 526085 ) on Friday March 07, 2003 @01:36PM (#5460213) Homepage Journal
    Like leaves in the fall
    Browser tabs fade away, and
    you close the window.

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