[Ghoser777]

Before I state my idea, let me point out that I hope Guy Incognito never gets a job in the business world, as he will be promptly fired. The whole idea of these forums is to share ideas, not for one person to assert his dominance over everyone else. He may be right from his perspective, but to argue that his way provides the best implementation for everybody is crazy. Some people will always find one way easier, than a way that seems intuitive easier to everyone else.

Anyway, I was wondering why we couldn't do tabbed browsing (not Aqua's implementation), but more like this:

Under the favorites bar, there's another bar, sort of dock like, that has rectangles (with some maximum width, probably a user preset) that contain the name of the window. In additon, this bar would have a horizontal scroller, so that if you have one hundred windows open, you can just scroll to them. Then just implement dragging the same way the dock does it (for re-arranging and closing aka poof).

To answer the resize problem, simply don't have the whole subview resize - instead, have it resize when you click on the "tab." Worried about running out of memory? Well, what happens if you open one hundred separate windows? It'll happen in both cases, so oh well.

So, being constructive, what does everyone think?

Matt

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:


Well, now that you put it that way...

Did you feel like the target of that message? It must mean something.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
Before I state my idea, let me point out that I hope Guy Incognito never gets a job in the business world, as he will be promptly fired. The whole idea of these forums is to share ideas, not for one person to assert his dominance over everyone else. He may be right from his perspective, but to argue that his way provides the best implementation for everybody is crazy.

Lame...I'm open to good suggestions. I'm closed to lamers that dwell on one idea such as the classic Chimera tabbed-browsing. You're the idiot I was talking about in my previous post. Open your f**king eyes, I'm the one shared the most ideas and I'm only sh!tting on people that can't open their minds further than the already-existing tabbed-browsing.

I might get fired for not accepting inferior solutions and being a jackass but you'd get fired for misinterpreting other people and being a general idiot.

I've shown many different ways to implement this so called tabbed-browsing. And I've grown to like some of the other ideas here suggested here.

But someone that refuses to evolve and remains stuck with the idea that tabbed-browsing is the best solution deserves to be slapped...like you Ghoser.

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


Lame...I'm open to good suggestions. I'm closed to lamers that dwell on one idea such as the classic Chimera tabbed-browsing. You're the idiot I was talking about in my previous post. Open your f**king eyes, I'm the one shared the most ideas and I'm only sh!tting on people that can't open their minds further than the already-existing tabbed-browsing.

I might get fired for not accepting inferior solutions and being a jackass but you'd get fired for misinterpreting other people and being a general idiot.

I've shown many different ways to implement this so called tabbed-browsing. And I've grown to like some of the other ideas here suggested here.

But someone that refuses to evolve and remains stuck with the idea that tabbed-browsing is the best solution deserves to be slapped...like you Ghoser.

Mind if I call you Adolf?

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:


Mind if I call you Adolf?

You can call me whatever you want as long as I can call you Horse Monkey.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
Before I state my idea, let me point out that I hope Guy Incognito never gets a job in the business world, as he will be promptly fired.

I'd probably quit before I got fired if the executives decided tabbed-browsing was still best after I've explained in detail why tabbed-browsing is flawed.

Sorry, I wouldn't want to work for a company of retards.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bed to try and regain the lost IQ from talking to some of you bozos.

[OwlBoy]

Tabs Tabs!

I just wanted to play with photoshop.



-Owl

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
Tabs Tabs!

I just wanted to play with photoshop.



-Owl

I think it would be better if the tabs started on the left side of the window and they stack to the right, like in Mozilla. When they're centered, if you close a tab, every tab moves. I don't like that, HOWEVER I COULD SEE HOW PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE IT ANOTHER WAY.

[Ghoser777]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


I'd probably quit before I got fired if the executives decided tabbed-browsing was still best after I've explained in detail why tabbed-browsing is flawed.

Sorry, I wouldn't want to work for a company of retards.

Your tolerance of other ideas is amazing. I've never seen such disdain for someone to disagree with you. And just to let you know, most businesses will do more annoying things than supporting tab browsing. I mean, if you were so right, why is Mozilla, Opera, and Chimera using them? They are such horrible GUI design that it just screams out at you, right? Well no, they are horrible to you. I could see how modifying them could be benificial, but to say the whole idea is horrible is a little stronger than you can backup.

I might get fired for not accepting inferior solutions and being a jackass but you'd get fired for misinterpreting other people and being a general idiot.

You're quite a deductive thinker. Why exactly am I an idiot? In fact, if you'd notice, most of the ideas I suggested move towards the favorites type idea you've started to like. But instead, because I mentioned that I liked tabs, I'm automatically an idiot.


Can we get back to the actual discussion anyway? I'm really sick of the name calling. State your arguments and let their merit speak for your intelligence.

Matt

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:

HOWEVER I COULD SEE HOW PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE IT ANOTHER WAY.

hehe NO! NO! centered! DAMN YOU AND THINKING DIFFERENTLY! ::echo echo echo echo::


-Owl

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:

I could see how modifying them could be benificial, but to say the whole idea is horrible is a little stronger than you can backup.

No! **** you...you haven't read any of my posts have you.

Yes Ghoser...you're an idiot because you like tabs.

I have yet to hear any reason from you bitches why tabbed-browsing is better than my method. I've explained many times why tabs are flawed and my method is better...now it's your turn to explain why name truncation and lack of manipulation is good.

I'll start ignoring anything that remotely sounds like "I liek teh tabs and I don't know why!" Start explaining what so marvelous about them or go **** yourself.

I'm tolerant of explanations but I'm not tolerant of people that simply claim that tabs are better and that I'm wrong.

LOOK! TABS!!! WOW! AMAZING!!!

[Ghoser777]

1. I did read all the posts before commenting.

2. Let me make sure I have your three ideas down:

1. A drop-down menu from the toolbar (this option is just as limited as tabbed-browsing but without the clutter and without the GUI-rules raping.)
2. A drawer...sure, the sacred screen-estate is being desecrated but it's already more functional than tabs. I go for functionality over screen-estate any day. You might not but you like Windows. No, no, shuttup...you *do* like Windows and therefore your opinions don't matter.
3. The Favorites bar approach.

Off number 1:
A) This requires the user to click twice. Yes, not the end of the world, but it is still two clicks
B) Re-ordering doesn't work (custom tabs would allos with functionality)
C) It has the same visual problem that the Dock has. To find out all the windows that are open in an app, you have to click
D) It's less intuitive. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have what are usually considered windows to be controlled by a pop-up button. It would seem that tabs would be better indicators of what's going on
E) Closing a window makes even less sense with the pop up button idea, even though with tabs it's *slightly* confusing (it's the x, just something to learn).

Off the number 2:
A) A drawer does take up lots of space. And just because it's functional does not mean it's more important than screen space. Also, it means that you can't take up the whole screen with your browser and have multiple windows open in the same controller window and be able to swicth between windows without something that isn't readily available from the GUI (i.e you'd have to use a key combo or resize the window).
B) A drawer is closeable... but where do my open windoes go when I close it? The visual feedback is usually very helpful in a tabbed approach.

Off the number 3:
If you paid close enough attention to my argument, I was morphing tabs into your favorites idea. I like that idea. I haven't been advocating Cocoa tabs at all in our short discussion. I want tabs that have a maximum width, but don't truncate to the point where nothing is seen. And what happens when there's too many tabs? Then you add a horizontal scroller.

Anyway, even if I was advocating Cocoa Tabs, it wouldn't be to hard to defen, as most people won't ever have more than 4 browser windows open at once. I mean, what's the point? For the majority (heck 99%) of users, tabs will work out just fine. That doesn't mean there's a better way, but I think you should recognize that your favorites idea is inheriting good stuff from tabs. People who like tabs like them because they work for them, and they work for me just fine. Your idea sounds good too. It may be better, heck I think it's better.


But please, please, calm down.
Matt

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
Anyway, even if I was advocating Cocoa Tabs, it wouldn't be to hard to defen, as most people won't ever have more than 4 browser windows open at once. I mean, what's the point? For the majority (heck 99%) of users, tabs will work out just fine. [/B]

Was this a survey I missed?

I'm sure if the so-called tabbed-browsing was implemented a little better people might want to have more than just 4 cached pages. In fact, I'd make all my current 'Favorites' as cached pages and have instant access to them.

I can't currently do that because I have lots of 'Favorites' and they would certainly get truncated as tabs.

I'm glad you provided counter-arguments though...thanks.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
So far, the mockup that I like best is cpac's.

Thank you.

everybody should quit the name calling - it's not productive and is a pain to read through.

Some points that seem to have been forgotten or overlooked:

(1) - if you only have 4 or so windows open at any given time, command-` gets you through them pretty darn quick with 0% loss in screen real estate.

(2) - if you want a pop-up list of open sites, guess what, it's called the "Window" menu.

(3) - As Guy's picture(s) above illustrate, it is easy for "favorites" to truncate titles/stack better than tabs can. It could even be set as a user preference (truncate after 30 characters, 20 characters, whatever...)

Also, on curmi's drawer idea: - good looking mock-up, but I think still problematic in that it does take up a significant chuck of screen real estate (even for a wide-screen user like myself), second, there isn't necessarily 1 click access to pages (if the drawer is closed, if the drawer needs to be scrolled, &c.). Third, the problem of extremely truncated page names remains in drawers - and having a preview doesn't help distinguish 3 different forum threads.

Keep up the *productive* part of the discussion y'all.

[Ghoser777]

If anyone cares, here's a little demonstration of what I'm getting at. This app is by no means polished, has some very ugly aspects, but I think it conveys the general idea well. Some cavets:

1. Only enter urls that don't have to be "fixed" (i.e. don't forget the http://)
2. Ignore the ugly colors I chose for the "tabs." They're just there for indicators, and I don't have any ounce of graphic art in me.
3. The size of the tabs, as well as the text displayed in the tabs can (and should) go way down.
4. Rendering is slow - I'm just using the built in functionality of NSTextView, nothing fancy.

TestBrowser

Cool, sucks (not the app, the idea)?

Matt

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
If anyone cares, here's a little demonstration of what I'm getting at. This app is by no means polished, has some very ugly aspects, but I think it conveys the general idea well. Some cavets:

1. Only enter urls that don't have to be "fixed" (i.e. don't forget the http://)
2. Ignore the ugly colors I chose for the "tabs." They're just there for indicators, and I don't have any ounce of graphic art in me.
3. The size of the tabs, as well as the text displayed in the tabs can (and should) go way down.
4. Rendering is slow - I'm just using the built in functionality of NSTextView, nothing fancy.

TestBrowser

Cool, sucks (not the app, the idea)?

Matt

Good work, Ghoser! I could see this going underneath the favorites bar. Also you should be able to click-hold, and drag a tab to sort them. You should also be able to drag the proxy icons from either the title bar, the left of the location field, or a favorite off the favorite bar onto it to open it in a new tab. Heck, it would be even cooler if you could drag a tab back onto the favorites bar to bookmark it!

I think we have a winner! *eats words*

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


I too wouldn't mind the 'Preview'-approach.

I wonder how Mr. 46"-3200x2400-I-Don't-Have-Problems-With-Truncated-Tab-Titles-Zimphire feels about this.

46"-3200x2400? How bizarro.

A 19" monitor at 1600x1200 isn't THAT rare.

Somehow I've got a feeling it might waste precious space on his movie theater screen.

I do graphic design

I don't think Zimphire and I ever agreed on anything. I think we're destined to think opposite.

Proteus? No! Fire.
Something other than tabs? No! Tabs!!!

Oh well.

Edit: wait...we both agreed that I was an a--hole. There's a glimmer at the end of the tunnel. [/B]

I would tell you what I think about it, but the pics are loading now.

[Zimphire]

Ok jus tgot pics to load, I wouldn't want to browse the web with my drawer open, nor would I want to have to open a slow opening drawer everytime I wanted to switch "tabs"

Oh and Guy, your tab shots are a bit extreme aren't they?

Does everyone have 15+ tabs open at once in Chimera?

Mine looks something like this

[sadie]

Guy Incognito suggested:

That actually looks pretty nice. Especially if the small image was live, you could see how far the page was from being loaded by watching the images appear in place and such.

It would take a quite powerful machine with smegloads of memory to do this effectively, though. Just because a page is cached to local disk doesn't mean it is available instantly - and if you draw one for every page the mouse rolls over, it does need to instant. Perhaps it caches the small images intelligently?

Can i suggest, that when you're scrolling it also indicates the current position on that big view, just like Photoshop's Navigator?

Anyone with a small screen or anyone who likes to browse in a window that's not fullscreen-wide will run into truncation problems with tabs. Not so with a Favorites Bar approach.

Not really true. When you have lots of pages with long names, you're always going to have to make a trade-off between taking up the whole screen, or truncating the name. This is the same whether you draw what looks like a tab around the name or not.

Anyway, you do have a decent idea there. But you're not going to make any friends with comments like this:

So anyone who prefers tabs over this idea is either closed-minded or simply trying to pick a fight with the All-Mighty Guy Incognito just for the hell of it.

[sadie]

I mean, if you were so right, why is Mozilla, Opera, and Chimera using them?

Why everybody is using tabs

It's clear to lots of people who reads numerous pages at once that there has to be something better than the many-windows approach. When Adam Stiles created NetCaptor with tabbed browsing, it was so obviously better that everybody copied it as quickly as they could. He's still innovating with tabs, and everyone else is still copying him. A bit like the Mac, really.

There a lots of ideas that haven't been tried, and it's quite possible that some of them (possibly even Guy's idea) are better than tabs. But we don't know, because people aren't innovating, they're just copying.

That's why I use NetCaptor for the PC. It's the only browser out that's innovating, not copying.

[Xeo]

Guy, relax! You're angering a lot of members. Personal attacks against other members is directly against the Agreement you clicked "Yes" to when you first signed up.

Re-think what you say before you say it. Don't let your anger get in control.

You can consider this a warning.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Xeo:
Guy, relax! You're angering a lot of members. Personal attacks against other members is directly against the Agreement you clicked "Yes" to when you first signed up.

They deserve it though...

[sadie]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
They deserve it though...

People usually do. If I stopped and shouted abuse at everyone who deserved it, I'd never get any work done - and then I wouldn't earn more than them.

[gadster]

What about a sort of docked dock hanging of the window with magnification options etc? just my 2� worth.

--------
gadster

[sadie]

You mean like iPhoto's resizing with a little slider?

How about an iPhoto for web pages? Zoom out, find your page, and zoom back into it? Could be fun.

[Ghoser777]

Hey Guy, I had another idea. There's no reason why Omni couldn't just implement both are ideas - your favorites and my favorites with a scroller - and make it a preference to switch between the two layouts.

I honestly think both approaches has their mertis and draw backs - yours will take up moer screen real estate, mine will cause some windows to only be reachable by scrolling horizontally. But I can see how different people could way these costs and benefits differently and think one implementation is better than another.

Matt

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


They deserve it though...

Not anymore than you.

Actually, one could say you deserve it more.

Guy you got to learn to accept rejection.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
Hey Guy, I had another idea. There's no reason why Omni couldn't just implement both are ideas - your favorites and my favorites with a scroller - and make it a preference to switch between the two layouts.

I honestly think both approaches has their mertis and draw backs - yours will take up moer screen real estate, mine will cause some windows to only be reachable by scrolling horizontally. But I can see how different people could way these costs and benefits differently and think one implementation is better than another.

Matt

Hmmm...yeah, that'd be cool. I don't see any drawbacks to that at all.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Zimphire:

Guy you got to learn to accept rejection.

Nah.

[clarkgoble]

Sadie When Adam Stiles created NetCaptor with tabbed browsing, it was so obviously better that everybody copied it as quickly as they could. He's still innovating with tabs, and everyone else is still copying him.

So what is he doing with tabs at the moment? (For those of us who've not used NetCaptor)

Zimphire I wouldn't want to browse the web with my drawer open, nor would I want to have to open a slow opening drawer everytime I wanted to switch "tabs"

What's the problem with browsing with the drawer open? All my complaints of windows with drawers open arise out of the "openness" of the drawer not being resizable. (i.e. as in Mail.app) If you could control how open it was and have it open quickly, I'd have no problem. I really, really like the drawer idea.

Ideally you could have both tabs and the drawer. I dislike tabs myself because of the naming issue. But each to their own.

[curmi]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Does everyone have 15+ tabs open at once in Chimera?

No, but I often have 15+ windows open in Omniweb.

[cpac]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:

What's the problem with browsing with the drawer open? All my complaints of windows with drawers open arise out of the "openness" of the drawer not being resizable. (i.e. as in Mail.app) If you could control how open it was and have it open quickly, I'd have no problem. I really, really like the drawer idea.

Ideally you could have both tabs and the drawer. I dislike tabs myself because of the naming issue. But each to their own. [/B]

Drawer open = not web page viewable area. I don't care about resizing drawers, I just don't want to have to open one every time I switch which page I'm viewing, nor do I need full graphical previews of the pages I'm loading (as, e.g.) one forum looks like the next. I've got a (rev A) TiBook, and despite the wide screen, I fully use and enjoy surfing with OW maximized.

How is it you think there wont be naming issues within the drawer concept? There's even less horizontal space than with tabs...

[Ghoser777]

The difference between tabs and drawers seems to be one of diminishing returns. That is, with tabs, a lot of the title can be displayed when there is only a couple windows open (which really is a majority of the time for most users, I believe, even without a survey). The drawer, on the other hand, would seemingly be more restrictive on the width of the diplayed title. But the more windows you add, the more titles get truncated. In the drawer, on the other hand, titles are always truncated the same way. And this sense, it's more consistent.

This doesn't counter the real estate argument, but I think in thise debate, it comes down to how many windows are open. Maybe we should do a study of what the average case is.

Matt

[sadie]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
When Adam Stiles created NetCaptor with tabbed browsing, it was so obviously better that everybody copied it as quickly as they could. He's still innovating with tabs, and everyone else is still copying him.

So what is he doing with tabs at the moment? (For those of us who've not used NetCaptor)

Recent developments:

• 'Undo' feature on closed tabs, so that if you close the wrong one you can reopen it with Cntl-Z - a lot quicker than finding it in history. Can be used repeatedly to reopen several tabs.
• Better feedback on page loading - tab icon now displays a little red/yellow/green progress bar when loading, and a favicon overlaid with a little green tick when it's ready (the tick vanishes when you look at the page).
• More intelligent options for blocking unrequested popups, and preventing popups that spawn when a page is closed.

Those may all seem like fairly small features, because he's refining the existing experience, edging it closer to the ideal for tabbed browsing - or at least, the ideal for *his* customers. He also responds well to user suggestions.

Other browsers are free to innovate in other directions, of course, but when it comes to tabbed browsing they're all playing catch up.

[JKT]

Another iron in the fire:

How about also having the ability to open windows *directly* in the Dock (i.e. the window appears minimised in the Dock immediately without first appearing on screen). We already have the ability to magnify to a decent size to look at the loaded page, a means to show a visible full length title for each window (mouse hover), live updating of the loading page etc, and none of the limitations of Tabs. There are obvious faults owing to the character of the Dock itself, but they aren't any worse than the ones I've seen for Tabs.

It'd work for me (in fact, it already does, except at the moment I have to minimise windows manually).

[Judge_Fire]

The apps by Adobe and Macromedia have used a variation of the 'tabbed windows' idea for years now, in their floating palette windows.

To me, this seems to be the most common example of tabbing actual windows together.

It was non- standard when it was introduced, but it has endured for years and even a few court cases, so I think their look & feel should not be ignored when thinking about browsers. Even if you consider it bad UI design, its persistence has made it familiar.

BTW, no comments on my previous post regarding crashing ?

J

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
The apps by Adobe and Macromedia have used a variation of the 'tabbed windows' idea for years now, in their floating palette windows.

To me, this seems to be the most common example of tabbing actual windows together.

It was non- standard when it was introduced, but it has endured for years and even a few court cases, so I think their look & feel should not be ignored when thinking about browsers. Even if you consider it bad UI design, its persistence has made it familiar.

BTW, no comments on my previous post regarding crashing ?

J

Actually, Adobe was wrong in starting this HI-breaking concept.

The way tabs are *supposed* to work is that they shouldn't be dynamic. You shouldn't be able to move them, delete them or change their size.

Tabs have to remain true to the metaphor. They are supposed to file (store, preserve in a more or less permanent manner) objects of the same nature. What would be the purpose of opening a filing cabinet and rearranging your tabbed folders or throwing them out every few minutes?

The fact is, Apple's HI group back in the days decided that tabs were supposed to be static. Sure, anyone can go against the HI rules and implement their own tab concept, or hack Apple's OS tabs to fit their dynamic needs but it'll break the UI consistency. Of course, there are plenty of Linux users that don't care about UI consistency and I'm sure this applies to a select group of Mac users to. However, I'd rather have the OS stay consistent and not get any closer to Linux.

I'm sure the original Chimera author had to come up with some very unnatural coding to dynamically add and remove tabs to Chimera. Same with Adium.

Adam Iser? Can you fill us in?

[clarkgoble]

Remaining true to the metaphor is good, but only up to a point. One thing that UI people must recall is that the point of metaphors is to put actions on the computer in terms of actions the user is already familiar with. However where some Mac zealots go wrong is in forgetting that the PC is now ubiquitous enough so as to have added many new "actions" that are part of regular human behavior. A great example of this is the right click context menu. While Apple wisely makes this optional (with single button mice), it provides it for users coming over from the Windows world. Of course Apple doesn't use it that well yet. But they are getting better.

With respect to movable, renameable "tabs," I think we should be careful about saying that their metaphor are tabs in a file folder. That is only a good limiting of the metaphor for tabs in dialog boxes or other static controls. Not all uses of tabs are, however, static.

To begin with I'd simply note that Adobe's "tabs" don't looks the same as OSX tabs. This keeps their identities unique. Further I'd note that by making the tabs the control for a movable sheet, they actually are following the tab as a visual element in our regular life. There are two kinds of tabs - those permanently affixed to folders and those temporarily affixed to sheets. Adobe's tabs can be grabbed and the sheet moved elsewhere, just as in real life. Can you do this with tabs in a "control panel?" No? Why not? I can understand why this functionality is removed from a UI point of view. From a metaphoric point of view, however, this makes no sense.

Further, if the metaphor is a way of encapsulating action, then the issue is one of moving large documents via a small "sign." Note how Apple does this in many places. See what happens when you grab the icon beside the title in the title bar. What is the metaphor here? It is a shortcut to the document as a whole, but I'd argue that the tab metaphor of Adobe actually makes more sense for this action, in terms of visuals.

Getting back to Omniweb. If you guys decide to add tabs, please, please, please do not use the appearance that your favorites bar uses. Use the appearance of tabs such as you find in GoLive. Notice how clean they look. Further notice how they provide a clean divide between the names of panes.



If you can, make it so tabs can be drug out of the window (opening up a new browser window with that page) or into an other window (adding the tab to that window). I'd also like it if you could name the tabs, with the tab keeping that name despite changes to the "title" of the web page. Provide the quick ability to switch back to the web page's title with a menu and a context menu click on the tab. Naming tabs enables you to set up "sessions" for your browsing. i.e. news, working, MacNN, etc.

Having said all that, please use the drawer instead. Or at least provide both options. I think the draw is much, much more flexible. I was just reading a long PDF document with Preview and the drawer works great. It is a nice UI enhancement to the Mac and is a standard UI element. Just open a long document and see. Play with it and you'll quickly see how nice it is to navigate with.



I'd add the request that drawer elements be dragable in a fashion similar to how I described tabs. Make it so you can drag them out of the drawer, opening a new window. Allow them to be dragged between windows to move the sheet between them.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I recognize that the one problem with the "drag out of window to open a new window" is that you can't drag and drop these elements to create shortcuts or file documents. However since that functionality is already in the address bar and the title bar, I'm not sure we need a third way to do it. Further visually the tabs represent not the page as a reference but a view of the page - conceptually quite different.

[clarkgoble]

As an aside, those of you interested might find the book Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction by Paul Dourish interesting. It is more philosophical than practical, but ought to be as required for reading as some of TOG's excellent books are.

He has basically adopted a lot of thinking from Heidegger's notion of "embodiment" to user interfaces in general. The best user interface is one you don't notice. Think about when you are using a mouse to move the cursor on the screen. Typically you reach a point where you don't even know the mouse is there. It is akin to moving your hand or arm. It is all "your body" as it were. It only comes into focus when it stops working - such as when you reach the edge of a desk.

This is how all UI elements should be - whether with a command line, a button, or so forth. You shouldn't need to think very much.

Something to keep in mind while discussing the tab issue.

[Guy Incognito]

The GoLive picture shows something the toolbar could handle, imo. Somewhat like OmniGraffle's 'Info' inspector window + a 'detach' button or something. Of course, dragging a tab out and spawning a new window of that tab is probably cooler and more natural...

But...

...we're not even talking about the same thing anymore really.

1. Adobe is using it's own implementation as you described. So there is no confusion by the end user since they look different than the cocoa/carbon tabs...and there's no hacking of the OS tab object.

2. While the tabs are dynamic, there's a fixed amount of windows that can be tabbed...unless I'm mistaken about how these tabs work, you will never get name truncations or run out of tab space. So their method works.

Even if we were to use Adobe's tabbing methods, we'd still run into the name truncation problem. But the rest would be cool (dragging a tab out to spawn a window,) a different tab appearance so that consistency isn't broken.

If you think about it though, if you changed the appearance of the current OW and Chimera 'Favorites' to look like GoLive tabs and allowed them to spawn a window when dragged and dropped somewhere...you'd get the same result as GoLive tabs.

I have a feeling people just want to have the tab-look. While that's fine, it doesn't work for multi-line favorites (or at least appearance-wise it doesn't). Ok, it works but you get the mess Windows introduced with multiline tabs.

[clarkgoble]

I agree that multiline tabs are plain ugly and very confusing. (There is no "bottom" to the tabs) With multiple tabs that exceed window width, Adobe has a little circle with an arrow you click on. (See the snapshot above) That brings up a menu with the names of all the tabs. If you use tabs that is a must so as to not shrink the tabs too much.

As I've said, I think that the length of text makes a vertical arrangement must more helpful that a horizontal arrangement. That is why I prefer the drawer myself. Plus the drawer provides visual feedback to the appearance of each page. (And is big enough so as to make this useful, as opposed to the minimized windows in the dock)

The mixed drawer and tab method which redraws the drawer with mouseovers seems to me to add little. If you already are creating a drawer of that sort, why not simply include both tabs and a drawer of the sort I mentioned.

BTW - I like what someone else mentioned about that PC browser's UI additions to tabs. Having some sort of visual feedback regarding whether a tabbed/drawered page is loading is a very nice idea. Quite often you switch windows or tabs because you are waiting for a page to load. The undo idea sounds good, but I'd want to think through it a bit more. It could turn into something like undoing a window move. That might be counter-intuitive. The reason it was likely added is because with tabs you have only a segment of the window's title and that means it is very easy to remove the wrong tab. The drawer UI would almost certainly remove the cause of the problem this attempts to resolve.

Oh, one final point about the drawer using up screen space. Once again I'd encourage people to try and play around with Preview and a PDF file. (Ones with graphics on the pages are better as they'd better mimick what will happen with web pages) It really doesn't affect things much. Most web pages are designed for around 800 pixels at their widest. Further the human eye gets distracted when reading pages that are too wide. (Try reading a paper printed in landscape versus regular mode) So the drawer really isn't eating up usable visual space. Even with browsers open I have them open only about half the width of the screen. And I have only the standard 17" LCD screen. On my PC with a 20" monitor they are even a smaller portion of the screen.

[resImadA]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I'm sure the original Chimera author had to come up with some very unnatural coding to dynamically add and remove tabs to Chimera. Same with Adium.

Adam Iser? Can you fill us in?

Adding and removing tabs from a tabView is trivial

I think a portion of the confusion/hatred of tabs comes from the fact that Chimera uses normal looking tabs. (I am guilty of this as well in Adium)

When adding non-standard behavior to anything, it's best to change the appearance, so the user knows it may behave differently. GoLive's "Grippy" tabs are good in this respect. If the object looks sort of like a tab, but different, the user can assume that it will behave sort of like a tab, but different.

The issues of tab scrolling, layering, and truncation are a problem for a web browser though, since page titles are large, and it's not uncommon to have ~30 pages open at once.


On the metaphor of tabs, Isn't a list of thumbnails nothing more than tabs with pictures turned sideways?

[cpac]

Originally posted by JKT:
Another iron in the fire:

How about also having the ability to open windows *directly* in the Dock (i.e. the window appears minimised in the Dock immediately without first appearing on screen). We already have the ability to magnify to a decent size to look at the loaded page, a means to show a visible full length title for each window (mouse hover), live updating of the loading page etc, and none of the limitations of Tabs. There are obvious faults owing to the character of the Dock itself, but they aren't any worse than the ones I've seen for Tabs.

It'd work for me (in fact, it already does, except at the moment I have to minimise windows manually).

This I think is a great idea. Just a couple of modifications of normal behavior would be necessary:

(1) (already mentioned) the "open minimized" clicking option

(2) need to have open window minimize when page in the dock is opened - ideally, this would be a keystroke akin to command-`
----------

The one thing this doesn't address is the need to group sets of "tabs" within a single window, or to otherwise associate them. Practically this would mean that I might have a "forums" set of tabs, and a "legal research" set of tabs, and a "recruitment" set of tabs. With some non-dock dependent set up, I could keep these sets of things separate, rather than having them all minimized in the dock in whatever random order I happened to open/close them.

[clarkgoble]

Regarding tabs being the pictures but sideways. I don't think that's apt. For one the drawer is easily hidden, typically using a visual element. Although I must admit I don't like the way Mail does this. Its open/close drawer icon is in the middle of its icon bar and not intuitively related to the drawer. You can do this with window task bars as well, as Netscape has done for years. The problem with Netscape is that its visual elements don't tell much about the collapsed task bar.

The main difference between an drawer and a tab bar though is the direction of the text. The drawer provides more real estate for displaying the name. Now you could emulate this with tabs at the top by rotating your text 90 degrees. However most people can't read rotated text easily.

But you are right in that there are many similarities between tabs and the drawer.

[cpac]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I don't like the way Mail does this. Its open/close drawer icon is in the middle of its icon bar and not intuitively related to the drawer.

Ever try moving it to the edge (right next to where the drawer comes out, and possibly separating it from others with, oh say a divider or a space?

I find most toolbars are unintuitively set up when they're the default forms, but thankfully it takes all of 2 seconds to change.

[clarkgoble]

The problem is that the drawer opens differently depending upon what side has more open space. Yeah it is a minor quibbling, I admit. I'd have preferred a different way of opening the drawer than one of the standard icons. But you're right about redoing the taskbars. I just wish you could also add applescripts to the task bar as well.

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Ok, I've been lurking this thread with amusement for a while now, but I feel it's time to chime in about something. Guy seems quite adamant about knowing what Apple's policy is regarding how Tabs are meant to be used, and states with conviction "The fact is, Apple's HI group back in the days decided that tabs were supposed to be static."

Now, I am not refuting this, as such, but I would like some proof. I would like to see where it is written, by Apple, that Tabs are meant to be used in a manner corroborative to what Guy states. As I brought up in a similar thread a while ago, this is the *only* thing the Aqua Guidelines document states regarding tabs:

Tab Controls
The tab control provides a convenient way to present information in a multipage format. Tabs can display centered horizontally across the top or bottom edge, or centered vertically along the left or right side. Figure 7-19 shows the proper orientation of text on tabs on each of the four sides.

The content area below a tab is called a pane. You can use other controls such as push buttons and scroll bars in tabbed windows too. The controls can be global�affecting the settings of all panes�or specific to an individual pane. Make it clear through labeling and placement (within or outside of a tab pane�s boundary, for example) whether a control affects one pane or all panes.

Based on this document alone, Apple is rather vague about what one does with the contents of a tab, or even where the tab is meant to be used..a far cry from the hardline position staked in this thread. If there are other *Apple* documents to support a more restrictive policy for Tabs, I'd like to see it.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Silky Voice of The Gorn:


Tab Controls
The tab control provides a convenient way to present information in a multipage format. Tabs can display centered horizontally across the top or bottom edge, or centered vertically along the left or right side. Figure 7-19 shows the proper orientation of text on tabs on each of the four sides.

The content area below a tab is called a pane. You can use other controls such as push buttons and scroll bars in tabbed windows too. The controls can be global�affecting the settings of all panes�or specific to an individual pane. Make it clear through labeling and placement (within or outside of a tab pane�s boundary, for example) whether a control affects one pane or all panes.

Based on this document alone, Apple is rather vague about what one does with the contents of a tab, or even where the tab is meant to be used..a far cry from the hardline position staked in this thread. If there are other *Apple* documents to support a more restrictive policy for Tabs, I'd like to see it.

Alright Gorn-boy (Captain Kirk messed you up good)...Apple isn't 'rather vague' at all. In fact, the document states what can be done with tab panes as though they are static. Apple also seems to state (and you'll probably disagree for the fun of it) that the tabs should be used for 'settings' that affect globally or locally. I explained earlier in this thread that tabs were used for grouping preference options. That's what Apple is telling you.

I know that if it isn't stated directly "Tabs shall not be used for tabbed-browsing", you'll tell me I'm wrong but Apple is saying that tabs should be used statically for grouping settings options (which always remain in their appropriate tab. And this tab always remains grouped with other tabs. They don't change...for the sake of easy troubleshooting, etc...)

There isn't a HI/GUI police that's gonna bust down your door and arrest you for using tabs dynamically...but face it, they aren't meant to be used dynamically.

This dynamic tabbing crap has never been done before until recently. And tabs have been around for a long damn time.

I'm growing tired of the discussion. No amount of explaining will make a difference to some of you anyways.

[King Bob On The Cob]

Originally posted by Ghoser777:
If anyone cares, here's a little demonstration of what I'm getting at. This app is by no means polished, has some very ugly aspects, but I think it conveys the general idea well. Some cavets:

1. Only enter urls that don't have to be "fixed" (i.e. don't forget the http://)
2. Ignore the ugly colors I chose for the "tabs." They're just there for indicators, and I don't have any ounce of graphic art in me.
3. The size of the tabs, as well as the text displayed in the tabs can (and should) go way down.
4. Rendering is slow - I'm just using the built in functionality of NSTextView, nothing fancy.

TestBrowser

Cool, sucks (not the app, the idea)?

Matt

I want the source code...

[Silky Voice of The Gorn]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
Apple isn't 'rather vague' at all. In fact, the document states what can be done with tab panes as though they are static.

No, it states what can be done with tab panes. Period. There is no indication as to the *state* of the panes, static or otherwise.

Apple also seems to state (and you'll probably disagree for the fun of it) that the tabs should be used for 'settings' that affect globally or locally.

No, it says that *other controls* you put into a pane may be used for global or local settings.

I explained earlier in this thread that tabs were used for grouping preference options. That's what Apple is telling you.

Apple isn't telling me anything about preferences. It's only telling me about "information" and "content".

Apple is saying that tabs should be used statically for grouping settings options

Apple isn't say *anything* about using tabs statically. They only talk about, again, "information" and "content". They don't qualify what type of information is intended for tabs.

There isn't a HI/GUI police that's gonna bust down your door and arrest you for using tabs dynamically...but face it, they aren't meant to be used dynamically.

Guess what? I agree with you. I don't like tabbed browsing either. In fact, I hate it. I'm merely trying to point out that it's presumptuous to assume you know what Apple's intent is, and continually present it in these forums as fact without clear evidence to back it up. I offer again: if you can point me to supporting technical documents or articles from Apple which address tab usage, then I will accept that as corroboration.

Otherwise, you would do better service to advancing your ideas of UI by stating them as opinion, rather than touting them as some hard fact chiseled in stone.