[OAW]

Originally posted by Rickster:


It's been interesting to see this group go through many of the same thought processes we did a few months ago. There have also been a few things brought up here that we hadn't looked at, and a few things we've been working on that haven't been discussed here yet -- as for which is which, you'll just have to wait until we start showing 5.0 to the public.

When I started this thread I was hoping you guys would eventually show up!

So now that you are here are we hot, cold, warm? Throw us a bone at least!

If nothing else could you let us know whether or not you guys have decided upon an approach? If so, then this thread, while fun, is nothing more than an excercise!

OAW

[swiz]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
The more I think about the more I like the 'Favorites' bar approach.

I'd like to see both Favorites and whatever-you-wanna-call-it-tabbed-browsing merged together. The favorites bar would essentially contain your favorites and the tabbed pages. How would this work, you ask?

When the browser launches it would load all your favorites into memory automatically...think of it as loading Chimera and having your favorites already in their tabs. They are your favorites right? So why not load them right away?

The favorites would be marked slightly differently as the tabbed pages that aren't your necessarily your favorites to prevent removing a favorite instead of a tabbed page.

These also update if the webpage has changed (just like they do now if you have it set to check for changes.) So the blue lightning icon would become green for the webpages that have seen changes.

This would be somewhat similar to the Dock idea...your favorite apps stay in the Dock, but other apps that are launched also appear temporarily in the Dock.

Yeah, this is a great idea Guy, I actually suggested this about two months ago but got the response that it would be a little too "Power-user-ish" and that Chimera is aimed at simplicity... ?

What ever happened to options?

[cpac]

Originally posted by OAW:
Anyway, this approach could work as long as it incorporated the following ....

1. A visual indicator for the currently displayed page.

2. A visual indicator for loading pages.

3. A visual indicator for pages alredy loaded.

4. An easy way to distinguish between an open page entry and a regular bookmark.

Having said all that, I still like my "toolbar/Liteswitch" approach better!

OAW

thanks for the feedback.

1. - this could be just a background highlight of the particular page.

2. - this could be the difference between the solid yellow arrow and a hollow yellow arrow (unless this distinction already has significance in OW) - or it could be a different color, rotating status indicator etc.

3. - that's the point of the yellow color. additionally, the fact that it's not in the "favorites" bar, but in a separate "open page" bar.

4. - again, besides the yellow color, this would be just the fact that the lightning bolt is in the "open page" bar rather than the favorites bar (which some might choose not to show, e.g.)

[Rickster]

Throw us a bone at least!

If nothing else could you let us know whether or not you guys have decided upon an approach? If so, then this thread, while fun, is nothing more than an excercise!

We have mostly figured out our plan for "tabbed" browsing (as well as a few related things). But do feel free to continue with the suggestions.

[tojo]

Originally posted by Rickster:





We have mostly figured out our plan for "tabbed" browsing (as well as a few related things). But do feel free to continue with the suggestions.

hehehehe! comedy.

[sadie]

Will you be using favicons, Rickster?

[DavidHossack]

Here is my suggestion. The colour is the background colour of the page. You can drag to change the order etc.


Funny how you only find a use for your iDisk two days before you use it because it isn't really worth $50.

I do have some webspace with my isp. They just need to fix finder FTP and I would use it instead.

[Guy Incognito]

...

As long as the 'tabbed-browsing' in OW 5.0 doesn't involve tabs, I'm happy.

I'd readily eat a pile of steaming elephant sh!t before using tabs for browsing.

[Sharky K.]

Originally posted by cpac:
Along the lines of the "cached page" pallet, why not just extend OW's already great bookmark control and allow you to set a preference to "load these pages on opening" - they could get a different color lightning zap and things showing they were ready to be displayed at any time, possibly having their own "bar" like favorites do...

I think this is the best until now including a pallet with 3 tabs: cached / updated / dead
so you can see immediately the status of your bookmarks. This pallet even could be in a "status drawer". (same option for bookmark drawer/window)

"Select next updated bookmark button" isn't really great.

[Sven G]

(Sorry for coming late...)

Personally, I think that the Mozilla/Netscape/Chimera tabbed browsing concept is quite good as it is - at least, as a basic option. Anyway, I would like an overall OmniWeb 5 (and Chimera) implementation that - besides providing the "basics" - also doesn't totally rely upon drawers (an option...?), as those are incompatible with full-screen-window browsing (yes, call me a "Windowsian", but I actually like full-screen windows in many circumstances!). Drawers look "cool", but they fail miserably when they don't have the space to expand - paned/framed window sections (� la Internet Explorer and Mozilla "sidebars") are a much better option, IMHO...

P.S.: Even better, the drawer concept should be drastically improved by allowing drawers to open also towards the *inside* of windows (� la Explorer sidebar, for example).

[Guy Incognito]

I've got another idea for the favorites/cached/open pages.

Warning tab-lovers: put your fingers in your ears and sing for a little bit.

Hovering the cursor above the favorites/cached/open pages in the bar should simply display the page in the browser right away. That way you get a full size preview of the page. No clicks involved unless you want to stay on that page. I'd only think about implementing this is the browser can display the pages fast enough (Chimera could probably do it if they tried a different approach than tabs or hacked the current tabs.)

Oh and maybe add a fast crossfade effect going from one page to another.

Edit: I'd actually be a little more forgiving towards Chimera's truncated titles problem if hovering the cursor above the tabs would display the page...that and simply the favicon in the tab would greatly make it easier to find the tabbed page without seeing it's title.

[OAW]

Originally posted by Rickster:

Well I did leave myself wide open for that one!

OAW

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I've got another idea for the favorites/cached/open pages.

Warning tab-lovers: put your fingers in your ears and sing for a little bit.

Actually Guy, it seems it is you that has any other idea turned off but your own.

Get your fingers ot of YOUR ears.

There are plenty of people who likes tabs.

Listen and you will hear them.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Zimphire:

Listen and you will hear them.

No yuo!!!

[Glennfield]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
Hovering the cursor above the favorites/cached/open pages in the bar should simply display the page in the browser right away. That way you get a full size preview of the page. No clicks involved unless you want to stay on that page. I'd only think about implementing this is the browser can display the pages fast enough (Chimera could probably do it if they tried a different approach than tabs or hacked the current tabs.)

Ew. Personally I think it's bad GUI design to have anything significantly change on a simple mouseover, and I would consider changing the currently displayed page to be a pretty significant change.

How sensitive would you make such a hover feature? If you make it happen as soon as the mouse enters the area, then you have the problem of the page "flickering" when the user mouses up to the menu bar and passes over the favorites/cached/etc bar en route. If you make it have a delay (like tooltips), though, then the user (or maybe just me ) gets frustrated having to wait for it to respond when he wants it to.

Or am I simply not seeing the big picture here?

[sadie]

DavidHossack came up with:


Here is my suggestion. The colour is the background colour of the page. You can drag to change the order etc.

Okay, that one does look pretty cool. What would it look like when there were too many tabs open? And could it use favicons?

[Sven G]

(Regarding the above picture...) IMO, it would be better if the "sidetabs" were on the inside of the browser window (even as a customisable option), in order to also allow full-screen web browsing without problems.

[Gul Banana]

So far, the mockup that I like best is cpac's.

[curmi]

Ok, the way I see this is as follows:

1) Most web pages are portrait shaped, like a piece of paper. For this reason, it makes sense to have "tabs" at the side, since screens are landcape shape - giving more room for the image.

2) Tabs generally don't scroll, so things bunch up if there are a lot of tabs. Scrolling tabs look strange, as they are an invented control - something most usability people frown upon.

3) OSX has the power to show thumbnails of images. This means that if images are used, you can "see" the page load. Omniweb does this when you minimise a loading page to the dock.

4) Other operating systems don't handle minimise images dynamically updated as well as OSX. In fact, after using OSX you expect to see this sort of behaviour. So, other browsers have gone for using tabs - as that was the easiest. An OSX browser does not have to go that way if something else is better.

Ok, so here is my mockup.



There is also a larger one at

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/.Pictures/tabbed.jpg

[oVeRmInD911]

That's purrty curmi. I'd go for that anytime.

[Spirit_VW]

Originally posted by curmi:
Ok, the way I see this is as follows:

1) Most web pages are portrait shaped, like a piece of paper. For this reason, it makes sense to have "tabs" at the side, since screens are landcape shape - giving more room for the image.

2) Tabs generally don't scroll, so things bunch up if there are a lot of tabs. Scrolling tabs look strange, as they are an invented control - something most usability people frown upon.

3) OSX has the power to show thumbnails of images. This means that if images are used, you can "see" the page load. Omniweb does this when you minimise a loading page to the dock.

4) Other operating systems don't handle minimise images dynamically updated as well as OSX. In fact, after using OSX you expect to see this sort of behaviour. So, other browsers have gone for using tabs - as that was the easiest. An OSX browser does not have to go that way if something else is better.

Ok, so here is my mockup.


There is also a larger one at

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/.Pictures/tabbed.jpg

Curmi, I'm sure some people will come back saying how that will take up too much space, etc. - but I LOVE that mockup and idea. That's exactly how I'd do it.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Spirit_VW:


Curmi, I'm sure some people will come back saying how that will take up too much space, etc. - but I LOVE that mockup and idea. That's exactly how I'd do it.

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

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.

[foamy]

As long as the 'tabbed-browsing' in OW 5.0 doesn't involve tabs, I'm happy.

I'd readily eat a pile of steaming elephant sh!t before using tabs for browsing.

So If chimera implemented "tabs" (with smaller text) that had the same background around the text and favicon as the rest of the toolbar, then that would be okay?

However, if you surround the favicon and text with a blue, aqua-looking "tab"-like button thingy then you would rather eat a steaming pile of elephant sh!t?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, you take this position because the Apple Bible says "tabs" shouldn't be used in this way?

Put another way. All things being equal (icon, text size, rearrangeability, etc) if it has a tab-like border, then it is utterly useless?

[OAW]

Originally posted by curmi:
Ok, the way I see this is as follows:

1) Most web pages are portrait shaped, like a piece of paper. For this reason, it makes sense to have "tabs" at the side, since screens are landcape shape - giving more room for the image.

2) Tabs generally don't scroll, so things bunch up if there are a lot of tabs. Scrolling tabs look strange, as they are an invented control - something most usability people frown upon.

3) OSX has the power to show thumbnails of images. This means that if images are used, you can "see" the page load. Omniweb does this when you minimise a loading page to the dock.

4) Other operating systems don't handle minimise images dynamically updated as well as OSX. In fact, after using OSX you expect to see this sort of behaviour. So, other browsers have gone for using tabs - as that was the easiest. An OSX browser does not have to go that way if something else is better.

Ok, so here is my mockup.



There is also a larger one at

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/.Pictures/tabbed.jpg

I too like this approach. However, drawers are for items that you need access to [b]occasionally[b], and no one is going to want to open and close a drawer every time they want to switch pages ... so the real estate consumption is an issue. If the thumbnails dynamically sized based upon the width of the drawer then the real estate issue might be mitigated. Perhaps.

However, this is why I advocate the "toolbar" icon approach which is essentially the same approach of using thumbnails and titles, but they are displayed horizontally under the favorites bar so as not to consume too much screen real estate.

OAW

[curmi]

I think someone with a widescreen would have even more reason to go for this approach. Their screen is super-landscape mode - meaning they have more room horizontally. Having the drawer at the side does not effect the vertical room for display of pages.

And it is a drawer, so they can close it when they don't need it.

I'd also note that the mini-previews could also be badged to show when they are loading (small isync-like rotating symbol). And context menus could exist on the small windows to reload a page, remove/close a window, etc.

Windows could be rearranged with drag and drop. Probably lots of other things.

And NO other browser would have this feature, and no other operating system either!

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by foamy:


So If chimera implemented "tabs" (with smaller text) that had the same background around the text and favicon as the rest of the toolbar, then that would be okay?

However, if you surround the favicon and text with a blue, aqua-looking "tab"-like button thingy then you would rather eat a steaming pile of elephant sh!t?

And, correct me if I'm wrong, you take this position because the Apple Bible says "tabs" shouldn't be used in this way?

Put another way. All things being equal (icon, text size, rearrangeability, etc) if it has a tab-like border, then it is utterly useless?

How about you go reread all my posts and figure it out yourself.

[foamy]

I guess I did get it right.

Tabs in a browser suck no matter what because they're not supposed to be used that way.

Kinda like arguing with a religious zealot. The Bible says so and that's that.

None of the ideas in this forum are in any way compelling reason to give up the current tabbed browser implementation. If someone comes up with a better implementation, I'll gladly use it.

[curmi]

Originally posted by foamy:
I guess I did get it right.

Tabs in a browser suck no matter what because they're not supposed to be used that way.

Kinda like arguing with a religious zealot. The Bible says so and that's that.

None of the ideas in this forum are in any way compelling reason to give up the current tabbed browser implementation. If someone comes up with a better implementation, I'll gladly use it.

Hey?

I'd say the fact that:

1) Tabs don't offer any visual indication of the page contents.

2) Tabs don't scroll, so have to get smaller meaning more difficult to read - unless you put them in a scroll pane, which then looks and acts differently than the control is meant to.

are reason enough.

The suggestions here by a number of people show ways that would give much more functionality. The inventors of the tabbed approach went with that as they were limited in what their OS could really do easily. OSX is not.

Sure, what is suggested here is harder to code than coding using tabs. But all good software is non-trivial.

There is no religious war here.

[kzmk]

Originally posted by curmi:
Ok, so here is my mockup.



There is also a larger one at

http://homepage.mac.com/curmi/.Pictures/tabbed.jpg

let's say i click on "macnn" - where does apple's page go to?

let's say i close the drawer - what happens to all the loaded pages? how do i access them? how do i know they're loaded?

if the drawer is closed - where do newly opened pages go to? a new window? into the hidden drawer?

i don't have the definite solution for the problem discussed here, but i think these are valid questions.

[curmi]

All good questions.

Originally posted by kzmk:


let's say i click on "macnn" - where does apple's page go to?

Apple's page is already in the drawer. This is the same as a "tabbed" interface. In my mockup, the Apple page is towards the bottom (highlighted in the drawer).

Check out the preview application - the behaviour is the same, but the images are static there.

let's say i close the drawer - what happens to all the loaded pages? how do i access them? how do i know they're loaded?

This would depend on the implementation. Perhaps the pages are cached as per normal - so it doesn't really matter what happens to them when the drawer is closed. It may be up to the user to close them individually if they want them to disappear from the drawer, but users really shouldn't have to worry.

You access them by opening the drawer.

As for knowing they are there, the interface could show that in some visual way. Much like bookmarks - how do I know they are there?

if the drawer is closed - where do newly opened pages go to? a new window? into the hidden drawer?

I would say the correct behaviour should be much like finder windows that don't have a toolbar. Ie, if you close the drawer, new windows appear (as Omniweb does now with Cmd-click). If you open it, they go in to the drawer.

When the drawer is open, it works pretty much like Mozilla or Chimera with tabs. Except that they give a visual indication, are vertical, and scroll.

When they are closed, the behaviour has to be defined. There may be a better way to handle them. But I don't think it is a huge concern given the advantages a system like this would have.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by foamy:
None of the ideas in this forum are in any way compelling reason to give up the current tabbed browser implementation. If someone comes up with a better implementation, I'll gladly use it.

Yes they are. Yuo lose!!!

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


Yes they are. Yuo lose!!!

Perhaps these implementations look to the tab users like tabbed browsing looks to you. There is no winner, only options.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by oVeRmInD911:


Perhaps these implementations look to the tab users like tabbed browsing looks to you. There is no winner, only options.

Actually, there are winners. And the 'Favorites' approach is *exactly* like tabs + they can be rearranged, renamed, deleted, context-clicked, and span mutiple-rows to prevent name truncation.

Heck, if Omni really wanted to, they could make those 'favorite' objects look like Aqua tabs (I'd advise against that because they're not really tabs and it could mislead people into thinking they are).

Yes, there are options...but there is a winner. Sorry to burst your bubble.

[sadie]

Guy incognito persists in saying:
And the 'Favorites' approach is *exactly* like tabs + they can be rearranged, renamed, deleted, context-clicked, and span mutiple-rows to prevent name truncation.

Last time I looked, tabs could be rearranged, renamed, deleted, context-clicked, and could span multiple rows to prevent name truncation. At the same time, they provide more useful feedback about which of them is open at one time. They even have favicons.

Again, this is all in NetCaptor, which I persist in thinking is the best.

[Gee4orce]

I love curmis idea - that's the way to do it. Also, what's needed is a 'forward page' and 'backward page' button, just like in Preview, to flip to the next/previous loaded page that the browser is holding.

What I like about it is that you can keep an eye on pages loading in the background, instead of just a name and progress indicator.

As for Sadie's comment about tabs - ugh, multi-line tabs are without exception the single worst UI atrocity that Windows has inflicted on the world.

[curmi]

Originally posted by Gee4orce:
As for Sadie's comment about tabs - ugh, multi-line tabs are without exception the single worst UI atrocity that Windows has inflicted on the world.

Agree totally. Multi-line tabs are a shocker - if Omni dared to include them they would lose all respect in the UI world.

I don't know why so many people are obsessed with tabs. Why do people accept "good enough" when they could have "much better"?

Another idea I've had is to do with flow. We currently have back and forth, but in reality there are "paths" or "threads" through web pages.

You can go to the history drawer say, but that doesn't really show the paths. Imagine if instead you could see the tree - like a family tree view - showing small icons of the windows, and the flow visually.

Hard to explain what I'm getting at. And this needs a lot more thought than tabs. I'll try to mock something up on the weekend...

[Giano]

Why don't use the WindowMaker virtual desktop approach? ...you could group the favorities into main category....Mac, News, ecc...every category is rapresented by a window with the preview of the the sites, then you can click on one of it....in an angle of the window you could have a clip that make you possible to swith the different "virtual desktop"...
it's an absurd idea ?

[sadie]

Gee4orce pointed out:
As for Sadie's comment about tabs - ugh, multi-line tabs are without exception the single worst UI atrocity that Windows has inflicted on the world.

Actually, I agree. I don't use multi-line tabs on my system, I just scroll. I also wouldn't want a multi-line launch-bar-like-thing for similar reasons. But if you did, they're available.

It also has a load status indicator, so you can see at a glance that those pages are ready to read, while those ones are still arriving.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by sadie:


Actually, I agree. I don't use multi-line tabs on my system, I just scroll. I also wouldn't want a multi-line launch-bar-like-thing for similar reasons.

No, the reasons are not similar because multi-line tabs do not work the same way as a multi-line launch-bar-like-thing.

Multiline tabs shift around in Windows. And everything becomes a moving target at this point. (Not sure if NetCaptor makes use of Windows tabs or their own brand of tabs...if it's the latter then they might have a bit more control over what they want their tabs to do.)

This doesn't happen with other similar concepts that don't make use of OS tabs.

[sadie]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:


No, the reasons are not similar because multi-line tabs do not work the same way as a multi-line launch-bar-like-thing.

Multiline tabs shift around in Windows. And everything becomes a moving target at this point. (Not sure if NetCaptor makes use of Windows tabs or their own brand of tabs...if it's the latter then they might have a bit more control over what they want their tabs to do.)

This doesn't happen with other similar concepts that don't make use of OS tabs.

turns multi-line tabs on for the first time in months

It has its own tabs, not the OS ones. But yes, they do move around in a really disturbing skitterish way. With several lines, they also use up too much screen space. For multi-line you're right, the tabs concept fails.

turns it back off as soon as humanly possible

But at least I have the option.

I probably sounded a little to harsh earlier. I have no emotional loyalty to tabs, and I'm perfectly open to other interface ideas - if I ever see any idea i think is better, i hope i'll be willing to ackowledge it. It's just that I haven't yet.

[Judge_Fire]

The browser is probably my main tool at work nowadays.

I've always been opening lots of windows in the background and the introduction of tabs really made things so much clearer. I really relate to all the tab- fans' testimonials here and appreciate any attempts to make them better - thanks for that.

Being able to open all those windows/tabs has a big downside, though. When my browser crashes, it takes a lot of unread pages with it.

So I'd wish for a better handling of these catastrophic failure situations, perhaps by using some sort of snapshotting scheme that records open tab/window URLs at set intervals and allows returning to the last saved snapshot.

Recording could happen, for example, when opening/closing pages, or by our favorite crash catcher app upon failure. Come to think of it, the crash catcher could have a button like 'Restore', which would bounce me back to the moment before. (To crash yet again...hmmm.... you get the idea, though.)

Possible?

J

[clarkgoble]

The problem with "favorites" like tabs is that many window titles are fairly long. With favorites I simply rename them to something *I* understand. With dynamic tabs that isn't possible.

I like the drawer model best - especially if the size of the preview varies according to how wide I open the drawer. It seems like a win/win situation. Having an option that puts the title rather than the preview in the drawer would probably be a good idea as well.

I love drawers. The only place I have problems with them is when resizing isn't handled intelligently. For instance with Mail.app when you choose small icon/text and then open the drawer you have this huge drawer consisting of nothing but empty space. This is because Apple decided that they wouldn't consider the size of the drawer (how open it is) So it always left justifies the folder list assuming a single size. Very annoying. But this is a problem with the application design and not drawers themselves.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by curmi:

I haven't liked drawers in the past, but curmi's mockup makes it look pretty nice. One of the things that makes it look nice is that the titles are (hand-typed in the mockup, but potentially) automatically truncated at the first - or :. Which makes everything much cleaner.

The visual preview is pretty good, but I still think you'd want a badge to indicate something is still loading.

It might be way too much, I haven't decided if I'd like it myself, but it might be nice if the drawer had magnification. It would be pretty handy to be able mouse over the drawer to scan the headlines and check for changes.

And while on the subject of checking for changes... you should be able to set your "tabs" to reload automatically whenever a site has updated. You'd probably want a little badge indicating that the site updates too.

It would be cool if there was a little bar at the very top of the drawer (not part of the drawer that scrolls) that would allow you to specify a number of minutes to check/update the "tabbed" sites. So you could have a news site, a webmail site, a stock site, and a forum site in your drawer, set it to update (if the content has changed) every minute, then continue with your regular browsing in the main, watching the drawer for updates.

~BS

[Guy Incognito]

Inspired by the drawer idea and mixed with my "Favorites Bar" approach I decided this might be cool:



Realize this...the Favorites Bar (or whatever you want to call it for the cached pages) works EXACTLY like tabs but without the tabs' inconveniences (truncated names when too many tabs are spawned in a window that can't fit them all...lack of organization...lack of renaming...lack of contextual manipulation.)

It's beyond my comprehension why someone would prefer tabs over this setup.

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.

Anyone who wants to delete/remove a cached page by simply dragging or context-clicking will run into trouble with the current OS tabs. Not so with a Favorites Bar approach.

Anyone who wants to manipulate a page through context-clicking (moving to the 'Prev' page or 'Next' page) cannot do so with the OS tabs. This leads to another feature that I haven't shown in my mockup...hover over an cached/tabbed page and the preview of it is shown in the drawer (like in the mockup), but then you can context-click it and get choices such as "Prev" or "Next" or "Reload" so you can navigate without even bringing the page forward into the browser window...and you'll still get the preview in the drawer that will show what's happening.)

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.

Seriously, for the sake of people with smaller screens and the sanity of people that like to organize and manipulate things, go for the favorites-approach.

Hell even Chimera has the Favorites Bar...why did they take a step backwards for the cached pages and decided to display them in tabs.

The Chimera method is a hack. Tabs aren't meant to be used that way and the author went through a great deal of pain to make them work the way he wants them to work. Please, save the author from the troubles of hacking and stick with guidelines...it's better for you and the whole family...honest!

[MrBS]

One thing OG really needs to do is get some good keyboard short-cuts for tabs. And not change the behavior of traditional shortcuts (like apple-W).

It seems like it would be easy to make option the tab modifier...
apple-option-W closes tab, apple-option-~ cycles through tabs, apple-option-N makes new tab,cmd-opt (or maybe just option) click on a link to open it in a new tab...

Is this against any guidlines? Or would there be any system-wide-shortcut conflicts?

~BS

[Northform]

I appologise if this has already been suggested, but...SOON. I know it sounds stupid, but OW needs to get some type of multi-window in a window solution quickly. After its here we can worry about conforming to OS standards and such.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by Northform:
I appologise if this has already been suggested, but...SOON. I know it sounds stupid, but OW needs to get some type of multi-window in a window solution quickly. After its here we can worry about conforming to OS standards and such.

Well like Rickster said...OW 5 will definitely have a 'multi-window in a window' solution. But will it be the best solution? I dunno.
And will it be released 'soon'? I dunno either.

[clarkgoble]

Incognito, while you idea is semi-good think about the following: How long will it take to render the page's "display" as big as your mockup suggests? Doing it on the mouse-over seems like it would be processor intensive, even if you buffered the minimized appearance. I like Curmi's mockup much better. Heck, make a pane like the favorites pane with titles if you want. Just make it so it can be turned off. The problem, as I mentioned, with a pane like the favorites pane, is that far too many title bars are VERY long. Just look at the title for this page! I think you'd find that if you use some default shortening you'd get something unreadable and if you kept it the full length you'd not have enough space.

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
How long will it take to render the page's "display" as big as your mockup suggests? Doing it on the mouse-over seems like it would be processor intensive, even if you buffered the minimized appearance.

Not long at all...the page is cached. I don't think it would take any longer than showing several thumbnails of pages in a drawer the way Curmi mocked-up.

Hit 'Back' in OmniWeb and see how instantaneous the previous page loads. Why wouldn't it be this fast for a preview of a cached page?

Edit: God, I give up...I'm surrounded by idiots.

[oVeRmInD911]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:

Edit: God, I give up...I'm surrounded by idiots.

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