[lookmark]

This is an idea I've been fiddling with for a little while, and was at last spurred into activity by Safari's release and several of OAW's ideas in this thread. (Interesting discussion, incidentally.)

The Page Pane on the right (as it's currently called, for lack of a better name) slides in at the touch of a button, and enables multipage viewing in a single window. Like the Dock, the size of the pages in the pane would dynamically adjust according to the number of pages it holds.

Turning on the pane would shift Safari into a slightly different Multipage View.

For more details, and larger pics, click here .

Feedback? Don't hold back.

- edit: fixed URL.

[Guy Incognito]

I love it. There will be people whining about how it takes up precious browsing space...but with the new widescreen that seems to be what Apple is defaulting to, this is fine. Sometimes screen estate has to be sacrificed for usability. I think your mockups are great.

I noticed that the page-holder can be resized. I'm guessing all those thumbnail would resize accordingly.

[Guy Incognito]

Edit: MacNN should shut down until this problem is resolved...I'm getting sick of this.

[kmkkid]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I love it. There will be people whining about how it takes up precious browsing space...but with the new widescreen that seems to be what Apple is defaulting to, this is fine. Sometimes screen estate has to be sacrificed for usability. I think your mockups are great.

I noticed that the page-holder can be resized. I'm guessing all those thumbnail would resize accordingly.

Couldnt the pageview have an auto-hide setting? Or a button that opens, or hides it, then no screen realestate is taken up unless they dont mind it always being open.

Chris

[cpac]

Originally posted by lookmark:
Feedback? Don't hold back.

Here we are again. I actually think that the "pane" should be the full page, like the bookmark window is. We've discussed the problems of thumbnails before (i.e. that one thread looks like another looks like another) but if one take the whole screen, it's easy to make up for this in one way or another.

Anyway, I posted how I think this could (and ought) to work in this thread

Check it out and let me know what you think.

[headbirth]

Love your idea! But I'm all for keeping the bloat out of Safari.

There are a couple of small enhancements needed, but all I want it to do is show sites fast and accurately.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Better then sheets but it takes up lots of room. You don't really need an icon over the page title do you?

[KidRed]

What about a simple menu like the bookmark icon, that displays a pulldown of all open windows, then just click the window you want? I like tabs and feel funny without them now, but also REALLY like the small UI safari has and don't want to loose much realestate.

[cwasko]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I love it.

LOL. Before I even saw your post I knew u'd like it

I do agree though. I'm all for a similar metaphor to the tabbed browsing; however, I'm not as addament about the tabs. I could care less, really.

The original posters mock-up is nice; however, my concerns are a littel more nit-picky:

First, let me explain why I like tabs. They are easy to get to, quick to use, and do not take up much space. The things I hate about tabs are that they cannot be renamed, cannot be repositioned, can can't be hidden to gain that extra 30 pixels.


Here are my problems with the above:

The thumbnail size; does it correspond to the aspect of the window or is it a fixed aspect? If it is related to the window aspect, then the icons *would* have to change their aspect when the window does. If they are fixed, then when adding the page to the 'storage pane', then it would have to re-rener the page and then make the thumbnail. Whether fixed or dynamic aspect, this does not seem very practical.

I do like the last picture shown on the original poster's website. Although I believe he is trying to demonstrate what will happen when there are alot of stored pages; I like the appearance better. There are no thumbnails to worry about. Alot of pages can be stored in a relatively samll space.

Since this is a mock-up, I'll request that we can re-order the pages and edit the displayed names. Additionaly, we should be able to bookmark groups of pages and have the edited display names stick.

[kman42]

I love the idea. The problem of screen realestate is easily solved by making it a drawer and allowing the user to use a text list OR thumbnails.

And the idea of the "booklists" is key. That is what is so great about tabs: bookmarking them all together.

Tabs represent almost essential functionality to me after using Chimera for several months, but I am not wed to the implementation of tabs. As they did with the new bookmarks, it would be great if Apple could take it just that one step further to differentiate the polish and UI insight that makes a great Apple product. I think this is a fine start to such an implementation.

kman

[OAW]

Originally posted by lookmark:


This is an idea I've been fiddling with for a little while, and was at last spurred into activity by Safari's release and several of OAW's ideas in this thread. (Interesting discussion, incidentally.)

The Page Pane on the right (as it's currently called, for lack of a better name) slides in at the touch of a button, and enables multipage viewing in a single window. Like the Dock, the size of the pages in the pane would dynamically adjust according to the number of pages it holds.

Turning on the pane would shift Safari into a slightly different Multipage View.

For more details, and larger pics, click here .

Feedback? Don't hold back.

- edit: fixed URL.

Lookmark,

I think you and I are approaching this from a similar angle. I'd suggest the following changes ...

1. The background of the "Open Pages" pane would be the standard white outline in metal instead of all metal. There should also be a "glass" title across the top of the pane that says "Open Pages". The current image introduces too much metal IMHO. Besides, what I am describing would "fit" better with the design of the Bookmarks Window. Better yet, forget the description. Just copy the "Collections" pane from the Bookmarks Window, stick it on the right side, rename it "Open Pages", and replace the folders with the thumbnails and titles like you have.

2. I would lose the "Close" button at the bottom of the pane. I would handle this with a contextual menu on the icon itself ... or by dragging the icon outside of the browser window (with a nice "poof" effect ).

3. There should be a simple "+" button in the lower left corner of the pane to fit with the current design of the Bookmarks Window. Clicking this button would function like the "Open New Tab" functionality in Chimera. In Safari, it would clear the webpage, add a new generic icon with a title of "Blank" in the "Open Pages" pane, clear the URL field and position the cursor there as well. Of course, there would be a keyboard shortcut as well.

4. The pane width should be resizable. I think you might have a resize widget on there but I can't really tell and the link to the larger pics isn't working.

5. I don't think the icons should grow or shrink in size depending upon the number of open pages like the dock. Instead, I think the size of the icons should be determined by a "Thumbnail Size" preference. Perhaps the smallest setting would display the "favicon" or a the generic icon instead of a thumbnail. If someone opens up enough to fill the vertical space then oh well ... that's what we have a vertical scroll bar for! Besides, one could easily get 8-10 good sized thumbnails in that pane before a scroll bar would even appear IMHO. Even more with a smaller setting. Also, the user should be able to determine whether or not the pane shows "thumbnails only", "thumbnails and text", or "text only" via a preference setting. In a nutshell, the pane should function just like the "thumbnails" drawer in Preview ... the only difference is the use of a pane instead of a drawer.

6. Another thought has occurred to me that I didn't put in my original post. Someone may have mentioned something along this line in this thread, but here goes anyway. The only "drawback" to this approach is that it cuts down on some of the viewing space for the webpage. I have a 15inch iMac and a 14inch iBook and I can see nearly every webpage just fine without horizontal scrollliing and I always have an inch of desktop exposed on either side of my browser. So accommodating this sort of "Open Pages" pane wouldn't be a problem for me at all. However, there are 12 inch iBook users so it might be a good idea to add some sort of "Auto Hide Open Pages Pane"[/b] preference that works similar to the dock. When the user hovers their mouse on the right side of the window ... the pane slides in from the right to allow the user to switch to another open page. Once the user clicks on one of the icons, the pane slides back out of view. If the preference is not selected, then the pane stays open all the time, but only if more than one page is open.

It's nice to see a picture of something very similar to what I've been advocating. Great work!

OAW

[milenko11]

Originally posted by cpac:
Here we are again. I actually think that the "pane" should be the full page, like the bookmark window is. We've discussed the problems of thumbnails before (i.e. that one thread looks like another looks like another) but if one take the whole screen, it's easy to make up for this in one way or another.

Anyway, I posted how I think this could (and ought) to work in this thread

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I agree exactly. I would love for that idea expect it is a full page just like the bookmark page. I would pay money for this! Could you make a mock up of that? It would allow for a lot more pages thumbnailed then as well.

[Dale Sorel]

Your idea definitely simplifies the clutter across the top of the browser, with all the tabs and bookmarks. I like it

[OAW]

Originally posted by milenko11:
I agree exactly. I would love for that idea expect it is a full page just like the bookmark page. I would pay money for this! Could you make a mock up of that? It would allow for a lot more pages thumbnailed then as well.

Why would anyone want a full page of open webpages? You'd be talking dozens of open pages! I think that's taking this whole idea of "tabbed browsing" a bit to the extreme. N'est pas?

Besides, if the pane had a vertical scroll bar that could easily accommodate the more adventurous among us. The whole point of "tabbed browsing" is being able to switch web page views in one click. An approach that covers the entire viewing area of the current web page would simply not meet that objective.

OAW

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by OAW:
Why would anyone want a full page of open webpages? You'd be talking dozens of open pages! I think that's taking this whole idea of "tabbed browsing" a bit to the extreme. N'est pas?

Besides, if the pane had a vertical scroll bar that could easily accommodate the more adventurous among us. The whole point of "tabbed browsing" is being able to switch web page views in one click. An approach that covers the entire viewing area of the current web page would simply not meet that objective.

OAW

Well you know...the way I saw the mockup is that the right pane that hold those pages can be resized...so it doesn't *need* to always be full-window size. If some prefer it that way...then they can resize it to fill the whole window and all the thumbnails would align themselves and resize to be as big as they can.

The little 'button' on the right of the Bookmark Bar in the mockup (opposite to the Bookmark icon) toggles this view.

So you can set the view anyway you'd want. Ain't that right lookmark?

[lookmark]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
I noticed that the page-holder can be resized. I'm guessing all those thumbnail would resize accordingly.

That's right.

Originally posted by kmkkid:
Couldnt the pageview have an auto-hide setting? Or a button that opens, or hides it, then no screen realestate is taken up unless they dont mind it always being open.

There would be a button that shows and hides the pane. (It's in the mock-up, at the far right of the Bookmarks bar.) There could be a keyboard shortcut too of course.

I'm not sure what would happen if you were hide the pane with pages still in it. There would need to be some kind of icon to indicate that you were still in Multipage View even though the pages for that window were hidden. I can't say I like the idea of hidden pages though. Something to think about.

Originally posted by cwasko:
Here are my problems with the above:

The thumbnail size; does it correspond to the aspect of the window or is it a fixed aspect? If it is related to the window aspect, then the icons *would* have to change their aspect when the window does. If they are fixed, then when adding the page to the 'storage pane', then it would have to re-rener the page and then make the thumbnail. Whether fixed or dynamic aspect, this does not seem very practical.

Fixed aspect: the pane's size would remain constant when resizing a window. It would only change when the user resizes it.

As for building for dynamic thumbnails, it seems to me that iPhoto does something like this very quickly (with many, many more). Preview, otoh, doesn't. Clearly something like this would only be usable if it's nice and fast.

I do like the last picture shown on the original poster's website. Although I believe he is trying to demonstrate what will happen when there are alot of stored pages; I like the appearance better. There are no thumbnails to worry about. Alot of pages can be stored in a relatively samll space.

I should point out that you could select no thumbnails in the Preferences. This would be a clear preference for those who keep a lot of pages in the pane.

Originally posted by headbirth:
Love your idea! But I'm all for keeping the bloat out of Safari.

There are a couple of small enhancements needed, but all I want it to do is show sites fast and accurately.

Agreed. I don't see something like this happening until version 2.0. If ever.

The demand for multipage/tabbed browsing will grow pretty strong, though, especially if the next version of IE for Windows includes it. So it's interesting to think about how it could be done, simply and in a hopefully Mac-like way.

Thanks everyone! I'll continue to work on this. I've fixed the URL now as well, so it would work.

[lookmark]

Originally posted by OAW:
The background of the "Open Pages" pane would be the standard white outline in metal instead of all metal. There should also be a "glass" title across the top of the pane that says "Open Pages". The current image introduces too much metal IMHO.

Hmmm, I'll give that a try and see how it looks.

Besides, what I am describing would "fit" better with the design of the Bookmarks Window. Better yet, forget the description. Just copy the "Collections" pane from the Bookmarks Window, stick it on the right side, rename it "Open Pages", and replace the folders with the thumbnails and titles like you have.

Heh, you might have to find someone else to mock-up that one. We differ on that approach. I find using the example of the Dock much more analagous to showing open web pages than bookmarks. Bookmarks are static, while the pane seems more dynamic to me.

I would lose the "Close" button at the bottom of the pane. I would handle this with a contextual menu on the icon itself ... or by dragging the icon outside of the browser window (with a nice "poof" effect ).

Dragging a page out with a poof is interesting. (Too much poofing, though, perhaps?) Definitely a contextual-menu for closing, reloading, and opening in a new window.

3. There should be a simple "+" button in the lower left corner of the pane to fit with the current design of the Bookmarks Window. Clicking this button would function like the "Open New Tab" functionality in Chimera. In Safari, it would clear the webpage, add a new generic icon with a title of "Blank" in the "Open Pages" pane, clear the URL field and position the cursor there as well. Of course, there would be a keyboard shortcut as well.

Yeah, I'm not too fond of that "Close window" button. A plus button sounds like a nice idea. Right now, you'd have to press command-N to open a new page.

4. The pane width should be resizable. I think you might have a resize widget on there but I can't really tell and the link to the larger pics isn't working.

It is. The link is working now.

5. I don't think the icons should grow or shrink in size depending upon the number of open pages like the dock. Instead, I think the size of the icons should be determined by a "Thumbnail Size" preference. Perhaps the smallest setting would display the "favicon" or a the generic icon instead of a thumbnail. If someone opens up enough to fill the vertical space then oh well ... that's what we have a vertical scroll bar for! Besides, one could easily get 8-10 good sized thumbnails in that pane before a scroll bar would even appear IMHO. Even more with a smaller setting. Also, the user should be able to determine whether or not the pane shows "thumbnails only", "thumbnails and text", or "text only" via a preference setting. In a nutshell, the pane should function just like the "thumbnails" drawer in Preview ... the only difference is the use of a pane instead of a drawer.

The reason I think the pages should dynamically resize in the pane and *not* use a vertical scroll bar is the same reason a full-page for pages seems too much and unhelpful. The whole point of multipage browsing (imo) is that all of the pages are right in front of you, and always reachable with a single click. Scrolling a long list of pages falls short of that goal.

I think it'd also look rather cool.

The user would have the option of choosing thumbnail size, or no thumbnails at all. See the full info at the link.

6. Another thought has occurred to me that I didn't put in my original post. Someone may have mentioned something along this line in this thread, but here goes anyway. The only "drawback" to this approach is that it cuts down on some of the viewing space for the webpage. I have a 15inch iMac and a 14inch iBook and I can see nearly every webpage just fine without horizontal scrollliing and I always have an inch of desktop exposed on either side of my browser. So accommodating this sort of "Open Pages" pane wouldn't be a problem for me at all... However, there are 12 inch iBook users so it might be a good idea to add some sort of "Auto Hide Open Pages Pane" preference that works similar to the dock. When the user hovers their mouse on the right side of the window ... the pane slides in from the right to allow the user to switch to another open page. Once the user clicks on one of the icons, the pane slides back out of view. If the preference is not selected, then the pane stays open all the time, but only if more than one page is open.[/B]

I find I always have room on the side of my screen when browsing as well. It definitely looks like a valuable space for Apple to use for something.

Sliding pane sounds interestin', too. You've given me lots ot chew on.

It's nice to see a picture of something very similar to what I've been advocating. Great work!

Thanks -- I'll keep at it.

[lookmark]

Originally posted by Guy Incognito:
Well you know...the way I saw the mockup is that the right pane that hold those pages can be resized...so it doesn't *need* to always be full-window size. If some prefer it that way...then they can resize it to fill the whole window and all the thumbnails would align themselves and resize to be as big as they can.

The little 'button' on the right of the Bookmark Bar in the mockup (opposite to the Bookmark icon) toggles this view.

So you can set the view anyway you'd want. Ain't that right lookmark?

Bingo.

[TC]

I like it a lot, you could also add a feature from omniweb and put a search box at the top.
This would allow you to perform a search for text in each of the open pages.
It could either dim pages which don't contain the content or remove them completely from the list.

I would really like to see something similar to this for bookmarks and history as well. Sorry but the extra click to go to the bookmarks page is too much for me.

Also when in multiple page mode you could allow a modifier key to be used to perform a refresh all, e.g. Option + click on reload.

[lookmark]

Originally posted by TC:
Also when in multiple page mode you could allow a modifier key to be used to perform a refresh all, e.g. Option + click on reload.

That's a good idea -- and one nice feature to having pages with thumbnails all grouped on the side is that you could see the sites refresh one by one.

I'll be working on this some more this weekend, and I'll whip up some "reloading" overlay icons for pages, large, medium, and favicon-size.