[lookmark]

All those interested in alternatives to tabbed browsing are highly recommended to check out Pith for Safari.

Very interesting, and IMO beautifully implemented.

[lookmark]

Screenshot:

[Mac Guru]

IMHO it's a cool idea but pointless because the windows are still there and it'd take just as much mousing to just click a darned window.

If it made the other non-active windows invisible and had a keystroke to invoke them in essence having only one visible window at a time I'd use it.

Mac Guru

[Mac Guru]

Additional:

What is the Menu Extra for? It does nothing on my system

Mac Guru

[lookmark]

Originally posted by Mac Guru:
IMHO it's a cool idea but pointless because the windows are still there and it'd take just as much mousing to just click a darned window.

If it made the other non-active windows invisible and had a keystroke to invoke them in essence having only one visible window at a time I'd use it.

Well, command-~ will still cycle through windows. I'm not sure how Pith requires much more mousing than, say, using tabs.

I agree a "Hide other windows when selecting" option might be nice. Definitely worth suggesting -- it's only a beta, after all. I also think a contextual menu for pages in the utility window, to close, reload, etc. would be great.

Additional:
What is the Menu Extra for? It does nothing on my system.

Clicking the Pith menu extra should make the utility window reappear if you've closed it. Apparently it's still a bit buggy.

[Millennium]

Interesting; someone's actually worked to implement an alternative.

However, it doesn't work as well. Problems:

• All of the pages are in one list. No method of organization appears to be provided (as oppostd to tabs, where organization is provided through multiple lists via multiple windows).
• Button placement is inconsistent; the buttons constantly change order so that the frontmost window is constantly at the top of my list. This contrasts with tabs, where items do not change position or order without user action.
• Screen real-estate: this takes up much more vertical space than a tab bar.
• Screen clutter: Does not cut down on the number of windows onscreen.
• Responsivity: Does not change to reflect the state of Safari's windows in real-time; there is usually a delay of about two seconds.

That said, this does have a few advantages:

• Resizability. Buttons can be resized to show titles.
• Crash recovery. This is actually unrelated to Pith's interface, but has more to do with its status as a separate app. Regardless, the ability to recover from a crash (by returning to the pages you were at before) is a Good Thing.
• Metal interface. Whether or not you think Metal is a Good Thing, the fact that it matches the rest of Safari certainly is.

In short: This is a good concept in its own right. However, it doesn't cut it as an adequate tabbed-browsing replacement. Lack of organization is the primary weakness, but the fact that it doesn't address the problem of screen clutter -which was the original point of tabbed browsing- is also problematic.

[JLL]

Originally posted by Millennium:
[*]Button placement is inconsistent; the buttons constantly change order so that the frontmost window is constantly at the top of my list. This constasts with tabs, where items do not change position or order without user action.

OK, I was just about to download it, but I won't now.

[Millennium]

A suggestion on the button-moving, by the way:

I suggest you not do it at all; find another way to note which window is active. But if you decide that you must move buttons around, you may want to consider moving the frontmost window to the bottom of the list, rather than the top. The reason has to do with "interface priority", similar to why the Mac menubar is always at the top of the screen. Users are not very likely to click on the button for the active window, since it's already the active window. Thus, moving it to the bottom gets it out of the way, while still being in an easy place to find. Also, moving to the bottom is less disruptive to the order of the buttons, since only the buttons below the button's original position will change (this is not perfect, but it's better than having everything change).

[lookmark]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Interesting; someone's actually worked to implement an alternative.

Yup, and I think the author of this deserves a lot of credit just for that.

To respond to a few of your critques:

However, it doesn't work as well. Problems:

• All of the pages are in one list. No method of organization appears to be provided (as oppostd to tabs, where organization is provided through multiple lists via multiple windows).

• It's an interesting point, but how many windows of tabs do users keep open? (In my own usage, rarely more than one.)
  
  
• Button placement is inconsistent; the buttons constantly change order so that the frontmost window is constantly at the top of my list. This constasts with tabs, where items do not change position or order without user action.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by lookmark:
Yup, and I think the author of this deserves a lot of credit just for that.

Oh, agreed. It's wonderful to see someone not just complaining about the problems of tabs, but actually doing something about it.

You've often insisted that people who have issues with tabbed browsing offer real-world alternatives. Fair enough, but once a beta of one is released, why the need to shoot it down so quickly?

I'd say give the concept a little more time to mature.

That's just it. It's the first beta (at least that I'm aware of); at this point, it's still relatively easy to make changes because nothing in the interface has been finalized. Given that, it's best to give this -as with any interface- a trial by fire before it's finalized. This has a lot of promise; it doesn't solve the problem that tabbed browsing was created to solve, but it's a good interface for another set of issues. With some work, it can be molded to become even stronger. As it is, were this interface to be combined with tabs, it would become indispensable.

In fact, that sounds like a very interesting exercise. What if an app like this were to be made for Chimera? the way I envision this, it would deal with windows, rather than individual pages. As a complement to tabs it would be incredibly useful, because it would allow people to group tabs into windows to provide organization, while then providing a button bar for the windows to retain the tabs' advantage of one-click access. Perhaps even better would be if the buttons had a context menu with the tabs in their windows, so that a user could use the palette to switch to a window and bring up a different tab automatically.

It's a thought, anyway. As a complement to tabs this could help solve many of the limitations of the current tab paradigm.

It's a shame this isn't Open-Source, or I'd try adding Chimera support to it myself. As it is I'll have to try reimplementing the whole thing as a separate app (or possibly folding it into the Chimera code itself).

[TC]

Originally posted by Millennium:
[*]Responsivity: Does not change to reflect the state of Safari's windows in real-time; there is usually a delay of about two seconds.

Looks like a nice little app, if it did the automatic hiding it would be worthwhile. Most of the faults listed here could be fixed by allowing people to choose the behaviour in the preferences, animate pages for example.

Wanted to reply to applaude Millenium on his discovery a new word, responsivity! Why use responsiveness when there is a much better word out there just waiting to be discovered

[Dale Sorel]

Well, I just downloaded Pith and I think most of the things you all are complaining about have been fixed in 0.9.2

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Pithetic compared to real tabs

[SwarmyCurve]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Pithetic compared to real tabs

Lol very funny.
I would have to agree. . .
Its as good as this type of product could be though.

[snotnose]

i wonder when safari will actually get tabs, i hope it is near or at the top of the list on things to do....

until then... chimera is default for me

[njitkoff]

Beta 2 is out

Fixes some of the problems, adds a few more....

http://www.blacktree.com/apps

[Anomalous]

Safari is my main browser now, but when I want to do something that would really benefit from tabs (i.e. these forums), I just switch to Chimera temporarily.

[chezpaul]

I'm using Pith with this other program (FullScreenSafari.ape) that keeps all my Safari windows one behind the other really just making one window present so it works fine.. Same as tabs to me. If someone says it's not the same then he hasn't tried it and isn't very open minded...

There's still a hiding feature bug to work out but it's damn as close as it gets to tabs.

Okay so I have a 22inch display too... ;-)
But works fine on my Ti... (space wise)

[Dale Sorel]

It seems that Pith has been updated and looks to work a little better: http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...d=18168&db=mac