[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
What kind of Dock animation will there be? Using the GeoURL code to have the globe spin to where the site is? I mean, it is practical, right?

How is this practical? Who really cares?

I thought I heard that the globe spins as web pages are loading, like a throbber outside the browser. Such a thing would seem like a needless waste of CPU cycles, however.

Something useful might be a progress indicator for a large download overlaid onto the icon, multiple indicators if you've got more than one going.

Adium has shown that the Dock icon can have several indicators overlaid at once.

[Nebagakid]

oops! I forgot the <sarcasm /> tags...

I really like dock animations though, and yes they waste CPU cycles, but they can be REALLY COOL! Imagine the iTunes CD spinning in the dock when importing a CD and burning a CD. Or the eagle in Mail.app flying when it is sending and receiving mail. Or the TextEdit icon instead of having a thumbnail of a document, make it the current document! The Internet Connect icon could glow and have light flow through the lines (Panther Icon) when there is network activity! Wasteful can also be cool!

Make the Omniweb.icns Localized by Hemispheres.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Site prefs are based on a similar notion of "autonomous domains" similar to the standard for cookies: a two-part domain name will be counted as autonomous for some TLDs but not for others: apple.com is autonomous, co.uk isn't, and apple.co.uk is. For 5.0, site prefs can only be set per autonomous domain... you can set prefs for all apple.com sites, but not have separate prefs for developer.apple.com. We know this can be pretty limiting in some situations, but decided to go with the simple implementation for schedule reasons... more sophisticated domain matching will likely come in a future 5.x release.

It would be really nice if you could include just basic regex matching to define "sites" for 5.0 and bring in some more polished options for 5.x releases.

Different parts of a.d.s are obviously used for very different things, especially when you're dealing with a big organization like UW or Apple. Even a site like OmniGroup's is pretty different once you get into http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/. mail.yahoo.com, news.yahoo.com and games.yahoo.com all probably would benefit from separate settings. And domains like geocites and the like are obviously not going to have similar default settings.

Anyway I'm sure you all recognize that, I just hope you'll choose to give people a more powerful if less polished option in addition to the autonomous domains option in 5.0.

~BS

[ambush]

Originally posted by Nebagakid:
Mail.app flying when it is sending and receiving mail.

What eagle? I never noticed that.........

[Nebagakid]

the bird! the bird! on the icon!

[WDRAM]

Wow I am blown away by OmniWeb 5. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

But PURPLE?! Ugh..and the Icon, if anything, is worse than the 4.5 icon. Get Sascha Hoehne (of RAD.E8 fame) to design it for you

Also, the persistent cache in Safari can be described as "overambitious" at times, displaying cached pages that should be updated.

Is this an issue with OW 5's persistent cache?

[CharlesS]

What's so bad about that icon?

[JKT]

Yeesh, I get back from my prolonged computer free holiday and you haven't released it yet!

Anyway, looks good - I had a raft of questions to ask about it, but it seems you've had plenty already so I'll save mine for later or when we've had the chance to use it.

Actually, one question (or suggestion) - with the thumbnails in the "tab-bar" will they dynamically resize a la sidebar icons in the Panther Finder so that scrollbars are avoided for as long as possible? Is that feasible... or practical, even?

Also, the new icon is a big improvement on the old one, but it could be better - my favourite still remains as the blue and ice icon in Rickster's alternative sets (a more Europe-centric version would be nice though )

Btw, Happy New Year.

[workerbee]

Like most here I can hardly wait to lay my greedy fingers on OW 5, which looks great.

In the meantime, however, one small and often-asked question: will OW 5 finally have smooth scrolling � la Safari / FireBird?

I've had a bit of fever these last few days and found that reading on the web is much easier on the eyes when a scrolling page comes to stop with a slight de-acceleration.

[ratlater]

Originally posted by workerbee:
Like most here I can hardly wait to lay my greedy fingers on OW 5, which looks great.

In the meantime, however, one small and often-asked question: will OW 5 finally have smooth scrolling � la Safari / FireBird?

I've had a bit of fever these last few days and found that reading on the web is much easier on the eyes when a scrolling page comes to stop with a slight de-acceleration.

I personally despise smooth scrolling, but it should be available in all cocoa apps in 10.3. The appearance pref panel has the option to turn it off or on for all apps.

-matt

[MrBS]

Originally posted by workerbee:
In the meantime, however, one small and often-asked question: will OW 5 finally have smooth scrolling � la Safari / FireBird?

gah such a timewaster. nothing like finally getting to the section you want and then having your buffered input keep you coasting down the page in a blurry, slowed down mess.

~BS

[workerbee]

Originally posted by MrBS:
gah such a timewaster. nothing like finally getting to the section you want and then having your buffered input keep you coasting down the page in a blurry, slowed down mess.

~BS

Yes, you're right of course!
Now where can we turn off all of the fancy-schmancy timewaster animations in OS X? Sheets, pref panes, resizing windows... gah! Humbug I say!

[MrBS]

Originally posted by workerbee:
Yes, you're right of course!
Now where can we turn off all of the fancy-schmancy timewaster animations in OS X? Sheets, pref panes, resizing windows... gah! Humbug I say!

Heh, okay that's fair. But none of those things take up an inordinate amount of time over the course of a day. I probably see a dozen sheets a day, all of which would require a window to open (not as much time but some) anyway, but if I had to deal with the kind of smooth scrolling WinIE has every time I wanted to read through a webpage I'd go crazy.

~BS

[workerbee]

Originally posted by MrBS:
(snip) but if I had to deal with the kind of smooth scrolling WinIE has every time I wanted to read through a webpage I'd go crazy.

~BS

I think smooth scrolling is much better in Safari/10.3 than in IE/XP; I wouldn't want the XP style - it compares a little bit like sheets in 10.3 (nice, fast, unobtrusive) to sheets in 10.2 (slightly clunky and annoying).
And the way I know the Omni boys, they'll have smooth scrolling as an user-selectable option anyway (if they have it).
It'd be a real shame if smooth scrolling did not work for some strange reason in OW5, since everything in the "tab drawer" is behaving just soo ultra-smoothy, as shown in the videos linked earlier. IMHO, of course.

[Nebagakid]

How did the MWSF first days of show off go?

[workerbee]

What does a RSS feed look like when subscribed to? Are there any images, perchance?

[Rickster]

RSS support is still very much a work in progress... here's what it looks like in today's build:

[Developer]

This uses a playlist, so it really ought to be brushed metal by Apple's guidelines.

[cpac]

d'oh - looking at Rick's screen shot it looks like my favorite little zap-bolts from the favorites bar are gone...

[Krypton]

Originally posted by cpac:
d'oh - looking at Rick's screen shot it looks like my favorite little zap-bolts from the favorites bar are gone...

Yeah (I liked those too), seems like they've thrown away all the nice graphics for the sake of making it look new.

This uses a playlist, so it really ought to be brushed metal by Apple's guidelines.

Not for playlists, but for a source view which it is in a way I suppose. However, if OW went brushed I would curl up and die... and how can you get upgrade fees from dead users?

[Rickster]

This uses a playlist, so it really ought to be brushed metal by Apple's guidelines.

Heh. Take a look at Apple's current guidelines. They don't say when you should use metal, they say when you can use metal, and advise against using it indiscriminately.

Besides, only the bookmarks interface has a source list in it -- at all other times, the browser window doesn't fit any of the qualifications for using metal. Some of the panes in System Preferences have source lists, but that doesn't mean that the System Preferences window should be metal (or should switch styles as you switch panes).


Personally, I'm not too wild about the purple bookmark icon either. (Speaking of which, what would y'all think of an icon-theme switcher for OmniWeb?) Of course, in the shipping version, you won't see it quite so often -- it'll be replaced by the sites' favicons. We don't have favicons being cached properly in today's build, which is why there's so much purple in my screenshot.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Personally, I'm not too wild about the purple bookmark icon either. (Speaking of which, what would y'all think of an icon-theme switcher for OmniWeb?) Of course, in the shipping version, you won't see it quite so often -- it'll be replaced by the sites' favicons. We don't have favicons being cached properly in today's build, which is why there's so much purple in my screenshot.

I would love a theme switcher, particularly if there were a couple high quality themes included (2 or 3 would be plenty).

Good to know about the favicons...

Also, Rick - can you confirm or deny whether OmniWeb 5.0 still respects the "graphite" system preference?

If not, a graphite theme would be top on my list of requests...

[Nebagakid]

dude, just make it an ICON theme PAK: include icons that replace the names, so, if you want to replace on icon, place it in a folder, name the folder .omnipak and then it will replace the icon with the same name when the program name. So, it is easy to remove all customization!

[Developer]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Besides, only the bookmarks interface has a source list in it -- at all other times, the browser window doesn't fit any of the qualifications for using metal.

You could warp the window appearance like the Finder windows do.

[Mike S.]

I'd be in favor of a way to switch icons, I just love CaminIcon and Safaricon. They're especially useful when I start changing themes.

How you go about it doesn't concern me (app, internal or "icon packs").

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Krypton:
However, if OW went brushed I would curl up and die... and how can you get upgrade fees from dead users?

Exactly. Do the sensible thing, don't kill your user base with horrid brushed chrome.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by Rickster:
RSS support is still very much a work in progress... here's what it looks like in today's build (snip)

Thanks Rick! OW5 is looking incredible, IMHO; Omni has obviously again done an absolutely outstanding job.
You wouldn't perchance know of any way to clone some of your developers, so that they could go and infiltrate places like Macromedia, and bring back the good old days of good, clean, fast design and code? On second thought, maybe not "infiltrate" after all... I just imagined Omni charging into the dirty masses of bad sloppy OS X coders like the Rohirrim in ROTK. "Forth Omnilingas!"

Re: OW Icons -- I really like the NetNewsWire icon, which is sort of similar to the OW 4.5 one, if somehow more clear and graphical. One icon that also really works well for me is the DevonAgent icon, which is much less graphical, but with stronger colours and much deeper shadows.

(edit: icon commentary)

[JKT]

Looking at that screenshot, Rickster, the problem of all the "tabs" starting with the title "MacNN -" is very evident - are there plans to strip that info so that the tab's titles are more useful?

P.S. is there an official name for your tabs as they aren't strictly speaking tabs?

[Montanan]

I played with OW5 some at MWSF last week, and I have to say I was thoroughly unimpressed with Omni's "tabs" implementation ... largely because of the problem illustrated in Rickster's recent screenshot. The thumbnail web pages sure look pretty, and they work fine if you load a bunch of very different-looking web pages that you're already familiar with. But if you load a series of pages that have similar graphic designs -- or if you don't know what a page you're loading is supposed to look like graphically -- it's very difficult to tell which page is which. The problem is compounded by the tiny size of the text caption that's visible for all but the largest drawer sizes. And the loss of screen real estate caused by the drawer definitely bothers me.

Personally, I don't think I'll be able to consider OW5 unless it also includes a more conventional tab bar as an option. The OW rep I talked to at the show said that he'd heard that comment a number of times during the week.

[Nebagakid]

I believe the OmniGuys were quoted before as that was a feature they were going to implement before the Public Beta. Safari uses a similar system to truncate common phrases out of multiple tabs. Such as if you open more than one MacNN forum page, it will truncate "MacNN Forums-" out because it is a common phrase in them. See? IT WORKSESES

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by Montanan:
I played with OW5 some at MWSF last week, and I have to say I was thoroughly unimpressed with Omni's "tabs" implementation ... largely because of the problem illustrated in Rickster's recent screenshot. The thumbnail web pages sure look pretty, and they work fine if you load a bunch of very different-looking web pages that you're already familiar with. But if you load a series of pages that have similar graphic designs -- or if you don't know what a page you're loading is supposed to look like graphically -- it's very difficult to tell which page is which. The problem is compounded by the tiny size of the text caption that's visible for all but the largest drawer sizes. And the loss of screen real estate caused by the drawer definitely bothers me.

Personally, I don't think I'll be able to consider OW5 unless it also includes a more conventional tab bar as an option. The OW rep I talked to at the show said that he'd heard that comment a number of times during the week.

This is almost verbatim of what I was going to say. I'm having a hard time getting use to the loss of screen space due to the drawer. The drawer was very very unexpected. I agree with you, I was hoping for a more conventional take on the tabs. But Ow's GUI looks great as usual.
The drawer thing though will keep me on Safari. Again this is just personal taste and preference. I just prefer no drawer that's all.

[cpac]

Originally posted by TheIceMan:
This is almost verbatim of what I was going to say. I'm having a hard time getting use to the loss of screen space due to the drawer. The drawer was very very unexpected. I agree with you, I was hoping for a more conventional take on the tabs. But Ow's GUI looks great as usual.
The drawer thing though will keep me on Safari. Again this is just personal taste and preference. I just prefer no drawer that's all.

To both of you (and any others) who share this sentiment - is collapsing the thumbnails into a list not acceptable?

Why?

I sympathize with the screen real estate issue (i browse on my TiBook with OW at full screen, no tool bar, just a favorites bar), and I understand how if you only have a few "tabs" open a drawer will consumer a bunch of unused space, but how much web page were you really going to see in those extra pixels? The trend in Apple products is towards having more and more wide-screen displays, where there are extra horizontal pixels to play with... Further, you can always stick with the multi-window approach (which I currently use in OW) just using expose or command-` to switch between windows...

[starts wondering whether this will become the new "excuse" not to use/buy OmniWeb - the old one being "it doesn't have tabs", the new one being "it has tabs, but I want traditional tabs"]

[Tim2 at Omni]

Originally posted by Montanan:
The problem is compounded by the tiny size of the text caption that's visible for all but the largest drawer sizes.

The entire point of the preview/public beta thing was to get feedback like this. We know people are concerned about not being able to see enough of the tab title, and we have several tricks up our collective sleeve to solve this problem.

One of these tricks is already being used in OW5 -- if you click on a link, and the text of that link is shorter than and partially matches the title of the resulting page, then the link text is used instead of the page title. For example, if I go to forums.macnn.com and click on "Software", then instead of "MacNN Forums - Software", the tab title will be "Software". This works especially well on CNN, which has very descriptive link text ("Alleged thread diverts Washington flight") but long page titles in the form of "CNN.com - FBI: Man demanded jet fly to Australia - Jan. 10, 2004".

In addition to this, we do plan on stripping out common strings from tab titles, like Safari does. We just haven't gotten around to it yet.

We could also have a sort of Dock-like "tooltip" which displays the full page title when you mouse over a tab.

Anyway... to all those people who seem to have lost faith in OmniWeb simply because of an alpha version they saw demoed at MacWorld -- why not send in your complaints and help make this browser even better? We're very receptive to user feedback. Offer feature suggestions! If you don't like how our tabs look, make a mockup and send it in! Etc!

BTW -- the need for a more traditional "tab bar" has been noted. I personally hate traditional tabs, but I think that if enough people really, really want that option, it might appear in a follow-up to 5.0.

[Montanan]

Originally posted by cpac:
To both of you (and any others) who share this sentiment - is collapsing the thumbnails into a list not acceptable?

I think it depends both on how you surf, and on how you value your screen real estate. If you typically have a bizillion tabs open and don't mind giving up the space for a wide drawer, then the solution you described works well. OTOH, if you normally just have three or four tabs going at once, or you don't want to sacrifice too much screen space for a drawer, then the drawer remains a very inelegant solution.

I'm definitely in the latter category. I'm almost always using tabs, but having tons and tone of them open at once doesn't seem very productive. And I don't want my browser to hog screen space -- I like being able to tab on other application windows to bring them forward, and to have some of the desktop remain visible for dragging and such. YMMV, of course.

[starts wondering whether this will become the new "excuse" not to use/buy OmniWeb - the old one being "it doesn't have tabs", the new one being "it has tabs, but I want traditional tabs"]

C'mon ... no one's looking for excuses, here. There are a whole lot of things I like about OW, and I really hope that it evolves into a product I can comfortably use -- and I'm certain that's why those of us who make less-than-adoring comments are taking the time to post.

I really don't think the almost-religious fervor of some of the regular posters to the OW threads is very constructive sometimes.

[Montanan]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
We could also have a sort of Dock-like "tooltip" which displays the full page title when you mouse over a tab.

I think the "tooltip" function would be a great addition -- I use that feature of Safari all the time.

Anyway... to all those people who seem to have lost faith in OmniWeb simply because of an alpha version they saw demoed at MacWorld -- why not send in your complaints and help make this browser even better? We're very receptive to user feedback. Offer feature suggestions! If you don't like how our tabs look, make a mockup and send it in! Etc!

Well, sure! Here goes:

To use OW, I'd definitely need the option of a conventional tab bar, but here's what I'd do with the drawer: give it the ability to transform into a separate floating, resizable window, with an "always-on-top" option. Having such a window in list mode would be very useful to people needing large numbers of tabs, and it would enable much greater user control over both the amount of screen usage, and the amount of text visible.

[Phoenix1701]

I am in agreement with the option to make the drawer into a palette instead... one might also provide the option (both in drawer mode and palette mode) to orient horizontally, thus allowing for a take on the traditional tab bar. (That is, list mode with a horizontal orientation would effectively be the traditional Safari tabs.)
As for the text issue, a tooltip seems like a pretty obviously good idea, but I think something even more obvious is being overlooked: why not allow the text under each thumbnail to optionally wrap to a second (or third) line? You could have the tooltip pop up on mouseover if the user's preference for line wrapping doesn't allow the full text to be shown (like the Finder does currently).

I think that covers everything.

[Montanan]

Palette! That's the word I was trying to think of!!

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by cpac:
To both of you (and any others) who share this sentiment - is collapsing the thumbnails into a list not acceptable?

I am a big fan of OW, but I also want things that I find useful. In my humble opinion, the collapsing thumbnails into lists are distracting. For me "tabs" should be out of the way and not a source of attention. The only time I want to notice it is when I want to switch pages. The "traditional tabs" (if you will) are just that. The implementation of tabs in Safari, Netscape, etc. are thin tabs running just underneath the toolbars, and url address box. I like that they don't take up much space.

While I do see the usefulness and creativity in OW 5's implementation of tabs, the combination of the drawer and the collapsing of thumbnails into lists are too distracting for me personally.

Just my 2 cents.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Montanan:
C'mon ... no one's looking for excuses, here. There are a whole lot of things I like about OW, and I really hope that it evolves into a product I can comfortably use -- and I'm certain that's why those of us who make less-than-adoring comments are taking the time to post.

I really don't think the almost-religious fervor of some of the regular posters to the OW threads is very constructive sometimes.

Sorry - wasn't looking to insult anybody, though for each person who sees no wrong in Omniweb, there's one who posts a comment akin the one I was wondering about.

Anyway, it's good to keep things constructive.

In that spirit, there were many arguments about whether tabs were necessary at all, and in the end there are only a few reasons out there for them, which I believe OW's previewed implementation does very well.

First, multiple windows are always an alternative to tabs/act in much the same way using the following controls:
� Window menu - has a full list of open windows, name changes based on whether the page is loaded or loading.
� Expos� - thumbnails of all the open pages, nicely dynamically sized, activated by gesture, keystroke, mouse-click, etc.
� Command-` - keyboard shortcut for the keyboard fans.

So any tab implementation, to be useful, must offer something that these three options do not. From the long debate of a while ago these features might be:

(1) at-a-glace indication of what's open, & whether it's loaded
(2) grouping of pages (two or more windows with related pages opened in respective tabs)
(3) one click access to any page (the Window menu is very close to this already, but involves a click & hold)

To do #1, you necessarily have to sacrifice some screen real-estate. Drawers take horizontal space, tab-bars take vertical space. If you're going to do thumbnails, the drawer option is better. If you're only going based on page name, then it's more of a toss-up: horizontal provides more space for low numbers of tabs & wastes less screen real-estate, while for a high number, the fact that a drawer can be scrolled vertically is an advantage.

To do #2, all you need is OW's new workspaces, no need at all for tabs

To do #3, you have the window menu, and the workspace pallet might already work as the floating pallet people have been asking about...

So I guess it just seems to me that a tab-bar is needed only in a very small number of circumstances--when you:
(1) desire only textual, not visual feedback about the pages you have loaded
(2) have only a few pages open
(3) when expose, the window menu, and command-` just aren't fast enough to switch pages for you, and
(4) when screen real-estate is enough of a premium that you hate a drawer, but refuse to use a menu/gesture/keyboard-shortcut

So the question is, are there really that many people that meet these criteria?

(again, I don't mean to be insulting anybody, if you think my reasoning is faulty, just say so and explain why...)

[petergallagher]

[petergallagher]

[petergallagher]

[petergallagher]

[petergallagher]

Quote
--------------------------
BTW -- the need for a more traditional "tab bar" has been noted. I personally hate traditional tabs, but I think that if enough people really, really want that option, it might appear in a follow-up to 5.0.
--------------------------

Tim2, I think that the issue of 'real estate' is a sort of economic question: the interface benefit obtained for the pixel expense.

The drawer + thumbnail approach is much prettier but less elegant design, in my view, because it uses more pixels to convey NO MORE RELEVANT INFORMATION than a well-implmenented tab array. By 'relevant' information I mean information relevant to the selection of one page among many. The scrollable drawer is less eficient, too, for scanning and selecting.

I find that I get sufficient clues to the location of a page in a crammed array of tabs at the top of a Safari or Firebird window from just a few letters on a tab (among say, 10 open at a time).

I can also select more quickly from a tab array than from a scrollable list of images.

I realize that Omni likes to sell the 'sizzle' (and you do really nice sizzle). But functionality matters more than the prettienss of the presentation in interface devices.

About the only things I can name that have improved tabs are the Safari use of a close button and a 'loading' graphic on the tab (why shouldn't they be the same graphic) and the inclusion of 'favicons' (in Firebird).

Best wishes,

Peter

[cpac]

Originally posted by petergallagher:
The drawer + thumbnail approach is much prettier but less elegant design, in my view, because it uses more pixels to convey NO MORE RELEVANT INFORMATION than a well-implmenented tab array. By 'relevant' information I mean information relevant to the selection of one page among many.

You're kidding right? A thumbnail conveys quite a bit more information than a few letters of the tab name--specifically what the page looks like (something you might be more likely to remember than the actual name if you're browsing unfamiliar sites).

Granted, it's not always necessary to have that extra information, but it's ludicrous to say that no more information is conveyed by a thumbnail than by a few letters of the page name.

The scrollable drawer is less eficient, too, for scanning and selecting.

Only if you have so many that you need to scroll, at which point you probably sill get more information than most people would from a few letters of the page name in a traditional tab.

I find that I get sufficient clues to the location of a page in a crammed array of tabs at the top of a Safari or Firebird window from just a few letters on a tab (among say, 10 open at a time).

good for you - but I doubt this is all that common...

I can also select more quickly from a tab array than from a scrollable list of images.

Perhaps this is true again, but then that's only if you have so many pages open that you need to scroll at all. (You know you can collapse those thumbnails to tab-like names of pages as well, probably being able to fit more, with more information in the drawer than in a horizontal tab bar, right?)

I realize that Omni likes to sell the 'sizzle' (and you do really nice sizzle). But functionality matters more than the prettienss of the presentation in interface devices.

Personally, I've found very little in any omni product which has useless eye-candy. Even the little airport-like waves that appear when docking pallets in OmniGraffle serve the purpose of indicating that the pallets will be joined...

About the only things I can name that have improved tabs are the Safari use of a close button and a 'loading' graphic on the tab (why shouldn't they be the same graphic) and the inclusion of 'favicons' (in Firebird).

It's seems odd then that you think that Omni's thumbnails cannot possibly convey any more useful information than a a few letters of the page name...

[nforcer]

Originally posted by Tim2 at Omni:
BTW -- the need for a more traditional "tab bar" has been noted. I personally hate traditional tabs, but I think that if enough people really, really want that option, it might appear in a follow-up to 5.0.

Add my vote to those who really want traditional as an option. While the drawer approach OW 5 will have looks nice, in terms of total screen space each approach requires, traditional is still far less. For people with smaller screens/screen resolutions, every saved pixel is important. While truncated title names in a tab approach like what Safari uses are not as elegant as I have seen in OW 5, they do a good enough job, and I can remember the contents of each tab I open.

[alex_kac]

OK so here is how I see it.

I want text tabs like Safari uses when I have 2-50 windows from the same site like MacNN. The way I read MacNN for example is to open the "New Posts" page and then immediately middle click all pages. That's 2-14 pages right there. I then go through each tab and middle-click on the threads I'm interested in. In the end I have anywhere from 2-over 50 threads I'm reading. The OmniWeb drawer would be really bad for that. Tabs would be much better.

But another example is when I go into my "Mac" directory and tell it to open in tabs. There I have 15 different sites and there OmniWeb's drawer works great.

So the ability to use tabs for sites like MacNN, CNN, etc... and the drawer for everything else would be awesome.

In fact, I'd like to see the tabs and drawer work TOGETHER. In that way I'd have my drawer of sites and when I click on the MacNN thumnail - I see the x number of tabs - sub-pages in essense.

THAT would be innovative.

[Gul Banana]

I wasn't at MWSF, and haven't tried OW5 or its tab drawer, buuuuuut... my main internet usage is on a 12" iBook.
Someone made a list earlier, of "situations where a tab bar would be better than a tab drawer," and it went like this:

(1) desire only textual, not visual feedback about the pages you have loaded
(2) have only a few pages open
(3) when expose, the window menu, and command-` just aren't fast enough to switch pages for you, and
(4) when screen real-estate is enough of a premium that you hate a drawer, but refuse to use a menu/gesture/keyboard-shortcut

They then concluded that it would be very uncommon for all of these to be fulfilled.

I'd say the list is more like this:

(1) don't need visual feedback, only textual
It's not a matter of specifically not wanting visual feedback, it's just that it's rarely useful enough to be worth it.
(2) have only a few pages open
(3) when screen real-estate is enough of a premium that you hate a drawer
"refusing to use a menu/gesture/shortcut" and "menus/gestures/shortcuts" are completely irrelevant. The great innovation of tabs over multiple windows is that you can see all open pages quickly - and well-truncated titles DO allow you to do that in a small space.

Now, let's look at the popularity again...

(1) my contention is that in almost any situation the textual feedback is enough
(2) I would further state it to be an a priori truth that most people do not have vast quantities of browser windows open at once. The human brain can only keep track of a few threads of information.
(3) hello I have a laptop like 47% of people that bought Apple computers in 2003

Again, I haven't tried OW5's tab drawer. I HOPE I like it, and I'll be giving it many chances to prove itself. However, the "traditional" implementation of tabs has survived because it works, and works well.

[MrBS]

Originally posted by cpac:
Personally, I've found very little in any omni product which has useless eye-candy. Even the little airport-like waves that appear when docking pallets in OmniGraffle serve the purpose of indicating that the pallets will be joined...

Nicely said cpac. I think all your points were valid (and I agree with all) save for that one.

The (I think it was called "Licky 2.0" or something similar) wave graphics are kind of useless in their current implementation... you already know that they'll dock and if you let go when the ripples start the palettes don't dock... and when you get close enough so that they will dock the palette jumps out from under your cursor to dock itself. It would make more sense if the ripples just showed you when letting go would dock and the palette never jumped when you were holding it....

Anyway back on topic I would really like to see a screen shot of a narrow drawer, maybe 100 px wide. It might be nice to get a dozen screen thumbs on the side of your window instead of opening a dozen windows behind the launching page as I do now...

Tooltip titles would really be helpful there, as would the ability to turn off the titles. Do the loading/new/error badges scale with the thumbs or are they an absolute size?

Thanks,
~BS

[nickm]

The drawer + thumbnail approach is much prettier but less elegant design, in my view, because it uses more pixels to convey NO MORE RELEVANT INFORMATION than a well-implmenented tab array.

This is not true. The thumbnails can show you if enough of the page has loaded to see. When I use Safari with tabs, I often switch to pages that are still loaded to see if anything useful has come over. With tabs, you can't tell if the page is coming over really slowly, or it is mostly done and it's waiting on an image or two. There are other things, but this seems like one of the more useful.

here's what I'd do with the drawer: give it the ability to transform into a separate floating, resizable window, with an "always-on-top" option.

The thing with a drawer, you see, is that it is attached to a window. So when you click on a thumb-tab, you know where it's going to open up. If you have a floating palette, the only interface I could see that would make sense would be that all the thumb-tabs had corresponding windows (which might be hidden, obscured, or minimized) and click on a thumb tab would bring that window to the front. Closing the window would make the tab disappear.

I could see this being a useful interface, but I think it would make it difficult to have multiple windows open, each of which corresponded to a particular task. With the drawer, you could have a window that had many pages but was conceptually related to one task and keep it separate from another 20 windows related to another task.