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Mozilla Contest: How Would You Improve Tabbed Browsing?
Ehtyar:
Damn you Mouse Man, was gonna post it when I got into work. I guess there are some advantages to living in the past after all :P
Personally I'm looking very forward to this. It seems that although tabs are a reasonably recent development in browsers, they've become dated and inefficient very quickly. Hopefully there will be some good ideas come from this.
Ehtyar.
tranglos:
My first thought when I read this was: OMG, they're going to spoil the tabs!. And so were my second and third thoughts.
Tabs are a very specific visual metaphor, based on a specific physical interaction known from the real world. They have a few advantages over MDI windows, in that you can see all the available workspaces at once, and that selecting a tab is a one-click operation. They have disadvantages, too - you can't show them side by side (so drag and drop operations between tabs are no longer obvious), and only so many will fit on screen.
There are a few ways you can enhance the usabilty of tabs, like color-coding them or making the current tab a little taller than the rest. I don't think you should mess around with tabs beyond that. For example, grouping tabs like buttons on the taskbar would kill the two defining features of tabs: you could no longer see all the workspaces at once, and selecting a workspace would no longer be a one-click action. It'd be like going back to the list of windows under the Window menu in an MDI application.
They're out to spoil the tabs!
wreckedcarzz:
There are a few ways you can enhance the usabilty of tabs, like color-coding them or making the current tab a little taller than the rest.
-tranglos (May 19, 2009, 06:52 PM)
--- End quote ---
You mean like this?
Mozilla Contest: How Would You Improve Tabbed Browsing?
Tab Mix Plus :up:
fenixproductions:
I've just browsed through web (Flickr mostly) and must say that many ideas are strange because most of the people are trying to reinvent the wheel. They focus on tabs only by grouping them or creating strange lists. It is no longer usable IMHO.
Why does nobody bother to i.e. use simple list view as overflow panel on the left side on the screen? With thumbnails and transparency it could be pretty nice to use. Just hover left area and it is shown. No magic needed.
Ehtyar:
IMO the hover thing is not going to work in a browser, both from an efficiency and usability standpoint, but I do like your thoughts Fenix Man.
Ehtyar.
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