Re: [Epiphany] Tabs changes

[Marco Pesenti Gritti <marco gnome org>]

On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 23:49 +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> So here it's a list of concrete changes I'd like to make to tab
> handlding in the next days:
> 
> - Remove the confusing "Open in tabs by default" pref
> - Make middle click on link open in new tab by default
> - Add an hidden pref for ever show tabs. Not a big cost, let's keep it
> until we have a better solution.

I made these changes on head.

> - Remove "Open in new tab" menu from history and bookmarks. It's
> confusing because you dont know in which window it will be opened. (a
> bit like links, just a bit less because you opened the dialog from a
> window). Instead make Open in new window use tabs to open all the urls
> in a multiple selection. That way we provide the ability to open a
> group of urls.

Christian showed me an interesting user task that "Open in new tab" can
allow: open pages by association with what
you are reading, from history or bookmarks". I usually tend to value 
non linear browsing behaviors, I think it make sense to allow
users to insert custom pages in a thread.
Obviously here thread start to look like a substitute of work space. And
that's what I mostly fear with the tabs in wm thing. (Actually I have never
been able to use workspaces).

Anyway, I think current (unintentional) implementation has a major a problem:
where the tab will be inserted ? In practice it works well only when one
window is opened.

My feeling is that the only intuitive and efficient implementation is drag and drop.
We already allow to drag stuff (bookmarks or other tabs) to the tabs bar.
The problem is that when it's full you can drag only on existing tabs, which open
the bookmark in the target tab, not in a new one. I think it could make sense
to change this behavior and ever open in a new tab when dragging on the tabs bar.
Problems I see here:
- we leave out would the case when there is only one tab opened (tabs bar not
visible).
- people does not use drag and drop much, it's likely that most users would not
find this functionality (Though I tend to blame it on the generally poor DND support
in gnome apps)
- I'm sure that people that use tabs implementation as MDI will be quite annoyed
by the change. We are not focusing on that use case but ... this is likely the camp
from where we would hear complaints.

Otherwise we could try to make current menu implementation more intuitive, for
example by tracking the last window focused. I still see some problems with that:
- You can open the bookmarks editor without any other window (maybe it should be 
insensitive in that case).
- We require to remember what is the last window used. (and possibly the work space
where that window is placed)
- I feel some sort of conflict with the new Open in window behavior. Cannot quite
figure out the reason now though.

Opinions/suggestions ?

Marco