Re: New Tab Behavior and Close Other Tabs

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jun 4, 2007, at 10:57 AM, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
> ...
> >  As I had said before, also, I asked several people to go to cnn.com
> > after opening a new tab. Every single one of them opened the new tab
> > (Ctrl+T or File -> New Tab) and just went on to typing 'cnn.com'. None
> > of them clicked into the location bar or hit "ctrl+L".
>
> By asking the question in this way, you already implied to those people
> that they should first open a tab and then go to cnn.com. I wonder what
> would happen if you asked them to enter cnn.com in the address bar and
> make it open in a new tab?
>
> Now I'm fully aware that Ctrl+Enter or middle clicking the Go button
> isn't exactly the obvious way to do it.

That's an understatement. :-) It's nifty, but not obvious. (Or at 
least, it would be nifty if I could specify "I don't use tabs" such 
that Ctrl+ opens addresses/links in new windows instead.)

> (Then again, people have to learn Ctrl+T at some point, too.) Perhaps 
> the Go button should have a dropdown like the Back/Forward buttons 
> with a 'in New Tab' option? (just an idea).

I don't think the Go button should exist.

> > On another note I'll be honest. My homepage is set to google.com. When
> > I open a new tab in epiphany I STILL hilight the location bar and type
> > in google.com without thinking. It's just second nature to type in my
> > destination when I open a new tab.

But Google.com contains an auto-focused text field. So if you don't use 
Ctrl+Enter (because you don't know about it or aren't used to it), then 
to open an address in a new tab, you need to:
1.  press Ctrl+T
2.  wait for the page to load and do its focus stuff
3.  press Ctrl+L
4.  enter the address
5.  press Enter.

If new tabs didn't open the home page, steps 2 and 3 would never be 
necessary. If Epiphany focused the address field on new tabs, steps 2 
and 3 *sometimes* wouldn't be necessary, but they'd be necessary if 
Google or similar was your home page.

So perhaps we should try to deprecate home pages, by finding ways of 
encouraging people to set up launchers for pages instead.

(Disclaimer: I use neither a home page nor tabs, so it's possible I 
don't know what I'm talking about.)

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/