Re: [Fwd: Tab browsing]

[Ryan McDougall <ryan mcdougall telusplanet net>]

On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 12:28, Josh Steiner wrote:
> Enver ALTIN wrote:
> 
> >On Tue, 2004-01-13 at 01:58, David Christian Berg wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Well that happens to me to sometimes, though other people rarely use my
> >>computer not too often.
> >>But as for experienced users they are a bliss let's just have an option
> >>in the view menu.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Let me ask, how on earth do you think you can drag'n'drop between tabs?
> >  
> >
> 
> here are two ideas off the top of my head:
> 
> 1) drag, hit "switch tab" key, drop
> 2) drag, hover over tab til it switches to that tab, drop
> 3) drag, drop onto tab
> 

Not everyone has the manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination to hit
such a small target as a tab. The possibilities for dropping it in the
wrong tab, then forgetting which tab you had open, is a serious corner
case that should be considered.

> 
> >What are tabs good for in a file manager?
> >  
> 
> exactly the same reasons they are good in a web browser, logical 
> grouping of windows and space saving.

The ultimate question of whether nautilus should have tabs is whether
they make the app/computer more useful. Web and File browsing are a
little different in that a file system has a much smaller scope with
much more logical layout. Also web pages are more about reading/surfing,
whereas file management necessary requires some sort of manipulation of
objects. Tabbing also implies a high degree of multitasking: when I'm on
the web I'll have multiple (dozens of) pages open so I can read through
them one at a time, but for most file management I only have a handful
of windows open at a time -- usually Source and Destination. Tabs are
nice for web browsers, and source code editors, but I have yet to see a
need for them beyond that. If we have problems manipulating windows then
the window manager is to blame. We need to look for more sophisticated
solutions, like Expose, or window grouping like in Fluxbox. 

I think one should be able to group any number of windows together on
the fly and move them around as one entity, that would better solve many
of the needs tabbing addresses, and make apps like GIMP more manageable.

Cheers,
Ryan