[Usability] Re: Tabs

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Hi Thilo,

Op Mon, 27 Jun 2005 19:13:57 +0200, schreef Thilo Pfennig:

> I think important is something like if somebody closes a window and there
> are many tabs open, that the application asks if the user really wants to
> close all tabs.

Not necessarily. The important thing is that data loss is prevented. When
the user presses the close button / menu item on a window, why second
guess that maybe she actually meant to close one tab? Only when there's
unsaved data, a dialog may appear-- but it would have appeared too when
not having tabs. Plus, in a web browser at least, there's always the
history that allows you to go back to accidentally closed webpages.

> often is that the structure is not that good or that using the back-button
> is very slow in comparison of having for example (a typical usage for me):
> 7 news articles open from one news site that I can close when I have read
> them.

Yes, improving performance of certain functions, like Back, would diminish
the need for many tabs.

> page? Javascript? I think a website could also organize content in tabs.
> it could have the TOC at the first tab and so on.

Interesting idea, but it should never be forced upon the browser, it could
be suggested by a style sheet perhaps.

> But I don't what to concentrate on browsers, because that probably would
> be better discussed in the epiphany list.

Feel free to do so :-)

> This reminds me on the time where Apple experimented with
> OpenDoc ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc) anybody else has seen
> this? ;-)

Yes. I've seen it in action on OS/2 Warp, even.

regards,

-- 
Reinout