Brainstorming session: The future of tabs
Alexander Limi
…or, as the case may be, "Why we should drop tabs altogether". Who knows. :)
As a recent addition to the User Experience team here at Mozilla, one of the
things I'd like to look at is how tabs work (and don't work) in Firefox. I'd
like to have an informal session where we talk about the future of handling
multiple pages — be it using tabs or some other mechanism. Tabs are becoming
increasingly constrained as a proper way to work with a lot of pages
simultaneously, as people's browsing habits have changed over the past few
years.
One of the upsides of being new to the team, is that I hope I can bring some
energy and momentum to pushing this forward. The downside is that I may be
unaware of earlier efforts in this area —if any — and why they stalled. I'm
hoping you can help me get some clarity around the issues and approaches so
far. I have read quite a number of suggested approaches (like
Aza's<http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefoxnext-tabs-on-the-side/>and
Oliver's <http://informationarchitects.jp/designing-firefox-32/> as well as
various articles through the years), and would appreciate you sending me any
other articles you have found informative sometime before the event.
I will be talking about the data and usage patterns I have collected so far,
some of my thinking on the matter — and a couple of directions we could
pursue — and I invite anybody that is interested and have ideas to attend
the session, either in person or remotely. As with all brainstorming, there
might be excessive whiteboarding involved, I'll try to post the results
online when there are things that are useful to share.
*Event details
When:* Wednesday, *May 6th*, 2009 at *3pm* Pacific Time (see other time
zones<http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=5&day=6&year=2009&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=224>
)
*Where: *The <option> room at the Mozilla office building S, available via
teleconference number: +1 800-707-2533, enter password 369, then enter
conference room number 556.
Hope to see you there!
--
Alexander Limi · Firefox User Experience · http://limi.net
John Bird
1 - some way to kep track of which tabs are related
I understand that IE8 colours related tabs - that when a new tab is opened
from one they both get a similar colour. Thats a great idea.
I think a better one for the longer term is:
Because wide screens are getting more and more common, we could get rid of
some browser real estate from the top of the screen and put it on the side
with a tree display of tabs. Then they could be heirarchical, and you
could show or hide a group of children tabs in the tab display. Two
advantages - a clear display of which tabs are related, and bigger vertical
area on the screen for the page. Maybe the tab display could be an
auto-hide thing even. This is thinking quite a way ahead, but I think its
the sort of area you have to look at for the longer term. Almost all users
are already familiar with this kind of functionality through Windows
Explorer and Mac Finder etc
2 - Some easier way to find a tab that is already open.
I have always liked adding the list of open tabs to the awesome bar search -
especially if they are clearly marked as tabs, different from bookmarks or
history for that tab.
3 - Some way to keep track of the overall number of tabs and find one in the
list.
The new Tab Switching mechanism is a good step in that direction, but it
does not show the total number of tabs - something at the bottom of the
switching screen saying something like
"Page 1 1-9 of 34 tabs" would be useful. I find myself trying to count
manually the number of tabs open because Firefox does not tell me anywhere
now.
4 - concise info screen on tabs
for instance a screen showing a list of tabs with the date and time each was
opened could be useful. And a function or a check boxes for "Close this
tab" "Bookmark the tab". This is much more minor however.
I typically have 50+ tabs open so this is something I would use everyday!
John Bird
Peter Lairo
> 3 - Some way to keep track of the overall number of tabs and find one in
> the list.
>
> The new Tab Switching mechanism is a good step in that direction, but it
> does not show the total number of tabs
I think the new tab switching mechanism is the worst thing to come to
Firefox in ... well, forever. I've stopped usig CTRL+Tab because of it,
and have resigned to using the mouse to select tabs (yes, I know about
the about:config setting, but I'm tired of having to "fix" an application).
(I've already detailed the reasons I think its bad in other places, so
I'm not repeating them right now)
--
Regards,
Peter Lairo
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David McRitchie
they would work a lot better. Eliminate the nonsense about trying to
show page content in the show all tabs button. Just a thought.
Spend far too much time trying to undo the devices concocted to "help" us.
You can see what my tabs look like at http://userstyles.org/styles/9043
Try putting 278 (that was actually a mistake but I did it once, though 120
is very reasonable) on the tabs bar and guess what at 278 you can still see
enough of the favicon in many cases, but it is the scrollable show all tabs
that is important if you really want to see what you have, and if you put more
than one column in that list it wouldn't be any better than scrolling and you'd
have to scroll anyway or not see much of the titles.
--
HTH,
David McRitchie, extensions I use are briefly documented on my site
Firefox Custom: http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/firefox/firefox.htm
"Alexander Limi" <li...@mozilla.com> wrote in message news:mailman.441.1241480229...@lists.mozilla.org...
Martijn
> If you went back to what was in Fx2 and set the minimum width to 0
> they would work a lot better. Eliminate the nonsense about trying to
> show page content in the show all tabs button. Just a thought.
I have to agree on this. I find the whole transparent popup thing for
the show all tabs button way too distracting. I never use it, probably
because of that.
But then again, I didn't use the old style overflow popup much either.
For me, the Seamonkey (and the old Firefox way) of handling tabs is
still superior, where tabs just get smaller and smaller. I just prefer
it to have all my tabs in sight.
Regards,
Martijn
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--
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Wayne Mery
> On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 4:19 AM, David McRitchie<fire...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> If you went back to what was in Fx2 and set the minimum width to 0
>> they would work a lot better. Eliminate the nonsense about trying to
>> show page content in the show all tabs button. Just a thought.
>
> I have to agree on this. I find the whole transparent popup thing for
> the show all tabs button way too distracting. I never use it, probably
> because of that.
ditto.
sorry to have missed the meet up so here's 2 cents. For me, text search
of tab titles is plenty - images don't work too well if most of the tabs
look alike, like 50+ bugzilla tabs. But I can imagine images are useful
to some users, page types and workflows.
tab kit and tabhunter extensions have supplied all my needs, especially
with a wide screen and tab kit's tabs vertical place on the side -
*exactly* what the doctor ordered:
* organized with grouping (automatic and manual)
* colored based on usage/age
* easy to read
* rock solid stability
* to continue I'd have to list at least 6 more items
wish we had this 4-5 years ago
Wayne Mery
function isn't needed in FF)
On 5/5/2009 6:00 PM, John Bird wrote:
> The main things Firefox could use with tabs are:
>
> 1 - some way to kep track of which tabs are related
>
> I understand that IE8 colours related tabs - that when a new tab is
> opened from one they both get a similar colour. Thats a great idea.
>
> I think a better one for the longer term is:
>
> Because wide screens are getting more and more common, we could get rid
> of some browser real estate from the top of the screen and put it on the
> side with a tree display of tabs. Then they could be heirarchical, and
> you could show or hide a group of children tabs in the tab display. Two
> advantages - a clear display of which tabs are related, and bigger
> vertical area on the screen for the page. Maybe the tab display could be
> an auto-hide thing even. This is thinking quite a way ahead, but I think
> its the sort of area you have to look at for the longer term. Almost all
> users are already familiar with this kind of functionality through
> Windows Explorer and Mac Finder etc
tab kit extension does much or all of this
> 2 - Some easier way to find a tab that is already open.
>
> I have always liked adding the list of open tabs to the awesome bar
> search - especially if they are clearly marked as tabs, different from
> bookmarks or history for that tab.
tabhunter extension
> 3 - Some way to keep track of the overall number of tabs and find one in
> the list.
>
> The new Tab Switching mechanism is a good step in that direction, but it
> does not show the total number of tabs - something at the bottom of the
> switching screen saying something like
tabcounter extension
> "Page 1 1-9 of 34 tabs" would be useful. I find myself trying to count
> manually the number of tabs open because Firefox does not tell me
> anywhere now.
>
> 4 - concise info screen on tabs
>
> for instance a screen showing a list of tabs with the date and time each
> was opened could be useful. And a function or a check boxes for "Close
> this tab" "Bookmark the tab". This is much more minor however.
I typically have 50+ tabs open so this is something I would use everyday!
with many open, some of which are forms which may be in progress of
completion, I'd like to have bug 370318 (which was wontfixed) - visually
indicate on tab those pages whose input form has been modified/changed
without a searchable or visual attribute, it's difficult to impossible
to to get back to the forms that are not yet finished.