Automatically ensuring enough information is included in tab titles

[Kerrick Staley]

I had an idea a while ago for Chromium (and any other browser using
tabs): instead of making all tabs the same size, why not find some way
to automatically determine how much differentiating information each
tab gets when it's allocated a given amount of space, and then size
the tabs so that each tab has enough information to distinguish it
from other tabs? For example, I currently have a tab titled "Compose
Mail - ma...@kerrickstaley.com - Kerrickstaley.com Mail" open in my
browser. The envelope-shaped GMail icon at the left gives me 80% of
the information I need: it tells me that it's a GMail tab. The word
"Compose" tells the other 20%; if I can see the icon and that word, I
know exactly what the tab is (and I could probably even figure this
out if only "Compo" or even "Com" were visible). The rest ("Mail -
ma...@kerrickstaley.com - Kerrickstaley.com Mail") is totally
redundant, and the space could be given to another tab (although most
of it ends up hidden anyway). If you keep a database of the titles of
sites the user visits, then you can probably figure out how unique a
given title prefix is based on how similar it is to the titles of
other sites.

I don't know if this is a useful/practical idea; I just thought I'd
put it out there in case it's worth implementing.

- Kerrick

[1] As a side note, I had this idea when faced with the issue here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=676453. I thought it would
be nice if Chromium could automatically "notice" that all of my tabs
were displaying the same name and expand them so enough information
was visible. The awesome Valadoc devs fixed the issue in this case,
but in general, it would be nice if the browser were smart enough to
handle this issue.

[Gavin Sharp]

This isn't quite the same as your suggestion, but you might be
interested in knowing that we're pretty close to landing a related
feature: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=583890 .

Gavin

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[Peter Kasting]

While feature ideas are great, this isn't the right place to send them.
File them in the bug tracker at http://crbug.com/ if you have a fairly
clear proposal for how to implement something. Consider emailing the
chromium-discuss list if you have less well-defined thoughts and just want
to bounce things off someone.

PK

[Dr J R Stockton]

In mozilla.dev.apps.firefox message <mailman.19192.1345774077.27472.dev-
apps-f...@lists.mozilla.org>, Thu, 23 Aug 2012 21:07:30, Kerrick
Staley <ma...@kerrickstaley.com> posted:

> If you keep a database of the titles of
>sites the user visits, then you can probably figure out how unique a
>given title prefix is based on how similar it is to the titles of
>other sites.

That means that a commonly-used visible label may change depending on
what other sites happen to be visited. That should be considered
unacceptable.

The answer is to allow tab labels to be altered and remembered, perhaps
partly matching the way Zoom level is remembered. Add "rename tab" to
the context menu of the tab ??

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