Re: Tabs

[Reinout van Schouwen <reinouts gnome org>]

Liam,

Don't mind if I forward this to the epiphany list :)

There are a few bugs open on improving history, but I don't think sort by
close date is filed already...

Op Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:09:41 -0400, schreef Liam R. E. Quin:

> On Mon, 2005-06-27 at 23:42 +0200, Reinout van Schouwen wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> An alternative is to provide Undo.  Consider a text editor that asks if
> you really want to delete a line of text, vs. one with undo :-)
> On the other hand, while I was typing this message, a dialogue box came
> up asking if I really wanted to discard the message.  I've no idea
> why, although I might have pressed control-w to delete a word... *tries*
> yes, "delete word" tries to close the window, stupid binding.  If the
> window simply vanished, how would I know if the mail had been sent, or
> if I'd saved the message for later, or if I'd deleted it?  So the
> dialogue is needed.  Better might be to animate the window going into
> the /dev/null abyss and a sound of a scream, plus a text log saying
> what had happened, e.g. in a scollable status section in the mailer's
> main window.  Then if I wasn't looking at the screen, I'd be able
> to figure out what had happened and press Edit->Undo or whatever.
> 
> If I'm not looking at the screen, I'm likely to press space or even
> enter not noticing a dialogue box happened.
> 
>> 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.
> 
> So, back to tabs...  if I close the wrong browser window by mistake,
> up comes "are you sure you want to close this window?" and I say yes
> because I have not realised I clicked on the wrong "X".  Then I go
> "oooh shiiit" because those windows had been up for days,  I was
> saving them in tabs until I booked my hotel for a trip.  So maybe they
> are in my history like you say and maybe not, depends if I cleared
> history, depends how long my history lasts, no?  If they are in my
> history, how am I going to find them?
> 
> So for your statement "they are in your history" to be anything
> other than useless :-) the history needs to have a "window closed time"
> field I can sort by.  I note that for a Web browser, Undo Close Window
> still doesn't really work because there's no single main window.
> 
> I restarted my Web browser (galeon) this morning and it started
> loading a dozen or so tabs.. it wanted a username/password, and hung
> until I typed it.  No idea which tab, which URI, not even 100% certain
> it was Galeon asking, but it seemed likely.  So there are other issues
> with tabs, and with associating dialogues/questions/errors with them.
> 
> I tried to imagine a Web browser that didn't have these problems, but
> it came out fairly radically different, and maybe not better.  E.g.
> a "main" window where you can type a URI/IRI and it'll open in a
> new window, or you can drag it onto an existing window.  A URL bar
> on a window then becomes read-only and means "this is what I am
> showing".  The main window can then have a place to undo a close
> window, to get at history, to configure preferences... I suppose more
> like Gimp, although I'm not sure I want to hold Gimp up as a UI to
> emulate, as it's addressing some very complex editing tasks.
> 
> Let's not dismiss problems with tabs as "oh, it's all solved by history"
> though, when in fact it isn't :-)
> 
> It's difficult to provide pervasive Undo on a desktop, because we are
> stuck with a file system that doesn't have Undo and, ultimately, we
> interface with a real world that doesn't have undo.  Putting your
> shoes back on isn't the same as to undo the act of removing them,
> because you don't forget that wonderful feeling of relief and
> comfort :-)
> 
> So the abstraction is a little leaky at the edges, and some of the
> questions that are coming up seem to me to be results of adding tabs
> as a convenient hack to programs -- I'm not primarily thinking of Web
> browsers here -- e.g. the interaction between "spatial" and "tabbed"
> is clearly weird -- should a tabbed nautilus window jump around the
> screen when I change tabs, to reflect correct positions? :-) -- and
> the tab also confuses the distinction between document and window.
> 
> Tabs have some (but not all) of the problems that MS Windows "MDI"
> had, but with a lot more flexibility & more benefits.  The question
> of where to put the [x] is an indication of this...  
> 
> Best,
> 
> Liam

-- 
Reinout van Schouwen
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