Re: [Usability] Tab consistency

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Alan Horkan wrote:
> ...
> Given the giant mess Firefox made of their Preferences dialog, 
> changing it though several iterations during their 1.x cycle and 
> flushing down the toilet years of techincal support Netscape built up,

Oh come now. Are you really defending the abomination that was 
Netscape's Preferences dialog? :-) They had to ditch it *sometime*, and 
it's understandable that it would take a while to hone its replacement.

> and ending up with an interface with absolutely no flexibility to 
> invitably add more options later,

Inevitably? Why?

> I do not for a second trust that they are doing thourough usability
> testing.  Harsh but I'm highly skeptical about their move to put close
> buttons on every tab.

Read for yourself.
<http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009210.html>

> ...
> As I said when this came up only a few weeks ago I do hope Gedit 
> upcoming versions of Gedit will change things so that Tabs go back to 
> being an option feature unnoticed by users who do not choose to have 
> them.

Agreed with that. I use Gedit and Bluefish and their tabs are in the 
way most of the time. And when I *do* have many files open 
simultaneously, tabs are much less convenient than a vertical list of 
files would be.

> ...
> I admire Ubuntu for trying but they have tried out several ideas that
> haven't worked out well and have since been reverted.
> ...

No comment. ;-)

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/