Firefox:3.0 Tabbed Browsing: Difference between revisions
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** An infobar, similar to the popup infobar will notify the user the first time they have created a new tab. | ** An infobar, similar to the popup infobar will notify the user the first time they have created a new tab. | ||
* drag and drop reordering | * drag and drop reordering | ||
** | ** Tab moving from one window to another | ||
* Close buttons on tabs | * Close buttons on tabs | ||
** xxxmpc: This is a big pain for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27_law Fitts' Law] adherence, the smaller target area is made even smaller by the "danger" aspect of the click area. This is allegedly "faster" but we're probably going to force all users to slow down, whether they realize it or not. Maybe enable an Accel-Click modifier to close tabs quickly (in addition to middle-click on non-contentLoadURL platforms). This would be faster/safer in both cases (closing and selecting). | ** xxxmpc: This is a big pain for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27_law Fitts' Law] adherence, the smaller target area is made even smaller by the "danger" aspect of the click area. This is allegedly "faster" but we're probably going to force all users to slow down, whether they realize it or not. Maybe enable an Accel-Click modifier to close tabs quickly (in addition to middle-click on non-contentLoadURL platforms). This would be faster/safer in both cases (closing and selecting). | ||
Revision as of 00:19, 1 April 2005
Required Features
- Put the "Open the link in New tab" menu before the "Open the link in New Window" menu and Put "New Tab" menu before the "New Window" menu. Although this seems trivial, it makes it a lot easier for users to utilize tabbed browsing,
- A new pref that changes various tabbed browsing options and UI elements at once:
- The user have two options: tabbed browsing mode (the new mode) and legacy browsing mode (used by firefox 1.0.* or below)
- Tabbed browsing mode will switch prefs to open new windows for popups, bookmarks, history, searches, url, DDE call etc. in the background
- Tabbed browsing mode will also hide the "New Window" menu and all related menus and toolbar buttons
- Legacy browsing mode will behave in the same way as a new installation of firefox 1.0.x
- Tabbed browsing mode should be the default
- An infobar, similar to the popup infobar will notify the user the first time they have created a new tab.
- drag and drop reordering
- Tab moving from one window to another
- Close buttons on tabs
- xxxmpc: This is a big pain for Fitts' Law adherence, the smaller target area is made even smaller by the "danger" aspect of the click area. This is allegedly "faster" but we're probably going to force all users to slow down, whether they realize it or not. Maybe enable an Accel-Click modifier to close tabs quickly (in addition to middle-click on non-contentLoadURL platforms). This would be faster/safer in both cases (closing and selecting).
- bugmenot: Other than the mouse click modifier, a right-click per-tab close button could also work (Maxthon uses this approach). We can also hide and disable the per-tab close button unless the user has pointed their mouse on the tab for a specified amount of time.
- xxxmpc: This is a big pain for Fitts' Law adherence, the smaller target area is made even smaller by the "danger" aspect of the click area. This is allegedly "faster" but we're probably going to force all users to slow down, whether they realize it or not. Maybe enable an Accel-Click modifier to close tabs quickly (in addition to middle-click on non-contentLoadURL platforms). This would be faster/safer in both cases (closing and selecting).
- Overflow bucket
- The history system needs to be made more compatible with tabbed browsing. In particular, we should adopt a brached history system (that braches every time the user opens a new tab/window) where the user can always go back unless he/she has reached the homepage.
Work Estimate
3 Weeks
Other Notes
In either the core or an extension, I'd like to see a concept of a sticky bookmarks tab, and a fixed number of non-sticky tabs. As you open new pages in tabs, the non-sticky tabs would get reused in oldest-first order, and would get moved to the end of the list. A tab could be made sticky by right-clicking on the tab and selecting stick or unstick (or some kind of alt-click on the tab or something). Sticky tabs would always show up before non-sticky ones.
This would let you freeze things like gmail, bugzilla, etc. in some N tabs at the beginning of your tab list, and then let you have 5 or something tabs after that that you'd reuse as you browse.
Undo for Tabs
Sometimes in haste I click Close all other Tabs because it is right next to Close Tab, and end up having the only tab I wanted closed, open. The tabbed browser extension has this, but I don't want to install that just for the one feature I use. I think we need to have a way to "Undo" the closing of tabs. I believe the current Opera 8 beta has something like this (a bucket).
- guspaz - Firefox crashes on occasion. It would be nice if it kept track of what tabs were open when it was closed. Then, when the user relaunched the browser, they could select an option somewhere (Edit menu? View menu?) to re-open previous tabs. Alternatively you could keep a bookmark folder up to date with all the current tabs. If a user re-launched the browser and wanted those tabs back, they could just open the bookmark folder and select "Open In Tabs".
Session Saving
Session saving is a feature that many users like, but that's often redundant, or even confusing to the user (the approach in rue's Session Saver or Opera) if incorporated by deafult into Firefox. Instead, it can be placed in the now IMHO useless Go menu. Go > Last session would fill most people's requirements, and it can be coupled with a "Save session now" feature. Go > Save session. This, too, could be tightly integrated with the new Places by placing saved sessions in the places folders.