Tabbed Browsing/User Interface Design/Possible Features

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Introduction

As internet applications gain ground over desktop applications, managing running internet applications will be as important as managing desktop applications. Currently, managing desktop applications is limited to arranging windows and tabs. This model does not meet the needs of current internet browsing.

One problem with the window and tab model is that it does not allow for easy navigation and preview of content. The current Firefox browser window is like a deck of cards with only the top card face up: it may have many tabs open in it, but the window only shows the currently activated tab and the names of a few others. The rest of the content remains hidden. This problem is exacerbated when each tab could be a fully running application rather than just a webpage.

In addition to being able to preview tabbed content, finding a particular tab is challenging in Firefox. Current tabbed content only gives the favicon and title as disambiguation, and these are often identical for many websites under a domain name. If windows must be viewed together to complete a task, finding and keeping track of the right ones is more difficult. For example, a user may which to create a Google spreadsheet based on data from an article on BBC news. To do this, he must navigate what could be many Google documents tabs looking for this spreadsheet, tear that tab off, and then navigate what could be many BBC articles looking for the correct one.

Problems with Current Tab System

  • No way to preview content in tabs
  • Favicon and start of title often not enough to disambiguate sites under same domain
  • When many tabs are open, most are obscured under excess tab menu
  • No way to detect tab multiple instances of same tab
  • No way to visually navigate tabs
  • No way to tear off tab into different window
  • No way to tell loading status of tabbed content
  • No way to search for a particular tab
  • No way to quickly get a sense of how many tabs are open and which could be closed to speed up connection
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