Tab Open/Close Study

• Champion: Limi (limi@mozilla.com)
• Status: Draft
• Duration: 1 week
• Implementation: Not started yet. Will be implemented with Test Pilot extension.
• Data to collect:

Introduction

Tabbed browsing is now the standard interface offered by all major web browsers, and its been argued that the browsing experience becomes difficult to manage when more than a handful of tabs are opened.

In conjunction with our recent focus on tabs and their possible reinvention (see the Summer 2009 Design Challenge: Reinventing Tabs, as well as in numerous blog posts) this study will seek to provide designers and developers additional information and insights to help inform the design of future tabbed interfaces.

Goals

This will be the very first study of tabbed browsing through Test Pilot. Our goal for this study is to understand and design:

• Tab behaviors after people close a tab (approved)
• Ways to manage and navigate among a large number of tabs
• What the distribution of tabs are, wrt. how many people have open, max/min.
• How many people open new windows to group tabs
  • How widely spread are sessions? Ex. Google search and new results in tabs
  • How long do split sessions survive?
• Behavior around tab dragging and docking (approved)
• Tab selection errors
  • T2(tab select) - T1(tab select) < 1.5s

Instrumentation

• Tab open/close hooks are easy
• Tracking "open in new window"(OiNW) and subsequent metrics is not easy.
  • Domain overlap
  • Lifetime variation in OiNW tabs versus other tabs (expectation is shorter if these are truly speculative opens, preserving the original)

Details

Design question 1: What would be the best default tab behavior after users close a tab?

In the past, we have observed that people close a tab in different contexts, for example:

1. When people finish using the tab: e.g. users close the tab when finish watching a video.
   
2. When people organize browser tabs: e.g. users close some less important or less used tabs when there are too many tabs open in a browser.
   
3. When people temporarily hide a tab: e. g. users close a tab when he detects someone is passing by; he would like to open it again when nobody is watching.
   

For different contexts, people have different intentions after close a tab, for example:

1. open another interesting tab
   
2. close another less important or less used tab
   
3. open whatever tab
   
4. open the most often used tab
   

For this test, we would like to to explore what would be the best default browser behavior after users close a tab. We will simply log what users would do after he/she close a tab, and through these log data, we may be able to detect certain patterns that help us design the default browser behavior that meaningful to most users. 

Annotations:

• T1: the tab user just closed it
  
• T2: the tab shows automatically after user closed T1
  
• T3: the tab user selects after T2
  

Metrics to consider:

• User actions after close T1:  T3 - T2=?
• Relations between tabs:  relations between T1&T2? relations between T1&T3?  relations between T2&T3? (e.g. opened through the same tab? within the same domain? opened at the same time? no relation at all?)
• Notable charactor for T1,T2 and T3: e.g. most often used? open the longest? previously opened?
  

Generic parameters to log:

• How many tabs are open in total when users close T1?
• Any add-ons or settings may influence this user behavior?

         * so far 273 add-on is related to tab behaviors based on AMO.

• Considering both mouse action and keyboard action
  

         * close the current tab: command+w (Mac); contrl+w (Win)

Design question 2:  What should be the best default placment when users open a new tab?

We have observed that people open a tab for different reasons, for example:

1. Open a new blank tab to type URL or to perform search
   
2. Open a new tab through links within current tab
   

We also notice that people doing following actions after they open a new tab:

1. drag the newly opened tab next to the previous tab
   
2. drag the newly opened tab next to a particular tab
   
3. drag the newly opened tab to a new window
   

For this test, we would like to explore what we can do to support people open a new tab in a meaningful way.

Annotations:

Tc: the opening tab before user open Tn (could be Tl or Tr)

Tn: the newly opened tab

Tl: the tab left to Tn after Tn is dragged

Tr: the tab right to Tn after Tn is dragged

Metrics to consider:

• Type of Tn:  with content (opened through a link), or blank?
  
• User actions after opens Tn when it is blank:  how users load content for the newly open blank tab? e.g. type URL, perform search, through other means? After the loading the content, do user perform drag and drop to group Tn with other tabs?
  
• User actions after open Tn when it is with content: activate Tn immediately? Time between open Tn and activate Tn? do user group Tn with other tabs?
  
• Relations between tabs: relations between Tc and Tn? relations between Tn and Tl/Tr?
  
  

Generic parameters to log:

• How many tabs are open when users open and drag Tn?
  
• Any add-ons or settings may influence this user behavior?

         * so far 273 add-on is related to tab behaviors based on AMO.

• Considering both mouse action and keyboard action

         * open a new blank tab: command+t (Mac); control+t (Win); right click on a tab, through menu button

         * open a new tab through a link: command+click (Mac); control+click (Win); right click, setting in Firefox

Basic info for this test:

• How long the browser is opening for?
  
• Tab/window amount per person during the browser opening
  
• How many times Firefox becomes unfocused during the time opening?
• Permanent tab amounts open during the broswer opening.
  

Test Data Analysis

Tab-related addons

Tree Style Tab Grab And Drag (This is the program that I think is the culprit tothe problem.)

• Observation 1:

I've had to change the way tabs open to maintain older behavior. However, it not what what it use to be.Consequently the way my browser opens tabs is very different, everything is a tab no matter what I click on. I dislike this but it is necessary to maintain proper child relationship to parent tab otherwise it opens parent tabs only. So there is a lot of opening and closing. I don't use the middle mouse button to open new child tabs. I have it set in Tab Mix Plus. (Force to open in new tab: All links (Lock all tabs) ). Left click to open new tab. Then Tree Style Tab gets it and places it as a child of the parent)

   When using Grab And Drag it makes parent tabs only. It works with

images and text fine though.

FoxTab

Tab Mix Plus (TMP)

• Observation 1:

I'll open a tab then lock it (thanks to TMP) and leave it locked sometimes all day and through restarts until I decide that I want to work on that page, interact with it etc.

Tabs Open Relative

FireGestures

• Observation 1:

when switching/closing/undoing close tab, using fire gestures, it logs that I did this with the keyboard. I don't know if this is a problem or not, but thought I would put it out there.

• Observation 2:

I have another issue but the same problem with UI type (FireGestures installed). I'm using TabMixPlus to open new tab just after current one. My test case: - I have two opened tabs: A, B - Switching to A using mouse - test pilot logs: "0, Switch, Keybord" - Click link on page A, which open a new tab (named "C" for example) between A and B (so I have: A, C, B) - "test pilot logs: 2, Open, Link" - Switching to B using mouse - test pilot logs: "2, Switch, Keybord"

This may look like I've switched to the just opened tab (C), but this is not true.

P. S. There are two things which can help in data validation: 1. Button to open "Raw Tab Usage Data" window 2. Auto refresh of this window

Individual use scenarios

• Use scenario 1:

When monitoring a particular page on a site that I'm moderating all recent posts and comments for, I'll open multiple new tabs from links from that one page and those are only open for a short amount of time while the first tab is open longer.

I have bookmarks of local files that I access frequently and most of those are opened for a few seconds.

Facebook, Twitter etc, it isn't uncommon to open multiple tabs from links on those sites too. They may be to add a quick comment, or watch a full video.

Another example is I'm writing this with chrome://testpilot/content/status.html opened in a tab so this is more of a temporary tab.

I guess that one of my main points is that for me (and probably other power users), I more often than not start with a base tab (containing whatever content) and work outwards from that. That tab will usually stay opened for a few minutes while the tabs that branch out from it more often than not are only open for a short amount of time. And sometimes I go to the bathroom. :)

• Use scenario 2:

I do malware removal tech support for two different forums. And when I am doing that I am opening and closing tabs for purely research purposes. Sometime while doing this I can do a search and open half a dozen pages in different tabs, and then find what I need while the others are loading, and close them all.

• Use scenario 3:
  • I regularly open duplicate tabs for one reason or another. For example, I may want to perform a quick visual comparison of two distinct renders of the same page (to compare changes due to randomised content or time).
  • The biggest tab-duplication problem I have is goosh.org. When I find I have dozens of tabs open, and two-thirds of them are duplicates, it’s usually that half of them are goosh tabs. Without knowing the url, it may not be possible to develop an optimal strategy for dealing with that situation.

• Use scenario 4:

Probably the biggest thing I'd like to see that would save a lot of time is a feature I find in Tab Mix Plus, where when you click on a bookmark, etc., a new tab is opened up for that particular event. Before I used Tab Mix Plus, I would find myself opening up a new tab, before moving on to the bookmark, etc., that I wanted to view next. This one single feature gives me a huge sigh of ease. Would love to see it default for options on/off in Firefox.