[SOC] Improvements to the Camino tabbed-browsing experience

Talk about the native Mac OS X browser.

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RubeRad
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Post by RubeRad »

Here's a simple one:

As a blogger, I VERY often have multiple tabs open for the purpose of copy/pasting URLs into my blog text.

So instead of
*) Left-click to activate other tab
*) Select URL
*) CTRL-C (copy)
*) Left-click to activate blog-editing tab
*) CTRL-V (paste)

It would be VERY convenient to have a new option in the right-click-on-tab menu: COPY CURRENT URL AT WHICH THIS TAB IS OPENED (using of course words that are most consistent with other Firefox menu/operation names; how about "Copy URL")

And of course, exercising this option would not raise the other tab, just copy its URL into the cut buffer.
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cflawson
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Post by cflawson »

RubeRad wrote:Here's a simple one:

As a blogger, I VERY often have multiple tabs open for the purpose of copy/pasting URLs into my blog text.

So instead of
*) Left-click to activate other tab
*) Select URL
*) CTRL-C (copy)
*) Left-click to activate blog-editing tab
*) CTRL-V (paste)

It would be VERY convenient to have a new option in the right-click-on-tab menu: COPY CURRENT URL AT WHICH THIS TAB IS OPENED (using of course words that are most consistent with other Firefox menu/operation names; how about "Copy URL")

And of course, exercising this option would not raise the other tab, just copy its URL into the cut buffer.


File a bug on that, please, and we'll discuss it. That sounds useful and it's dirt-simple to implement.

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Post by RubeRad »

Done: 339736

thx,

r
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cflawson
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Post by cflawson »

You do realise this is the *Camino* forum, right? :-p

Not that it's not a valid RFE for Firefox too, but...

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hakanw
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Post by hakanw »

Here are some tab-related ideas I'd like to see:

* Tab exposé: when exposé is invoked, a browsing window's content area would change to show all the open tabs.

* Tab overflow: being able to "scroll"/walk forward backward (having an overflow chevron on both sides?)

* I like the idea about resizing via the tab borders. That's quite nifty and pretty well-hidden for users that aren't interested. Anyone wanna file a bug on that?

* Being able to focus tabs using the Tab key on the keyboard when full keyboard access is on (see Safari for a way to do this)

/Håkan
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Post by crabwalk »

Please, please, PLEASE make it so that my tabs are saved in the event of a crash or quit, a la Saft for Safari. I typically have anywhere from 10 to 40 tabs open at any given time, and one crash brings them all down irretrievably. (I know about Bookmark All Tabs, but you can't be doing that with each new tab that opens.) It seems like it would be easy to save an XML file somewhere that would track all open tabs and that would be reopened upon next launch.
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cflawson
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Post by cflawson »

crabwalk wrote:Please, please, PLEASE make it so that my tabs are saved in the event of a crash or quit, a la Saft for Safari.


This has absolutely nothing to do with tabbed browsing. Please keep this on-topic.

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dand
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Post by dand »

cflawson wrote:
crabwalk wrote:Please, please, PLEASE make it so that my tabs are saved in the event of a crash or quit, a la Saft for Safari.


This has absolutely nothing to do with tabbed browsing. Please keep this on-topic.

Doesn't seem particularly off-topic to me... I understand that it's probably outside the scope of the SoC but it would be a nice feature.
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Post by BDog »

dand wrote:Doesn't seem particularly off-topic to me...
True it deals with tabs, but Session Saving would also deal with multiple windows, so its not just a "tab only" thing.
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Post by Uncle Asad »

dand wrote:Doesn't seem particularly off-topic to me... I understand that it's probably outside the scope of the SoC but it would be a nice feature.

It's off-topic for this thread and is very much outside the scope of Desmond's SoC project. It's been discussed recently in the "What's Missing" topic, so any further discussion should go there (and yes, we all agree it's a very nice feature).
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Post by delliott »

Hello again everybody. I decided not to reply to this topic for a week to let as much original thought flow around before I came in and started prodding at the ideas that people were having for more details. Between now and Wednesday I will be really active on this topic if people post in reply to this or just in general.

Perhaps some of the ideas that we have are fantastic and we just need to be able to show my Mentor that they will be worthwhile implementing and lots of discussion and some <b>appropriately</b> filed bugs would help support some worthy cases.

Disclaimer: these are my thoughts with relation to replies, these thoughts should not be interpreted as "He is totally going to implement my idea" or "He thinks my idea is rubbish", they are just initial thoughts. If I quote you and don't reply to everything that you mention it is because somebody has probably mentioned it before you and I've answered their post and don't want to repeat myself.

gray49 wrote:@delliot,
I think a drop-down menu in each tab with the history of that
tab would be an good idea...making tabs an even more efficient
way of browsing.
Peace


This is quite a nice idea that might be able to provide a user with a richer experience.

osono.design wrote:A preview of all opened tabs would be cool. Like in OmniWeb or Shiira... Here you get an idea: http://www.osono.ch/files/preview.gif (700 KB)


This is quite a cute idea but it is rather clunky and it might be a little clumsy.

computerdude33 wrote:Undo closing tabs... that might be useful.

Also, a Bookmark All Tabs menu item would be pretty nice, and a stop-gap until something like Workspaces is (hopefully) introduced.


Undo closing tabs is an intriguing idea but can you really justify the need for it?

phiw13 wrote:I've tried to read your proposal, but it was a bit (cough) hard on the old eyes...

Some very quick thoughts:

* Undo close tab (multiple steps, not sure how heavy this might be on the browser)
* I can see a good case for a Tab Preview (more like Opera 9 beta or the tabpreview extension(s) in Firefox), but with option to hide it (required !:-)
Things you already mentioned, I think:
* tab reordering (!)
* improving the tab overflow - if I understood your proposal correctly, there is an idea to make it more like sliding back and forth, that doesn't sound very attractive to me.

For both last points: think about keyboard accessibility, which is quite reasonable already.


Following your feedback I have put my proposal on the web as a HTML file which should be easier for you to read.

As you say, undo close tabs might be resource intensive and we want to keep Camino with as small a footprint as possible. My thoughts on Tab Preview are just above.

You do understand my proposal and you're right, it might not work correctly so if you have any further suggestions as to how you would like to see it implemented then please reply!

Macskeeball wrote:PSMTabBarControl


The author of PSMTabBarControl has been in touch with me and we are speaking about ways we can use his code or the concepts underlying his code.

nufferkay wrote:Hey - congratulations! Summer of Code is such a great idea, and how cool is it that you get to work on Camino (and that we Camino users get someone helping out!)

Camino's tab implementation is actually pretty nice right now, but there are some remaining imperfections. My thoughts:

* How about an option to set how many tabs can go in the window before overflow, or a way to set the minimum tab width, ideally with an option to have unlimited tabs / not limit width? That way, those who can't stand the overflow interface could avoid using it altogether.

* One of the biggest problems with the current overflow implementation is that overflowed tabs don't support the options available for other tabs on right-click, some of which aren't available in the application menu. In particular, "move to new window" and "close other tabs" would be really useful to have, either somehow via a context menu or the menubar (BTW, per Apple's HIG, shouldn't all context menu options be available in the menubar?).

* Before the tab implementation was redone, I seem to remember there being "close all tabs to left" and "close all tabs to right" options, which are also kind of useful.

* I don't know whether this falls within the scope of your project, but if it were possible for sheets to be tab-modal rather than window-modal, that would eliminate another annoyance.

* Another item that may be out of scope: being able to "view image in new tab" instead of just "view image" would be nice.

* This is probably controversial, but dragging a bookmark folder from the bookmark toolbar into the viewport replaces current tabs instead of appending. For me, this is an unexpected behavior, and one that has occasionally resultted in lost work from an errant mouse-click.

* How about a way to choose whether the beginning, middle, or end of a page title is displayed in a tab when it's truncated? When, for instance, you're browsing a forum, and have a dozen tabs open with various threads and all you can see of each one is "ForumName :: Vi...", it's a bit frustrating.

I don't know if any of those are reasonable or feasible - just some ideas. Good luck, and have fun!


Thanks for that, it's great to be working with a group of developers who are friendly and approachable and it seems like the community is really active so we'll be abl e to pick up lots of feedback this summer.

You make a valid point that some users might not want to use tab-overflow and so there should be an option that allows a user to disable the new overflow control. What would you propose happens if they don't want to use overflow control? A new window would be automatically created? Tabs would be implemented as they currently exist (the tabs become tiny until you cannot read what is in them and is IMO difficult to use)?

View image in (new?) tab should be pretty reasonable to implement.

The bookmark dragging thing feels a little off-topic.

chrisgeleven wrote:How about something as simple as drag/drop tabs into a new position on the tab bar?


I'm sorry, did you read my proposal? Seriously.

krmathis wrote:I see two parts where Camino need some improvements/new features:
* Tab reordering. Reorder the current tabs by drag and drop.
* Tab overflow. The current overflow implementation dont support the normal context menu through ctrl-click, or 'click to close' (there are no X button). Which "regular" tabs support.


Tab reordering is one of the main things listed in my proposal, did you read it?

There was a comment above about context menu support. The drop down menu is ugly and it is my intention to replace it with a 'circular' lsit of tabs. Then tabs would always have proper context menu support. The current overflow support is kind of lopped on.

buddhahead wrote:there are a lot of things i like about the tab options in the firefox tab mix plus extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/), for example, changing the font of unviewed tabs, displaying progress bars on the tabs, the handling of overflow tabs, setting tab min/max width, being able to change the location of the close button (on individual tabs v. single 'x' on the right side of the tab bar), and all of the options to open/close individual tabs.

i don't remember if tab mix plus has this option, but some ffx extension i was using a while back let you choose whether you wanted new tabs opened from links to open adjacent to the existing tab (so all tabs from same site are grouped) or at the end of the tabs (so tabs are in chronological order of clicking). thought it was a really convenient option!

i'll also add another vote for being able to somehow adjust the text that's displayed on the tabs because there will be many times when i have to cycle through 10 tabs on different pages of the same forum before finding the tab i want.

i think soc is a great program and wish you the best of luck. guess this means i have to switch back to camino from ffx for the summer ;) just wish krmathis was still building his optimized nightlies for the community!


People have already mentioned adding stuff from the Firefox Tab Mix Plus extension but we need to be careful not to bloat Camino with things that people are rarely going to use.

Yeah, you will need to switch back from Firefox to Camino so we can have as many people testing out our zany ideas as possible.

DrawingBusiness wrote:I'd like to be able to hover over the border between any tab while holding the option key, and drag-resize all the tabs so that I can squeeze more in, or read long page titles.


An interesting hack that might be worth looking into since I'll be doing things with resizing tabs. Could be resource hungry or cause weird boundary conditions that could make things ugly.

SickSadWorld wrote:How about a tab bar that handles overflow in a manner similar to the way a Finder window does?

The display capacity of Finder windows are determined by their size and the manner in which the contents are viewed.

When that capacity is exceeded for the given size of the window, the scroll bars appear and are then used to manoeuvre to the items which are hidden beyond the field of view.

I imagine a kind of thin horizontal glide bar, which could scroll between the the tabs that appear within the window, and those "outside" of it.

If that's too complicated, maybe a set of arrows which could toggle between "sets" of tabs, while keeping the tab for the current content area anchored to one side.

The current method with the popup menu is ok, but I try to avoid overflow situations when I can.


I quite like your idea, it sounds quite slick and if we could get the UI to work with it then it might be very nice for users.

Your final point is important. The current implementation means that people tend to avoid overflow because it doesn't behave how they want it to. By the end of the summer we will have something that behaves as should be expected.

hakanw wrote:Here are some tab-related ideas I'd like to see:

* Tab exposé: when exposé is invoked, a browsing window's content area would change to show all the open tabs.

* Tab overflow: being able to "scroll"/walk forward backward (having an overflow chevron on both sides?)

* I like the idea about resizing via the tab borders. That's quite nifty and pretty well-hidden for users that aren't interested. Anyone wanna file a bug on that?

* Being able to focus tabs using the Tab key on the keyboard when full keyboard access is on (see Safari for a way to do this)

/Håkan


Tab exposé is a rather delightful idea and my Mentor has also mentioned it, so why don't we see where things go from there. :)

We are planning to have overflow on both sides.
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Post by cflawson »

delliott wrote:
gray49 wrote:@delliot,
I think a drop-down menu in each tab with the history of that
tab would be an good idea...making tabs an even more efficient
way of browsing.
Peace


This is quite a nice idea that might be able to provide a user with a richer experience.


Just to throw in my two developer cents here, this sounds like it could be a nightmare, too. Where is this menu going to go? Placing tab session history in the context menu is going to bloat the context menu like you wouldn't believe, and it's already available (on a per-tab basis, even!) on the Back and Forward buttons. There isn't really any logical place to put a session history menu *other* than in the tab's context menu.

delliott wrote:
osono.design wrote:A preview of all opened tabs would be cool. Like in OmniWeb or Shiira... Here you get an idea: http://www.osono.ch/files/preview.gif (700 KB)


This is quite a cute idea but it is rather clunky and it might be a little clumsy.


Isn't that basically a form of "tab exposé?" We can argue implementation details later ;)

delliott wrote:
computerdude33 wrote:Undo closing tabs... that might be useful.

Also, a Bookmark All Tabs menu item would be pretty nice, and a stop-gap until something like Workspaces is (hopefully) introduced.


Undo closing tabs is an intriguing idea but can you really justify the need for it?


Yes. We have requests for this all the time, and I think we even have an extant open bug on it. I'm not sure if this is really a "tab" bug or if it's more related to session saving (which isn't, as I've noted, related to tabbed browsing at all).

delliott wrote:View image in (new?) tab should be pretty reasonable to implement.


So easy, in fact, that I think what you're referring to is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=186591 ;)

delliott wrote:The bookmark dragging thing feels a little off-topic.


It is ;)

delliott wrote:
DrawingBusiness wrote:I'd like to be able to hover over the border between any tab while holding the option key, and drag-resize all the tabs so that I can squeeze more in, or read long page titles.


An interesting hack that might be worth looking into since I'll be doing things with resizing tabs. Could be resource hungry or cause weird boundary conditions that could make things ugly.


This is absolutely genius, IMO, and if we implemented it, we'd be the first tabbed browser to do anything nearly this friendly for setting tab sizes.

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Post by froodiantherapy »

delliott wrote:There was a comment above about context menu support. The drop down menu is ugly and it is my intention to replace it with a 'circular' lsit of tabs. Then tabs would always have proper context menu support. The current overflow support is kind of lopped on.


See <a href=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=319777>bug 319777</a> for some interesting discussion on this, and why having a circular list of tabs is probably a bad idea. I agree that something needs to change though.

cflawson wrote:
delliott wrote:
computerdude33 wrote:Undo closing tabs... that might be useful.

Also, a Bookmark All Tabs menu item would be pretty nice, and a stop-gap until something like Workspaces is (hopefully) introduced.


Undo closing tabs is an intriguing idea but can you really justify the need for it?


Yes. We have requests for this all the time, and I think we even have an extant open bug on it. I'm not sure if this is really a "tab" bug or if it's more related to session saving (which isn't, as I've noted, related to tabbed browsing at all).


<a href=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=316458>Bug 316458</a>. :)
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Uncle Asad
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Post by Uncle Asad »

cflawson wrote:
delliott wrote:
DrawingBusiness wrote:I'd like to be able to hover over the border between any tab while holding the option key, and drag-resize all the tabs so that I can squeeze more in, or read long page titles.


An interesting hack that might be worth looking into since I'll be doing things with resizing tabs. Could be resource hungry or cause weird boundary conditions that could make things ugly.


This is absolutely genius, IMO, and if we implemented it, we'd be the first tabbed browser to do anything nearly this friendly for setting tab sizes.

I kinda like this, too, but making it a success is going to depend on getting the implementation correct, and designing the right implementation will be tough ("oops, I accidentally closed that tab!" among others). (Which is not to say we shouldn't try :) )
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Post by phiw13 »

Uncle Asad wrote:I kinda like this, too, but making it a success is going to depend on getting the implementation correct, and designing the right implementation will be tough ("oops, I accidentally closed that tab!" among others). (Which is not to say we shouldn't try :) )

I had the same thought there... Other problems with this: probably quite hard to make it accessible through keyboard interaction.
But a good reason to have a 'undo close tab' option ;-).
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