delliott wrote:Thanks for all of the discussion so far, it is very useful.
What do people think about scrolling tabs by width-of-window as a default?
If not made a default, I'd like to see it made a user option without requiring the use of a modifier.
Where the window scrollbar analogy fails is that the tab scrollbar lacks an apparent mechanism (the aqua scroll bar itself) that permits easy and rapid navigation to a particular point in the range of content, as well as providing an indicator of the amount of content, and the location of current focus within that content.
In both cases, the arrows are adequate for small jumps or for precise movements, but are inefficient for large or quick jumps. (Yet I've seen users rely solely on arrow buttons to navigate within long documents -- typically novices) Increasing the scroll rate to alleviate that would only hamper their accuracy.
On a side note, with regard to the arrow buttons themselves, dual arrows at both ends would be my preference, even at the cost of some tab space.
Making the tab bar scroll-wheel aware as others have suggested would be a nice alternative, but not everyone has a scrolling mouse.
Having a method to rapidly navigate the range of content is something heavy users of multiple tabs would appreciate.
Not having such an alternative method, whether a popup menu, window-width increment, scroll-wheel awareness, or even a mini scroll bar, would only penalise proficient users to keep things simple for novices.
I suspect that tabbed-browsing is not something that most novices make much use of anyway, so a situation where the overflow UI comes into play is infrequent enough to justify catering so much to their needs.
