... valiant effort, but not yet to my liking. it has the benefit of enforcing a minimum width on tabs which ensures that a big part of the page title is readable for each tab, but i don't necessarily need to see a lot of the title to pick the tab i want. a lot of times the site favicon is enough to identify the tab i'm looking for, and if that isn't enough the first couple letters of the title will be plenty for disambiguation. if that still isn't enough i can always hover the mouse over the tab to see the full title.
put another way, i like the scrolling feature, but i want a much much smaller minimum width. speaking for myself, i don't think i've ever wished for a wider minimum width. one user's perspective.
my vote on the new bon echo tab scrolling feaure is ...
- mcdavis
- Posts: 3195
- Joined: December 9th, 2005, 5:51 am
- MechR
- Posts: 1286
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 4:13 pm
- Location: Earth
I think the left-right scroll buttons sound like a big pain in the butt. IIRC I've encountered the implementation before in certain Gnome apps, and didn't like it.
Someone suggested using a horizontal scrollbar. I think that would be functionally better, but it would look strange...
Actually, IMO the handiest overflow implementation would be a vertical list, either in a dropdown menu or in the sidebar. At that point you're not quite working with tabs anymore, but it's arguable that tabs aren't good for managing a huge number of sites anyway.
I could get behind a Tab Sidebar There's an extension, but it has page thumbnails that you can't turn off.
Someone suggested using a horizontal scrollbar. I think that would be functionally better, but it would look strange...
Actually, IMO the handiest overflow implementation would be a vertical list, either in a dropdown menu or in the sidebar. At that point you're not quite working with tabs anymore, but it's arguable that tabs aren't good for managing a huge number of sites anyway.
I could get behind a Tab Sidebar There's an extension, but it has page thumbnails that you can't turn off.
- mcdavis
- Posts: 3195
- Joined: December 9th, 2005, 5:51 am
MechR wrote:Someone suggested using a horizontal scrollbar. I think that would be functionally better, but it would look strange...
Agree, it would look strange. And I don't want to give up another 16px of screen real estate.
MechR wrote:Actually, IMO the handiest overflow implementation would be a vertical list, either in a dropdown menu or in the sidebar. At that point you're not quite working with tabs anymore, but it's arguable that tabs aren't good for managing a huge number of sites anyway.
Hmmm, maybe a chevron a la the personal bookmarks toolbar ...
MechR wrote:I could get behind a Tab Sidebar There's an extension, but it has page thumbnails that you can't turn off.
I'll have to try that out.
- MechR
- Posts: 1286
- Joined: July 30th, 2003, 4:13 pm
- Location: Earth
*returns from reading the Google Groups thread*
Re: Having the scroll buttons together on one side of the tab bar, after thinking a moment, I could see how keeping them on opposite sides might make sense.
With separated scroll buttons, if you want a tab that's off the left side of the screen, you push the left-scroll button until it enters the screen-- from the left. It'll be right next to your cursor when it shows up.
OTOH, if you have both buttons on the right side of the bar (for example), then your cursor will be far from the desired tab when it enters the screen from the left.
Re: Having the scroll buttons together on one side of the tab bar, after thinking a moment, I could see how keeping them on opposite sides might make sense.
With separated scroll buttons, if you want a tab that's off the left side of the screen, you push the left-scroll button until it enters the screen-- from the left. It'll be right next to your cursor when it shows up.
OTOH, if you have both buttons on the right side of the bar (for example), then your cursor will be far from the desired tab when it enters the screen from the left.
- mcdavis
- Posts: 3195
- Joined: December 9th, 2005, 5:51 am
MechR wrote:*returns from reading the Google Groups thread*
Re: Having the scroll buttons together on one side of the tab bar, after thinking a moment, I could see how keeping them on opposite sides might make sense.
Good points. Also, I can't think of another place in the UI where scroll arrows appear together; everywhere else they are at opposite ends of the thing that is being scrolled. There do appear to be some trade-offs. It's an interesting problem.