[Ext] Tab Utilities 1.5 - light but featureful

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ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

braveheartleo wrote:a) Does not the Pin tab also shorten tabs, like what the Faviconize tab does?

People use Pin tab mainly to fix its position. People use Faviconize tab to shorten tabs. I know quite a few people use Faviconize tab to open a whole site links in favcionized tabs, for the sake of occupying less space, but no one will do so for pinned tabs.

braveheartleo wrote:b) You say that Pin tabs have optional unclosable and undivertible functions. Does not the Faviconize tabs have the same using Protect/Lock tab menus?

Unclosable and undivertible are treated as pinned tabs' intrinsical features by some people. People have no expections on this for faviconized tabs.
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

braveheartleo wrote:So I will be taking a break before things go somewhere else. I hope that some of the points I'm trying to make got through. I always have in mind the greater benefit of TU.

I'm aware of your position. Things are not likely to change if there's only voice from you one. I need more input. And you have mixed many requests together, but decisions need to be made one by one. So if possible, please list your requests briefly, and other people may give opinions.
Morgan B
Posts: 155
Joined: June 7th, 2009, 9:08 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by Morgan B »

@braveheartleo:

Here is my attempt at explaining the difference between TU's pinned tabs and faviconized tabs. In this case I'm using TU with default preferences in a new profile.

Pinned Tabs
Pinned tabs are kept apart from the other tabs (= the normal tabs). They are always visible, no matter how many tabs you have open. The reason for this is that you're able to easily reach them at any time. As an example, I have Gmail and Facebook as pinned tabs, as I visit them sporadically (to read and write new messages for example).

The reason for them being the size of the favicon: Otherwise they would take up too much space of the tab bar. And there's no need for the title: I KNOW which sites they are (in my case Gmail and Facebook)!

The pinned tabs have two states: Loaded and unloaded. Unloaded pinned tabs have less opacity.
(if the "bookmark icons" messed things up for you, I can tell you that the unloaded pinned tabs are not REALLY tabs, but bookmarks placed in the tab bar LOOKING like tabs, but that has nothing to do with the functions of the pinned tabs - just technical information.)

The pinned tabs are saved across sessions. When Firefox starts it will show your homepage (or however you've configured Firefox to start). The pinned tabs will not be loaded, to not slow things down. When I click one of the pinned tabs it will change into loaded state, and it will be focused and loaded. If you switch to another tab it will remain loaded (you can see this by the normal opacity). You could compare it with the task bar in Windows 7, or, as ithinc done before, with Chrome's phantom tabs.
This is something I find very useful and easy to use.


Faviconized Tabs
Faviconized tabs behave exactly as normal tabs, with the only exception of taking less space. For example, you could open a series of pictures in new tabs and faviconize all those tabs to save space and make navigation easier.
Morgan B
Posts: 155
Joined: June 7th, 2009, 9:08 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by Morgan B »

Some changes that would make the "Focus new tabs from" section in the UI better, IMO:

Currently, the "All" and "None" checkboxes does not behave really as checkboxes.
Instead I suggest this layout:

o All o Some: o None
[the rest of the checkboxes]

"o" means a radio button. "All" and "None" should work just as now, greying [the rest of the checkboxes] out. "Some:" should work as now when neither "All" nor "None" is checked.

Perhaps the order should be: o All o None o Some:
And maybe "Some:" should be "Only these:" or something, because checking "All" does not mean the same thing as checking all the other boxes, and checking "None" does not mean the same thing as checking none of the other boxes, do they?

And perhaps "All" should be "Everything", and "None" should be "Nothing"? I mean, they complete the sentence better, don't they: "Focus tabs from everything"/"Focus tabs from nothing". (Note: English is not my native language.) This would also better point out that they are not just shortcuts for checking all/none boxes (are they?).
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

braveheartleo wrote:You are most welcome. Probably by now you know how auto-protected/locked pinned tabs should behave and appear. Auto or not, they shouldn't be treated as separate functions, especially if the distinction is only in terms of automation.

Till now, we have different answers to my 4 questions. Unclosable and indivertible are treated as pinned tabs' (optional) intrinsical features by TU. This is also the tendency in Firefox 4. In Firefox 4, app tabs will be hard to close (Ctrl+W and middle-click to close will be disabled on app tabs) and not allowed to divert to external urls.

braveheartleo wrote:Regarding the icons, it shouldn't need to be anything fancy, but just a small dot filled with a single web color, and offer additional colored icons for mixing and matching with browser themes if you'd like. Of course it would be nice to have suggestions from graphic designers who can add something more to this otherwise plain representation.

Do you have a mockup for the dot icons?
Newser
Posts: 3
Joined: December 10th, 2010, 8:33 pm
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Contact:

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by Newser »

I'm using addon called Tab Overflow Scrollbar: it adds a horizontal scrollbar below the tabbar when many tabs are open
The problem is, when tab number increases and horizontal scrollbar appears, the height of the tabbar do not changes like it happens when Tab Utilities addon is turned off. This is because there is such feature like changing tabbar height in Tab Utilities. Tab Utilities Lite does not have this problem, but it lacks few useful features as well.
So, it would be great if you added some option like "do not change tabbar height (set to Firefox default)", because both addons are great.
hllwn
Posts: 54
Joined: March 6th, 2010, 9:52 pm

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by hllwn »

Feature idea: Ability to change order of tab context menus.

Image
regular guy
Posts: 6
Joined: October 17th, 2010, 2:21 am
Location: England

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by regular guy »

Just a minor problem found with the Open With extension...TU 0.9.9.9.1 seems to stop the tab context menu display of the add-on, though doesn't interfere with the other four display options (Firefox 3.6.13 Windows 7 x64).
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

regular guy wrote:Just a minor problem found with the Open With extension...TU 0.9.9.9.1 seems to stop the tab context menu display of the add-on, though doesn't interfere with the other four display options (Firefox 3.6.13 Windows 7 x64).

Confirmed, but please request a fix from the Open With extension.

Code: Select all

gBrowser.tabContextMenu || document.getAnonymousElementByAttribute (gBrowser, 'anonid', 'tabContextMenu')


It will also be fixed by TU.
Last edited by ithinc on December 14th, 2010, 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

Newser wrote:I'm using addon called Tab Overflow Scrollbar: it adds a horizontal scrollbar below the tabbar when many tabs are open
The problem is, when tab number increases and horizontal scrollbar appears, the height of the tabbar do not changes like it happens when Tab Utilities addon is turned off. This is because there is such feature like changing tabbar height in Tab Utilities. Tab Utilities Lite does not have this problem, but it lacks few useful features as well.
So, it would be great if you added some option like "do not change tabbar height (set to Firefox default)", because both addons are great.

Confirmed, but please request a fix from the Tab Overflow Scrollbar extension. Otherwise, add the following to your userChrome.css file.

Code: Select all

tabs[overflow="true"] .tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox[clicktoscroll="true"] {
  min-height: 38px !important;
}
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

hllwn wrote:Feature idea: Ability to change order of tab context menus.

Menu Editor or userChrome.css with the help of "-moz-box-ordinal-group" property. For example:

Code: Select all

#context_closeTab {
  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 100;
}
Post feature requests to http://tabutils.uservoice.com.
Post bug reports to https://github.com/ithinc/tabutils/issues.
m4dc4p
Posts: 1
Joined: December 13th, 2010, 8:56 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by m4dc4p »

Using Firefox 4.0b7 on Windows 7, I found that if the CTRL+LEFT-ARROW/RIGHT-ARROW option is on, then that key combination will switch even when a mutli-line textbox has input focus. The option should not change the behavior of that key combination in a text box as its supposed to move the cursor word-by-word.
K4RBQT99
Posts: 284
Joined: November 11th, 2010, 3:23 pm

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by K4RBQT99 »

ithinc wrote:Menu Editor or userChrome.css with the help of "-moz-box-ordinal-group" property. For example:

Code: Select all

#context_closeTab {
  -moz-box-ordinal-group: 100;
}

I was looking for something as this, thanks. MenuEditor works buggy as hell for me (A pain that it isn't updated anymore), so I begun to using DOMi and css code for this...

m4dc4p wrote:Using Firefox 4.0b7 on Windows 7, I found that if the CTRL+LEFT-ARROW/RIGHT-ARROW option is on, then that key combination will switch even when a mutli-line textbox has input focus. The option should not change the behavior of that key combination in a text box as its supposed to move the cursor word-by-word.

I can to replicate this, a ugly issue (or intentional, maybe)... but, anyway, ithinc commented that the Ctrl+arrow will be removed; use instead the Ctrl+Pg.up/down for to navigate between tabs.

--
And I agree with @Morgan B. Actually, i don't know how the 'All' and 'None' check-boxes works, they always looks disabled for me.
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

m4dc4p wrote:Using Firefox 4.0b7 on Windows 7, I found that if the CTRL+LEFT-ARROW/RIGHT-ARROW option is on, then that key combination will switch even when a mutli-line textbox has input focus. The option should not change the behavior of that key combination in a text box as its supposed to move the cursor word-by-word.

It is an intended behavior. When I navigate tabs with Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow, I don't want it interrupted by some textbox. You may disable the option and use Ctrl+Page Up/Down instead, which is provided by Firefox itself. Even not in textbox, Firefox also uses Ctrl+Left/Right Arrow to move cursor word-by-word, for Caret Browsing.
ithinc
Posts: 1029
Joined: February 19th, 2008, 12:10 am

Re: [Ext] Tab Utilities 0.9.9.9 - light but featureful

Post by ithinc »

Morgan B wrote:Currently, the "All" and "None" checkboxes does not behave really as checkboxes.
Instead I suggest this layout:
...

That will make it more complicated IMO.

Morgan B wrote:This would also better point out that they are not just shortcuts for checking all/none boxes (are they?).

They aren't, but no many differences.

K4RBQT99 wrote:And I agree with @Morgan B. Actually, i don't know how the 'All' and 'None' check-boxes works, they always looks disabled for me.

The "All" and "None" options have tooltips. They correspond to the status bar buttons. They are placed there mainly for displaying purpose, as many people ignore the status bar indicators and complain for this. If the corresponding status bar buttons are hidden, the options will be disabled.
Post feature requests to http://tabutils.uservoice.com.
Post bug reports to https://github.com/ithinc/tabutils/issues.
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