New tabbed browsing behavior (in Firefox trunk builds)

Discussion about official Mozilla Firefox builds
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sdporter
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Post by sdporter »

I have been using the TabBrowserPreferences extension happily for some time now. I have uninstalled it for the purpose of testing the new build to see if it fills the purpose the extension did.
So far I am happy, although one has to reset the "open tabs in most recent window" option to take effect.
I like the close tab icon on each tab it reduces the distance you need to move the mouse to close a tab and you don't loose context of where you were.
Per Peter(6) options for too many tabs; I believe (2.) is likely a better option.
A feature I would like to see (not seen it elsewhere) is that closing a tab would focus the tab that opened that tab rather than the tab to the left of it.
EoRaptor
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Post by EoRaptor »

Wow, what a horrible change.

Tabs add or remove functionality based on their size? Functionality of an element based on the amount of screen it takes up is horribly confusing,rendering the lement unused and therefor useless.

You now have to hunt for the close button. You've gone from the second most valuable piece of screen (the edge/gutter) to having no value at all. It's impossible to close the current tab without looking for the close button, a game of 'hunt and close' which is sure to waste users time. It's like playing missile defense, only without the big explosions.

But now I can close unfocused tabs? You could always do that with middle click, and since tabs will lose their close button if there are more than 5 or 6 of them, the 'button' goes away just when you might actually need to use it.

Identical, repeating graphics are ignored.
Image
Yeah, that's certainly a unique element with a clear purpose. People complaining about width should realize in 3~ years that 1600 will be an average width. Useability isn't about now, it's about the future too.

Miss-clicking a tab can make in vanish. If your mouse pointer is 1 pixel off, kiss your tab goodbye. Even if you really, really needed it, because there isn't any undo, despite the millions of 'do it' buttons. P.S. Most people never install any extensions, and never will.

I don't know if Ben has ever taken a User Interface course, or a Psychology/Human Behaviour course, or even a design course, but trusting any one person to make UI decisions in a vacuum is long proven not work. People in that type of enviroment get bored, and begin to fiddle with elements that users have come to trust, resulting in confusion. The Apple UI research clearly showed that the more an element was used, the closer to the edge of the screen it should be, with the most used elements in the corners. We've just taken the third or fourth most used element, stripped it of its prime position, then spammed it all over the middle of the screen. But don't worry, it goes away if the computer thinks there are too many of them. This is not an improvement.
Last edited by EoRaptor on January 21st, 2006, 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Peter(6)
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Post by Peter(6) »

@ EoRaptor
can you either replace that image by a narrow one or add put a link to it ?
anyone with a =<1280 px wide screen has to scroll to read the messages now.

thanks
Last edited by Peter(6) on January 21st, 2006, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Lee_Dailey
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Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy EoRaptor,

would you mind clipping the center out of your pic? shorten it until the page no longer needs to scroll sideways ... it makes reading this page a bummer.

take care,
lee
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ColdFusion650
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Post by ColdFusion650 »

will somebody please respond? how do you move the close tab button back the way it was? if nobody says, just say you don't know, but somebody say something. at least acknowledge that i am posting the question. i've tried to reverse the patch, and i can remove the close button on each tab, but i can't add back the close button on the right.
Last edited by ColdFusion650 on January 21st, 2006, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Mossop
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Post by Mossop »

EoRaptor wrote:I don't know if Ben has ever taken a User Interface course, or a Psychology/Human Behaviour course, or even a design course, but trusting any one person to make UI decisions in a vacuum is long proven not work.

It is not one person that is making this decision. First of all Ben has based this initial work on usability studies carried out by Google. secondly this is not a decision, it's an experiment to allow us users to throw our feedback into the process so that the final decision will actually be carried out based on real use.
ColdFusion650 wrote:will somebody please respond? how do you move the close tab button back the way it was? if nobody says, just say you don't know, but somebody say something. at least acknowledge that i am posting the question.

Thats a pretty dumb thing to ask, do you expect everyone reading this thread to respond to say that they acknowledge your question and have no answer to the problem? I suggest you post a new thread asking this question rather than cluttering up and potentially obscuring any feedback people have to give on the subject.
Last edited by Mossop on January 21st, 2006, 1:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
supergirl260
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Post by supergirl260 »

it still has the right click option too close tab if thats what you mean also i view this change as good it might need a few improvements but it could be pretty good
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ColdFusion650
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Post by ColdFusion650 »

@mossop: sorry. i just asked 5 hours ago, and despite 2 pages of posts since then, nobody had even said something like "make a new thread". but i will make a new thread. actually, i would have 5 hours ago if somebody had something to that effect.
Unarmed
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Post by Unarmed »

EoRaptor wrote:Tabs add or remove functionality based on their size? Functionality of an element based on the amount of screen it takes up is horribly confusing,rendering the lement unused and therefor useless.

[...]

But now I can close unfocused tabs?

[...]

Miss-clicking a tab can make in vanish. If your mouse pointer is 1 pixel off, kiss your tab goodbye.


I don’t specifically disagree with what you’ve said, but I do want to point out that you can change the behavior in the points you make in the quotes above by setting <a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabClipWidth">browser.tabs.tabClipWidth</a> to 1 and <a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.disableBackgroundClose">browser.tabs.disableBackgroundClose</a> to true.

On another note, I filed <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=324259">Bug 324259 - browser.tabs.tabClipWidth does not immediately affect first tab when second tab is opened</a>.
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Lee_Dailey
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Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy ColdFusion650,

what does the dom inspector report for those items? isn't that the recommended way to get the labels and other info for objects that ya wanna play with?

take care,
lee
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ColdFusion650
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Post by ColdFusion650 »

well, i didnt try the dom inspector, and it wouldnt have helped. at least i don't think so, based on the solution i found. somebody pointed out that tab mix plus adds back the close button, so i copied one line of javascript that adds back the button. combined with 3 lines of css to get rid of individual the individual close buttons, ive done it and hope to release an extension that takes care of it.
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wget
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Post by wget »

Does ctrl-w'ing with one tab open still (erroneously) close the entire window instead of giving you a blank tab?
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supergirl260
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Post by supergirl260 »

wget wrote:Does ctrl-w'ing with one tab open still (erroneously) close the entire window instead of giving you a blank tab?
yes it does
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Lee_Dailey
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Post by Lee_Dailey »

howdy ColdFusion65,

kool! glad ya got it ... and hope this msg will push that danged dork EoRaptor's msg off the current page.

take care,
lee
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ColdFusion650
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Post by ColdFusion650 »

Lee_Dailey wrote:hope this msg will push that danged dork EoRaptor's msg off the current page.

normally, there are 15 posts per page, which means that the post after this one will be on a new page.
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