Comments on: Tabulation

By: Bryan Clark » Blog Archive » Thunder-tab

Bryan Clark » Blog Archive » Thunder-tab — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:58:52 +0000

[...] previous tabbing post already discussed how tabs help people to keep their current context and multi-task more [...]

By: Emanuel House

Emanuel House — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:11:21 +0000

One more use case with respect to tabs is that I often keep my webapps permanently open. I.e. I never really want to close my GMail, Google Reader, To-do list, etc. tabs - I always keep those open. The Prizm project is aimed at taking those tabs out of the browser and giving them their own windows, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

By: Dubroy.com/blog - The future of tabbed browsing

Dubroy.com/blog - The future of tabbed browsing — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:11:57 +0000

[...] closest thing to the work I’m doing is Bryan Clark’s post about how and why people use tabs. Bryan is working on the UI for Thunderbird, the Mozilla mail client. They’re interested in [...]

By: Is visual navigation ahead for Firefox? « Boriss’ Blog

Is visual navigation ahead for Firefox? « Boriss’ Blog — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:17:50 +0000

[...] are on better ways to incorporate visual navigation into Firefox (see posts from Madhava, Aza, Bryan, and [...]

By: antistress

antistress — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 01:09:07 +0000

i’m running Ubuntu (GNOME) and don’t see the advantage of having tabs in Firefox or in any other browser

Since Linux desktop now has Compiz/Beryl effects like Expose for Mac, it seems obvious to me that the tab concept was a transitional idea.
Tabs were efficient when desktop were not good at handling windows.
At present time GNOME with Compiz Fusion has Expose, and GNOME allows to rearrange buttons in the Windows List.
Therefore, GNOME (for instance) has at less the same level of functionalities than Firefox to manage several application windows.

Then it doesn’t need anymore tabs because tabs doesn’t allow Expose to work.

Tabs was a great idea when desktop were not good at managing multiple windows. Now it’s just useless
http://libre-et-ouvert.blogspot.com/2007/09/le-vent-du-changement-souffle-sur-les.html

By: Improving tabs « Boriss’ Blog

Improving tabs « Boriss’ Blog — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:38:39 +0000

[...] sketches, tabs There’s been a lot of recent forum and blog posts on the subject of tabs. Brian Clark’s and Aza Raskin’s posts got me thinking about how tabs are one of the tiny changes that [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:54:58 +0000

It’s easier to open/close tabs in FF with the mouse wheel than to open/close new windows. Besides, the way the Win taskbar handles a bunch of browser windows is plain ugly: with tabs I can at least look at the site icons

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 22 May 2008 02:47:57 +0000

I’ve found that the “defer action” usage is particularly helpful when you’re on a slow connection (or the site’s slow). If the browser downloads and parses the page before you’re ready to look at it, you spend less time waiting. (For Thunderbird, that might be useful for big mail messages, but I don’t think Ioften get mails big enough for it to matter.)

By: B.J. Herbison

B.J. Herbison — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:51:11 +0000

I have two uses that I see as distinct from the four cases you list:

1) Open tab groups. I have tab folders for various purposes (one contains all my web sites and is used to verify they are up, another has my “daily” reading — traffic report, weather report, school sports calendar, etc). At specific times I open all the pages in folder into separate tabs, then close each tab as I read them.

2) Avoid page reloads. Standard browsing is visit a page, follow a link, back up, follow another link. This is slow because of page reloads. I typically visit, for example, a news site, open an article to read in new tabs, then close the new tab after reading to return to the main news page. This is similar to Defer Action, except the goal isn’t to defer. It’s also similar to Switch Context, except I’m not really changing context.

By: marcus

marcus — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:10:48 +0000

You nailed it.

By: ovidiu

ovidiu — Wed, 21 May 2008 09:44:48 +0000

I’d add one reason to use tabs that is probably a more basic or initial one. I think I first used tabs as a replacement to several windows considering it more convenient UI than taskbar.
I cannot really say now if it was the more compact approach or the different look than the taskbar items, or just the intention of not mixing the windows (tabs) with the other apps present in taskbar. But I would say that the reasons presented in this post are somehow derived from this initial approach, as a “refined usage” or as “growing up” of this feature.

I say that cause I rarely open msg in Tb in separate windows, which makes me kinda neutral to this reasons of using tabs in TB. (Still that seams the basic reason, similar to FFox for those using msg like that)

I’d rather consider tabs in TB as
-different views of the data (folders/msg/different searches/AB/calendar etc)
-different views/panes/elements for the screen real estate issues (imagine collapsed pane presenting a tab for getting it back, intuitive UI ..)
-detailing of related data,
(meaning like in one [main] tab you get the folder/thread/msg pane, have a search and select the msg and other tabs may present related elements, view of the whole thread, view of the contacts etc, view of a graph representation of relations to that msg, highlight corresponding tab header when hover certain data etc. Ok, these seam already for another discussion ..)
-tabs for contextual data, updated accordingly (in addition to above maybe ..)
-other non modal panels, for extensions etc …

[note that split window may be necessary to have a main tab and other tabs aside temporary (like today pane in lightning or related elements mentioned above), but that is another thing..]

By: Nicu Buculei

Nicu Buculei — Wed, 21 May 2008 05:51:11 +0000

I would add to that “Lightweight Window Management”, click once and have all your browser windows minimized/maximized .

And maybe “Comparative Research”: do a Google search (maybe for researching a purchase), open results in tabs and switch from one to another and compare the information.

But the truth is, while I rely on tabs for all the above mentioned scenarios, I started because “Smaller Resource Consumption”, back in the pre-Mozilla 1.0 days (I switched to Mozilla Suite as a default browser around 0.9) when it absolutely sucked performance wise. So you *had* to use tabs to have it usable.
Since then, the resource usage is not a problem any more, but in the meantime I got so attached of using tabs…

By: Tyrone Rambo

Tyrone Rambo — Tue, 20 May 2008 23:29:08 +0000

Someone please show this article to the Epiphany developers so they can tell (tab) users they use the web wrong, again…

Noone needs more than 640k, nor more than 2-3 tabs, after all.

By: Paul W. Frields

Paul W. Frields — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:03:09 +0000

You nailed all four of my use cases; sorry I can’t give you more food for thought.

By: vext

vext — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:43:43 +0000

Interesting. Though it made me want a TB approach for use in a web browser. I tend to keep tabs open of things that I will ‘get around too’. Typically these can be blog/slashdot entries for reference. These tend to be pretty time/cycle consuming to open when the browser is restarted. Naturally they are, to some extent, sat using memory as well afterwards. I tend to have these over disparate sessions on different machines/environments. When I do get around to viewing the content I tend to refresh it anyway.
Perhaps it is my disorganised nature that needs adjusting but I tend to use my Inbox the same way. Lots of messages that I do not need now but will need without any hunting in a moment. imap ’summaries’ makes this nice and efficient and I think I could use something similar in a browser.
I used to keep bookmarks in a folder called TEMP but they were out of sight and so consequently ‘out of mind’ and after a while became an unwieldy mess.
I think I need a drop box of references instead (with previews or other visual indicator), and threaded into subject/time would be nice.
Perhaps this is what the FF3 ’smart’ bookmarks are for but if so I haven’t found how to maximise(?) my usage.
Sorry, wandered of the subject a bit but… I think that FF et al can learn more from TB in this regard rather than the other way around

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 20 May 2008 18:41:10 +0000

Here are some use cases I have for tabs. They pretty much fit the topics you have above, but include their own sub-patterns of usage.

1. Documentation browsing. When developing I’m usually gluing together multiple apis and environments. I’ll keep many tabs open when using web pages for reference documantation.

2. Web administration. I use Django to work with several of my own sites. Usually I’ll have one tab opened to the front end and one tab on the back end. I’ll make administrative changes in one and view the results in the other.

By: aguafuertes

aguafuertes — Tue, 20 May 2008 17:17:19 +0000

Nice description, although I always find it hard to break it down into discrete categories. But all in all it is a nice summary of how I use tabs in a browser:

sequential:
- to open a page (most likely related) to read after current page
- to keep a page open to go back to it later, if needed

“simultaneous”:
- to do something in one page (e.g. write a blog post) and use other pages for reference
- to do research and jump between pages to compare results