Talk:Firefox:3.0 Tabbed Browsing

Tab HTML Tag

This is probably a discussion that doesn't only belong here, but also at the W3C; how about making Firefox react to a new specification within the anchor tag? I'm just going to give an example that should be very clear: <A HREF="link" TARGET=_TAB>... I don't think there's any use in further explanation! --Xavez 06:39, 26 Mar 2005 (PST)

Per-tab close button

Does "close button on tabs" mean a per-tab close button? This seems like a usability issue to me - gaim does this, and it's much too easy to unintentionally close a tab. --CTho 11:39, 28 Jan 2005 (PST)

on tabbed browsing

I wrote some thoughts in the Firefox:Tabbed_Browsing:Scratch_Pad that I believe should be taken into consideration when talking about improvements to Tabbed Browsing. cheers. -- AlliXSenoS 18:16, 30 Jan 2005 (PST)

Why not use the back button?

This is an idea I had that I think might work. Imagine single-window mode is on (since we are discussing tabs), and a user clicks a link that opens in a new tab. We could leave the back button enabled so if the user clicks the back button, the tab closes and firefox returns to the tab that page came from. The same could apply to new windows from links, when a new window opens, click the back button (or press backspace) to close the window and go back to the page that opened it.

This will benefit beginner users because they can sometimes be lost by randomly placed new-window links and plus it means I can easily close a lot of tabs and windows with just the backspace button.

Any thoughts on this?

• As a user, I must agree - the back button isn't enabled in that case, and enabling it this way would give it the natural meaning. Tobu 06:17, 13 Mar 2005 (PST)

• I strongly disagree. People already grasp the meaning of "back". And having "back" do different things on different tabs will only make matters worse.

For example, in one tab "back" would go to the previous page, and on th eother tab it would close it and focus the page that opened it (_if_ it still exists). Caleb 11:08, 25 Apr 2005 (GMT)

Complex Solution

I must admit I sometimes close a tab by an accident. I IMO think, that's because: 1. The tab-close button is "shared" and stands at the same point when other tab gets focus after closing the current tab. 2. It takes time to distinguish which tab has focus since the non-focused tabs are not dimmed.

As a remedy, I'd suggest to go the way Eclipse manages its tabs, ie. when hovering over a tab, a close button icon appears on it. At least, this would eliminate the issue at point 1. To improve the focused tab distinction as described at point 2, I'd suggest do dimm all the tabs that don't have focus.

When it comes to the Tobu's suggestion of using back button, I think it's great idea as it tracks the history accross the tabs. That would necessarilly make history more complicated since a linear row of URLs wouldn't be enough in this case. Instead, a tree of URLs, branching for each new tab would have to be maintained. If realized, I'd suggest to change colour of the back button when closing the current tab and switching to the "parent" tab.

As an addition, a solution to the missing progress bar for unfocused tabs, I'd preffer an improved throber - a rotating (indicates "still in progress") filling pie diagram of the throbber size. This solution would take up much less space on a tab in comparison to the common progress bar. When hovering such a tab, a tooltip shows the exact percentage of the progress. Any toghts?

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See Firefox:2.0 Tabbed Browsing. --funTomas 13:16, 13 Mar 2005 (PST)