A New Issue With Tabs and UI Consistency
Disclaimer: I have not used Safari v62 and don't really care to because it hasn't been released to the public yet. The following post works on the assumption that Safari's keyboard combo for closing a tab is Command+W, as it is with Camino and Netscape 7.
Since most of my browsing time is spent in IE classic (on my 8600), I don't get exposed to OS X browsing often enough. I just found out, though, that the keyboard command to close a tab is Command+W. If that's the case, I feel there's a major issue here concerning UI consistency.
Nearly every other application on the face of the Mac uses Command+W exactly the same way. Command+W is the keyboard equivalent for Close Window. Command+W is exactly the same command as selecting Close in the File menu or clicking the red close stop light widget. All three of those commands should produce exactly the same behavior.
Now I realize that some may like this unconventional functionality, but I have a significant problem with changing a standard UI convention to please a certain proportion of users. I do agree, of course, that there should be a way to close tabs without clicking on their GUI close widgets. There should be both a menu command as well as a keyboard equivalent. But that keyboard equivalent should definitely not be Command+W. We have quite a few letter keys left from which to choose, so please don't take one that's already reserved for an important function!
Since most of my browsing time is spent in IE classic (on my 8600), I don't get exposed to OS X browsing often enough. I just found out, though, that the keyboard command to close a tab is Command+W. If that's the case, I feel there's a major issue here concerning UI consistency.
Nearly every other application on the face of the Mac uses Command+W exactly the same way. Command+W is the keyboard equivalent for Close Window. Command+W is exactly the same command as selecting Close in the File menu or clicking the red close stop light widget. All three of those commands should produce exactly the same behavior.
Now I realize that some may like this unconventional functionality, but I have a significant problem with changing a standard UI convention to please a certain proportion of users. I do agree, of course, that there should be a way to close tabs without clicking on their GUI close widgets. There should be both a menu command as well as a keyboard equivalent. But that keyboard equivalent should definitely not be Command+W. We have quite a few letter keys left from which to choose, so please don't take one that's already reserved for an important function!
Comments
Being generally anti-tab I see your point but, pragmatically, once you start messing with the UI you can't leave everything else the same.
The only reason they changed it is because in other tab implementations lots of people were losing data by closing windows when they meant to close tabs. Obviously this is very bad and so the less destructive action was made the default at the expense of consistency. Of course they still will lose data if they habitually use the close widget rather than shortcut keys.
Note that Cmd-W reverts to closing windows when there are no tabs open and that I haven't used tabs in Safari either so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.