Should Safari use vertical tabs?
I remember trying out Omniweb once and saw that it used vertical tabs. Now, I didn't particularly like it because it showed a big preview - not sure if that can be turned off or not - but anyway, I think tabs work better vertically.
One issue with Safari is that if you reach a certain amount of tabs, the end turns into a menu. If they were vertical, it would just form a scroll bar.
Safari also reduces the sizes of the names the more tabs there are but in a list, you can drag a slider like in the Finder.
Both the Finder and itunes have a vertical area for devices and bookmark etc so should Safari do the same? I think the more that wide screens are coming in, the more we can use the horizontal space. You can also fit more tabs on screen vertically given that every one takes up the height of the font and not the length of the title.
One issue with Safari is that if you reach a certain amount of tabs, the end turns into a menu. If they were vertical, it would just form a scroll bar.
Safari also reduces the sizes of the names the more tabs there are but in a list, you can drag a slider like in the Finder.
Both the Finder and itunes have a vertical area for devices and bookmark etc so should Safari do the same? I think the more that wide screens are coming in, the more we can use the horizontal space. You can also fit more tabs on screen vertically given that every one takes up the height of the font and not the length of the title.
Comments
And yes, OmniWeb's tabs can be made purely textual, i.e. you can collapse the preview images away entirely.
FWIW, iChat 4 in Leopard uses vertical tabs.
That's good, the only thing I think that would hold Apple back from doing it in Safari is that everyone is used to horizontal tabs. Maybe it could be optional.
And yes, OmniWeb's tabs can be made purely textual, i.e. you can collapse the preview images away entirely.
I just checked out the Omniweb site again and I remember why I didn't like it:
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/gallery/
They use drawers. Out of all the interface elements Apple has, I think that drawers have to be the ugliest. I much prefer the inline sidebar element. I wish they would do it with Preview. IMO drawers should be replaced in the Apple devkit for a feature that extends the current window but splits it.
Text reads left to right, so should your tab bar. There are many reasons why a left-to-right tab bar works better than a vertical one.
True but the Finder and itunes have vertical 'tabs' and they seem to work ok. I found it odd when I used vertical tabs for the first time but I'm sure it was just because I was so used to using horizontal ones. I had the same trouble adapting to tabs when they first came out.
I'll try and make a mock-up of what it would look like but if anyone else wants to, feel free. I'm mainly curious to see how many more tabs can be fitted onto a standard monitor vertically than horizontally.
From initial measurements, on my 1280x1024 screen, I can get 16 horizontal tabs and the text is limited to about 8 characters. Vertically, I estimate that I would get around 42 tabs and there is no limit on the amount of text displayed.
On a widescreen 1440x900 display, you'd get maybe 18 horizontally and 37 vertically. Still over double the amount and more text. They could even put favicons beside each tab so you could see which site the tab is on.
As you can see, that window fits 31 tabs with room for more and bookmarks at the bottom. The full tab text and favicons can be displayed too.
Now here is what it currently looks like:
I did squash the website a bit in the first one but with the vertical tabs, you can resize or hide the tab bar as you would with any other sliding sidebar.
edit: sidenote, that mockup was done in Photoshop under Parallels. I'm surprised at how well it runs and I think I'll be using it until CS3.
(firefox has an extension that does this.)
i would hate vertical tabs. the mockup shows why. it looks stupid and smooshes the screen. you just need to be able to set a number of tabs for each row and have multiple (horizontal) rows. so they wrap down to a new row once it hits your number.
(firefox has an extension that does this.)
I don't think it looks any stupider than the Finder or itunes, which use the same setup and because it's resizeable, you can adjust it to not use any more space than the current tab bar. The main advantage would be for widescreen displays, which Apple mostly uses these days. A Macbook only has 900 pixels vertically but 1440 horizontally.
The idea of rows of tabs is ok but it still reduces the length of the tab titles. Vertical tabs use the same amount of space consistently and they can even have grouping options so that you can group tabs according to website.
I'm not saying Apple should ditch one way for the other, just that it would be nice to have the option.
This isn't an argument against vertical tabs, but would remedy some of the problems with horizontal ones.
Text reads left to right, so should your tab bar. There are many reasons why a left-to-right tab bar works better than a vertical one.
Wrong suckah. There's a reason why newspaper articles have a narrow columns layout. It's simpler to read narrow blocks of text than wide blocks. And text isn't always read left to right.
Better yet, let Safari use Extensions like Firefox. Done better.
Oh and Drawers...are so stupid. I wonder when they'll get rid of them. Still lots of NeXT junk to clean out of OS X.
Wrong suckah. There's a reason why newspaper articles have a narrow columns layout. It's simpler to read narrow blocks of text than wide blocks. And text isn't always read left to right.
While it's easier to read narrow blocks of text to a point, newspaper columns are way too narrow. They only exist to put more stories on the front page.
With text that spans the full page, you have to be more careful scanning back to find the next line (you don't realize this, of course). With narrow columns, even though it's easier to scan back, you're still spending half your time finding the next line instead of reading, because you have to do it every 5 words.
The happy medium is about 4-6 inches, depending on the font size, font, and a bunch of other factors.
While it's easier to read narrow blocks of text to a point, newspaper columns are way too narrow. They only exist to put more stories on the front page.
With text that spans the full page, you have to be more careful scanning back to find the next line (you don't realize this, of course). With narrow columns, even though it's easier to scan back, you're still spending half your time finding the next line instead of reading, because you have to do it every 5 words.
The happy medium is about 4-6 inches, depending on the font size, font, and a bunch of other factors.
People generally read by blocks for 3-4 words...ideally, you don't want more than two blocks per line. I'd say 4 inches is the happy medium. Searching for lines is not a problem when you've got narrow columns of text.
I don't think it looks any stupider than the Finder or itunes, which use the same setup and because it's resizeable, you can adjust it to not use any more space than the current tab bar. The main advantage would be for widescreen displays, which Apple mostly uses these days. A Macbook only has 900 pixels vertically but 1440 horizontally.
The idea of rows of tabs is ok but it still reduces the length of the tab titles. Vertical tabs use the same amount of space consistently and they can even have grouping options so that you can group tabs according to website.
I'm not saying Apple should ditch one way for the other, just that it would be nice to have the option.
widescreens becoming more commonplace means sites will start being built to those dimesions. that's why you don't want to steal space anywhere. like i already said: if you can tell your browser how many tabs to put in each row, you can make each one as long as you need/want.
it's pretty weird that there's not an option for vert or horizontal.
widescreens becoming more commonplace means sites will start being built to those dimesions.
That would be extremely poor form...if a website dev decided that it would be fun to make 1920 pixel wide webpages, I'd simply never go to that website ever again. Besides...how would printers handle such a dumb format?
Document-based apps should take printing into consideration.