This topic is not nearly interesting enough to merit this long a discussion. Suffice to say, tabs are handy in a Terminal because millions of little Terminals in Exposé are not discernable. The contents just aren't different enough to merit seperate windows. Moreover, Exposé gets choppy with so many windows.
I remember this big debate about should Safari use tabs. As if it's worhty of a big debate. Now we all use tabs in Safari.
Those that don't want to use tabs in a terminal can hit Command-N and have fun Command-Tabbing through 6 of them.
Tabs should be added to a "Developer Mode" version. NeXTSTEP had two modes, "user" and "developer" with the latter offering more advanced functionality.
With the tabs option it reduces screen space. I hope they add it.
Tabs should be added to a "Developer Mode" version. NeXTSTEP had two modes, "user" and "developer" with the latter offering more advanced functionality.
With the tabs option it reduces screen space. I hope they add it.
This topic is not nearly interesting enough to merit this long a discussion.
Obviously, I very much disagree. It's this sort of UI/workflow discussion that is at the heart of good interface design. Just defaulting to "make it an option" is the lazy way out, and doesn't add anything to the knowledge surrounding the issue.
I'm not a fan of tabs, but it's because of how I work that make them fairly useless for me. I'm trying to understand under which conditions they *do* make sense, because frankly, I haven't seen them yet in my own day to day usage patterns. Obviously though, some people are rabid fans, and I'm interested in what they see in them.
Quote:
Suffice to say, tabs are handy in a Terminal because millions of little Terminals in Exposé are not discernable.
Hunh. I use color coding for different tasks in general, so I don't have that problem. (Green on black for compiling and svn checkins (they look utterly different in flow when minimized in Expose), white on blue for testing, green on red for working in a directory that I have to be careful in, etc) I guess it didn't occur to me to never change the colors to reflect the use patterns, I've done it for years.
Quote:
The contents just aren't different enough to merit seperate windows. Moreover, Exposé gets choppy with so many windows.
It's not just about whether or not the content is different, but whether the content is *exclusive*. I frequently need to keep an eye on several Terminal windows at once to watch progress of builds, tailing log files, etc - that is simply impossible to do with tabs.
Quote:
I remember this big debate about should Safari use tabs. As if it's worhty of a big debate. Now we all use tabs in Safari.
But WHY are they actually useful in Safari, and not so much in other apps? That's the meaty bit to consider. I don't think it's possible to intelligently state unequivocally that they are Good or that they are Bad. In some apps, with some workflows, they are useful. In other apps, with other workflows, they are a waste of developer resources and give users a less than optimal experience. So, when are they useful, and when are they not?
Quote:
Those that don't want to use tabs in a terminal can hit Command-N and have fun Command-Tabbing through 6 of them.
Cmd-~, not Cmd-Tab, that's for switching between apps. But I haven't noticed any problem with the, uh, 8 I have up now. *shrug*
For my workflow, tabs would just seriously hamper my ability to get things done. Yes, I could 'just not use them', but I'd refer you to my earlier post about TextMate - it has a tab bar that just wastes screen space, with no way to turn it off, because the developers used the tabbed interface as the default UI. To me, it seems a poor decision to do so, but I'm trying to learn under what circumstances a developer might want to go that path.
So no, it's really not a waste of time, at least not to me or a number of others.
As I said earlier, I use tab's as short time bookmarks, I open a new tab to do something quickly, and then close it to return to my previous task. I also don't want to have too many extra windows loitering on my desktop, so tabs are great, because they just cover the previous process until I'm ready to return to it. In Safari I use tabs both as a view to some handy web pages e.g. dictionary and also as a reading queue. Both sides of this conversation so far have only presented their own opinions, but I don't think anyone has anything to complain about the way they implemented tabs in Safari. You either use them or you don't, and one little checkbox turns it on and off. It would also be interesting to hear why they should NOT implement tabs to programs, and the argument that those coding hours are waisted doesn't apply, because coders spend anyways the hours to features they feel important(or their employer feel are important)
As opposed to having fun clicking on 6 tabs with undescriptive names?
Why undescriptive names? In KDE you can assign whatever you like as name. If tabs come to Terminal.app, they should have *at least* the KDE functionality. Otherwise, given that terminal tabs are of interest for perhaps less than 5% of OS X users, it would not make sense.
No. You don't give the tabs names. You look at their contents. Much quicker.
I think you mean windows, not tabs. Anyway, if you have many windows and not enough screen space to see them all together without using Expose, you run into the same problem.
Anyway, if you have many windows and not enough screen space to see them all together without using Expose, you run into the same problem.
With windows + Exposé, you'd see the windows contents. Very small, with little detail, but you could structurally analyze them. The eye is very quick at distinguishing shapes.
With tabs, on the other hand, all(!) you would see is the tabs' names. Not only would you have to manually give them names (automatic names would be mostly useless; sure, they could include the currently running process, and an ID, but that's often not very helpful ?_ten different tabs labelled "nano (1)", "nano (3)", "nano (10)" aren't gonna give me much of a clue of what that particular tab is really about), but even then you wouldn't have as much information. The eye is *slow* at scanning through text.
With windows + Exposé, you'd see the windows contents. Very small, with little detail, but you could structurally analyze them. The eye is very quick at distinguishing shapes.
From experience I can say that it does not work that way when you have ten or more windows. Not for me anyway.
It's true that Exposé might be slightly hindered by having a smaller screen or a resolution dependent OS...but take these two out of the equation and Exposé is *still* the much better window management system.
Even today, if you take 2 seconds to learn how to use "All windows" and "Show all windows" or the 'tab' key while in Exposé-mode, you can easily distinguish the window you want out of 10 windows on a 1024x768 screen.
Larger monitors, of course, help both the Exposé approach as well as the tabbed-approach...but increased PPI will help Exposé and not help tabs at all.
And tabs and Exposé both fail when there's an inordinate amount of windows to manage. Exposé may become better at handling more windows when higher PPI screens hit the market and when Apple actually uses them but higher PPI will only go so far. So, either way, we all need to manage the amount of tabs or windows we've got on screen.
And before you say that tabs and Exposé work well together since you can have less windows on screen than an all-Exposé workflow, you'd be wrong. Exposé is a very visual tool. Exposé-ing a tabbed window will not magically show you the info hidden inside a tab that doesn't have focus. If anything, tabs are destroying Exposé's usefulness. You really can't use them together unless your brain is working overtime remembering the content of every tab inside a window.
I'd be interested in seeing an extensive study of workflows using an all-tabs approach and an all-Exposé approach. I would put 100 bucks that the people using Exposé work, on average, quite a bit faster than people that use tabs.
Exposé advantages:
No need to name or rename anything to create any meaning when compared to the tab-approach.
Larger targets to hit when compared to tabs.
Showing all windows is not limited to the width of the window.
Drag-and-drop ability is conserved (some tab implementations do offer this though).
The thought process to find a single window out of a large number of window is essentially identical as the thought process to find a single tab out of a large number of tab. If someone uses excellent keywords, that person might find the tab he wants a little quicker than the person trying to find a window...but that gained time is instantly nullified by the fact that he had to rename that tab with a descriptive keyword.
From experience I can say that it does not work that way when you have ten or more windows. Not for me anyway.
If you're going to have a large number of windows like that, you might as well just right-click on the app icon: instant alphabetically-ordered 'tabs'.
I can't imagine the traditional 'horizontal-tab' being efficient with more than 10 tabs. It forces people to widen the window and thus defeat the entire purpose of tabs in the first place: to save space.
If you're going to have a large number of windows like that, you might as well just right-click on the app icon: instant alphabetically-ordered 'tabs'.
I can't imagine the traditional 'horizontal-tab' being efficient with more than 10 tabs. It forces people to widen the window and thus defeat the entire purpose of tabs in the first place: to save space.
It's not. But for 5-10 tabs, it works perfectly, allowing you to survey and close tabs in a very satisfying, easy, and visually non-disruptive way (which isn't the case using Exposé or --ugh! -- right-clicking the app icon). As it turns out, a group 5-10 tabs per windows works pretty well, at least for me.
As for a wide windows... with widescreen displays popping up everywhere, is this really a big issue?
Look, I *love* Exposé. It's the cat's meow. But the truth is each method has pros and cons. IMO, tabs edges out Exposé for the viewing & manipulation of multiple windows (web-surfing) and text-heavy documents (writing).
The beauty of it is you can use what you like. Tabs are completely invisible if you don't want them.
It's not. But for 5-10 tabs, it works perfectly, allowing you to survey and close tabs in a very satisfying, easy, and visually non-disruptive way (which isn't the case using Exposé or --ugh! -- right-clicking the app icon). As it turns out, a group 5-10 tabs per windows works pretty well, at least for me.
As for a wide windows... with widescreen displays popping up everywhere, is this really a big issue?
Look, I *love* Exposé. It's the cat's meow. But the truth is each method has pros and cons. IMO, tabs edges out Exposé for the viewing & manipulation of multiple windows (web-surfing) and text-heavy documents (writing).
The beauty of it is you can use what you like. Tabs are completely invisible if you don't want them.
They're not always entirely invisible especially when the developer thinks tabs are the greatest thing and forces them down everyone's throats. And they simply don't make sense on an OS with good window management such as OS X. Tabs originated from app developers using OSes with inadequate window management such as Linux and Windows. They don't really fit in OS X...and people that use them the wrong way nullify any benefit that Exposé may give.
With widescreen displays popping up everywhere, there shouldn't be any need for tabs...I'm on a stinkin' 1024x768 screen...and Exposé is working great...I imagine the 1920x1200 display I'm getting when the Mac Pros are out will be more than enough (for Exposé) for me...or anyone.
Look...I don't really care how people use their computer...I'm just trying to help them. Just don't try to get Apple to implement a custom and shitty window management feature inside apps when the OS offers something lightyears ahead in usefulness.
The only reason why Safari got tabs is because Hyatt was responsible for them on earlier browser projects he worked on. Hyatt, however, is only on the Safari team. Sorry.
[B]They're not always entirely invisible especially when the developer thinks tabs are the greatest thing and forces them down everyone's throats.
But they are, when implemented correctly, as in Safari.
Quote:
And they simply don't make sense on an OS with good window management such as OS X. Tabs originated from app developers using OSes with inadequate window management such as Linux and Windows. They don't really fit in OS X...and people that use them the wrong way nullify any benefit that Exposé may give.
Grrr. Look, bud, I've been using the Mac OS for 15 years, and OS X full-time since 10.2 -- don't tell me a popular UI element doesn't "really fit in OS X" and that I'm using it "the wrong way".
The fact that many people like and demand tabs is telling enough, but if implemented correctly (invisible if not used, and drag-and-drop savvy) and appropriately w/r/t to the app in question, they can trump Exposé for non-disruptive surveying & control of multiple windows.... as I keep saying, and you keep ignoring) . Exposé is not a solution for everything and everyone.
The fact that many people like and demand tabs is telling enough, but if implemented correctly (invisible if not used, and drag-and-drop savvy) and appropriately w/r/t to the app in question, they can trump Exposé for non-disruptive surveying & control of multiple windows.... as I keep saying, and you keep ignoring) . Exposé is not a solution for everything and everyone.
Show me an implementaion of tabs that trumps Exposé for non-disruptive surveying and control of multiple windows and we'll talk.
btw, I've been using Macs for 22 years...and OS X full time since Public Beta...do I win a prize?
Comments
Originally posted by Kickaha
Damn, you replied while I edited that.
Of course.
I remember this big debate about should Safari use tabs. As if it's worhty of a big debate. Now we all use tabs in Safari.
Those that don't want to use tabs in a terminal can hit Command-N and have fun Command-Tabbing through 6 of them.
With the tabs option it reduces screen space. I hope they add it.
Originally posted by mdriftmeyer
Tabs should be added to a "Developer Mode" version. NeXTSTEP had two modes, "user" and "developer" with the latter offering more advanced functionality.
With the tabs option it reduces screen space. I hope they add it.
Interesting. Thati is a cool feature.
Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R
This topic is not nearly interesting enough to merit this long a discussion.
Obviously, I very much disagree. It's this sort of UI/workflow discussion that is at the heart of good interface design. Just defaulting to "make it an option" is the lazy way out, and doesn't add anything to the knowledge surrounding the issue.
I'm not a fan of tabs, but it's because of how I work that make them fairly useless for me. I'm trying to understand under which conditions they *do* make sense, because frankly, I haven't seen them yet in my own day to day usage patterns. Obviously though, some people are rabid fans, and I'm interested in what they see in them.
Suffice to say, tabs are handy in a Terminal because millions of little Terminals in Exposé are not discernable.
Hunh. I use color coding for different tasks in general, so I don't have that problem. (Green on black for compiling and svn checkins (they look utterly different in flow when minimized in Expose), white on blue for testing, green on red for working in a directory that I have to be careful in, etc) I guess it didn't occur to me to never change the colors to reflect the use patterns, I've done it for years.
The contents just aren't different enough to merit seperate windows. Moreover, Exposé gets choppy with so many windows.
It's not just about whether or not the content is different, but whether the content is *exclusive*. I frequently need to keep an eye on several Terminal windows at once to watch progress of builds, tailing log files, etc - that is simply impossible to do with tabs.
I remember this big debate about should Safari use tabs. As if it's worhty of a big debate. Now we all use tabs in Safari.
But WHY are they actually useful in Safari, and not so much in other apps? That's the meaty bit to consider. I don't think it's possible to intelligently state unequivocally that they are Good or that they are Bad. In some apps, with some workflows, they are useful. In other apps, with other workflows, they are a waste of developer resources and give users a less than optimal experience. So, when are they useful, and when are they not?
Those that don't want to use tabs in a terminal can hit Command-N and have fun Command-Tabbing through 6 of them.
Cmd-~, not Cmd-Tab, that's for switching between apps. But I haven't noticed any problem with the, uh, 8 I have up now. *shrug*
For my workflow, tabs would just seriously hamper my ability to get things done. Yes, I could 'just not use them', but I'd refer you to my earlier post about TextMate - it has a tab bar that just wastes screen space, with no way to turn it off, because the developers used the tabbed interface as the default UI. To me, it seems a poor decision to do so, but I'm trying to learn under what circumstances a developer might want to go that path.
So no, it's really not a waste of time, at least not to me or a number of others.
Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R
Those that don't want to use tabs in a terminal can hit Command-N and have fun Command-Tabbing through 6 of them.
As opposed to having fun clicking on 6 tabs with undescriptive names?_ Really...listen to yourself.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
As opposed to having fun clicking on 6 tabs with undescriptive names?
Why undescriptive names? In KDE you can assign whatever you like as name. If tabs come to Terminal.app, they should have *at least* the KDE functionality. Otherwise, given that terminal tabs are of interest for perhaps less than 5% of OS X users, it would not make sense.
Originally posted by PB
Why undescriptive names? In KDE you can assign whatever you like as name.
So you want users to waste time manually naming their tabs? WTF.
Originally posted by Chucker
So you want users to waste time manually naming their tabs? WTF.
Is not that what you need to do with today's Terminal.app windows?
Originally posted by PB
Is not that what you need to do with today's Terminal.app windows?
No. You don't give the tabs names. You look at their contents. Much quicker.
Originally posted by Chucker
No. You don't give the tabs names. You look at their contents. Much quicker.
I think you mean windows, not tabs. Anyway, if you have many windows and not enough screen space to see them all together without using Expose, you run into the same problem.
Originally posted by PB
Anyway, if you have many windows and not enough screen space to see them all together without using Expose, you run into the same problem.
With windows + Exposé, you'd see the windows contents. Very small, with little detail, but you could structurally analyze them. The eye is very quick at distinguishing shapes.
With tabs, on the other hand, all(!) you would see is the tabs' names. Not only would you have to manually give them names (automatic names would be mostly useless; sure, they could include the currently running process, and an ID, but that's often not very helpful ?_ten different tabs labelled "nano (1)", "nano (3)", "nano (10)" aren't gonna give me much of a clue of what that particular tab is really about), but even then you wouldn't have as much information. The eye is *slow* at scanning through text.
Originally posted by Chucker
With windows + Exposé, you'd see the windows contents. Very small, with little detail, but you could structurally analyze them. The eye is very quick at distinguishing shapes.
From experience I can say that it does not work that way when you have ten or more windows. Not for me anyway.
Even today, if you take 2 seconds to learn how to use "All windows" and "Show all windows" or the 'tab' key while in Exposé-mode, you can easily distinguish the window you want out of 10 windows on a 1024x768 screen.
Larger monitors, of course, help both the Exposé approach as well as the tabbed-approach...but increased PPI will help Exposé and not help tabs at all.
And tabs and Exposé both fail when there's an inordinate amount of windows to manage. Exposé may become better at handling more windows when higher PPI screens hit the market and when Apple actually uses them but higher PPI will only go so far. So, either way, we all need to manage the amount of tabs or windows we've got on screen.
And before you say that tabs and Exposé work well together since you can have less windows on screen than an all-Exposé workflow, you'd be wrong. Exposé is a very visual tool. Exposé-ing a tabbed window will not magically show you the info hidden inside a tab that doesn't have focus. If anything, tabs are destroying Exposé's usefulness. You really can't use them together unless your brain is working overtime remembering the content of every tab inside a window.
I'd be interested in seeing an extensive study of workflows using an all-tabs approach and an all-Exposé approach. I would put 100 bucks that the people using Exposé work, on average, quite a bit faster than people that use tabs.
Exposé advantages:
No need to name or rename anything to create any meaning when compared to the tab-approach.
Larger targets to hit when compared to tabs.
Showing all windows is not limited to the width of the window.
Drag-and-drop ability is conserved (some tab implementations do offer this though).
The thought process to find a single window out of a large number of window is essentially identical as the thought process to find a single tab out of a large number of tab. If someone uses excellent keywords, that person might find the tab he wants a little quicker than the person trying to find a window...but that gained time is instantly nullified by the fact that he had to rename that tab with a descriptive keyword.
Originally posted by PB
From experience I can say that it does not work that way when you have ten or more windows. Not for me anyway.
If you're going to have a large number of windows like that, you might as well just right-click on the app icon: instant alphabetically-ordered 'tabs'.
I can't imagine the traditional 'horizontal-tab' being efficient with more than 10 tabs. It forces people to widen the window and thus defeat the entire purpose of tabs in the first place: to save space.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
If you're going to have a large number of windows like that, you might as well just right-click on the app icon: instant alphabetically-ordered 'tabs'.
I can't imagine the traditional 'horizontal-tab' being efficient with more than 10 tabs. It forces people to widen the window and thus defeat the entire purpose of tabs in the first place: to save space.
It's not. But for 5-10 tabs, it works perfectly, allowing you to survey and close tabs in a very satisfying, easy, and visually non-disruptive way (which isn't the case using Exposé or --ugh! -- right-clicking the app icon). As it turns out, a group 5-10 tabs per windows works pretty well, at least for me.
As for a wide windows... with widescreen displays popping up everywhere, is this really a big issue?
Look, I *love* Exposé. It's the cat's meow. But the truth is each method has pros and cons. IMO, tabs edges out Exposé for the viewing & manipulation of multiple windows (web-surfing) and text-heavy documents (writing).
The beauty of it is you can use what you like. Tabs are completely invisible if you don't want them.
Originally posted by Hobbes
It's not. But for 5-10 tabs, it works perfectly, allowing you to survey and close tabs in a very satisfying, easy, and visually non-disruptive way (which isn't the case using Exposé or --ugh! -- right-clicking the app icon). As it turns out, a group 5-10 tabs per windows works pretty well, at least for me.
As for a wide windows... with widescreen displays popping up everywhere, is this really a big issue?
Look, I *love* Exposé. It's the cat's meow. But the truth is each method has pros and cons. IMO, tabs edges out Exposé for the viewing & manipulation of multiple windows (web-surfing) and text-heavy documents (writing).
The beauty of it is you can use what you like. Tabs are completely invisible if you don't want them.
They're not always entirely invisible especially when the developer thinks tabs are the greatest thing and forces them down everyone's throats. And they simply don't make sense on an OS with good window management such as OS X. Tabs originated from app developers using OSes with inadequate window management such as Linux and Windows. They don't really fit in OS X...and people that use them the wrong way nullify any benefit that Exposé may give.
With widescreen displays popping up everywhere, there shouldn't be any need for tabs...I'm on a stinkin' 1024x768 screen...and Exposé is working great...I imagine the 1920x1200 display I'm getting when the Mac Pros are out will be more than enough (for Exposé) for me...or anyone.
Look...I don't really care how people use their computer...I'm just trying to help them. Just don't try to get Apple to implement a custom and shitty window management feature inside apps when the OS offers something lightyears ahead in usefulness.
The only reason why Safari got tabs is because Hyatt was responsible for them on earlier browser projects he worked on. Hyatt, however, is only on the Safari team. Sorry.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
[B]They're not always entirely invisible especially when the developer thinks tabs are the greatest thing and forces them down everyone's throats.
But they are, when implemented correctly, as in Safari.
And they simply don't make sense on an OS with good window management such as OS X. Tabs originated from app developers using OSes with inadequate window management such as Linux and Windows. They don't really fit in OS X...and people that use them the wrong way nullify any benefit that Exposé may give.
Grrr. Look, bud, I've been using the Mac OS for 15 years, and OS X full-time since 10.2 -- don't tell me a popular UI element doesn't "really fit in OS X" and that I'm using it "the wrong way".
The fact that many people like and demand tabs is telling enough, but if implemented correctly (invisible if not used, and drag-and-drop savvy) and appropriately w/r/t to the app in question, they can trump Exposé for non-disruptive surveying & control of multiple windows.... as I keep saying, and you keep ignoring) . Exposé is not a solution for everything and everyone.
Originally posted by Hobbes
The fact that many people like and demand tabs is telling enough, but if implemented correctly (invisible if not used, and drag-and-drop savvy) and appropriately w/r/t to the app in question, they can trump Exposé for non-disruptive surveying & control of multiple windows.... as I keep saying, and you keep ignoring) . Exposé is not a solution for everything and everyone.
Show me an implementaion of tabs that trumps Exposé for non-disruptive surveying and control of multiple windows and we'll talk.
btw, I've been using Macs for 22 years...and OS X full time since Public Beta...do I win a prize?