[quote="extropy"]Hi guys!
I was thinking on having tabs for windows some time ago but lack the skills to implement them.
Your pager looks good. But it's very impractical. You cannot tell even how much windows there are without moving the mouse to title bar.
I'd suggest to draw all tabs on the title bar. If there are many tabs, draw the icons only. The active tab can take up as much space as needed and remaining space is used by other tabs.
I made a little mockup of the title bar:
[img]http://semweb.mii.lu.lv/viesturs/tabbedWindows.jpg[/img]
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Well we don't think that the title bar is the right place for a tab bar, because it would be complicated with all the window decorators, so it's actually not possible at the moment. Anyway even if it would be possible imagine a small window with only a title bar size of maybe 200px, hard to click there any tabs.
[quote]
Some usability features i'd like to have:
* to be able to create a tabbed window group by dragging one window titlebar over another.
* to be able add and remove windows by dragging them into/form the tab-bar
* to be able to reorder tabs by drag-and drop.
* to be able to merge two tab-bars.
* to be able to split the tab-bar into two windows - each containing some part of tabs.[/quote]
Yeah we want to add some of this tab features in group later. In fact I'm currently doing the initial work for it.
[quote="magicrobotmonkey"]I think it would be nice to have the "scale" effect on tabs. So you can basically group a bunch of windows (a "task") and invoke scale just on those windows. I've being trying to stop using tabbed browsing in FF so i can utilize scale more, but i like this solution better. You dont have a lot of windows polluting things, but you can still use the scale functionality to switch windows.
[/quote]
Well we could add a support for groups or tabbed groups in scale so that it only shows the group windows. A good feature that we could add later.
[quote]
Also, (and I'm not sure if this is beryls job), it would be nice to have windows automatically "group" I.E. If I click a link in an email in evolution, it opens a ff window which is grouped with the evolution window.
[/quote]
(At leats) I think group shouldn't handle that sorts of things... But you could do it with dbus + script. Maybe someone will write a script for it.
[quote]
EDIT!!! and another thing: perhaps make these grouping labelable, and/or stick-around-able so I could set up "web-dev" and open a tabbed group thats jedit and various firefoxes open to varios sites i develop, etc...[/quote]
Well, we don't really understand what you mean, but I think you mean something like adding labels to groups? Possible but it as no high priority now.
[quote="lonjerpc"]I really like extropy's ideas
Here are some ideas to build on them..
1.
I have an idea for the interface for merging two windows into one window with multiple tab bars for all the tab bars in the original two windows.
It would work by causing the window borders on the widows to be merged to change colors when their top borders overlap. When the borders change colors the user would then be able to press some key that would cause the windows to merge into one with more tabs. If the user did not hit the key nothing would happen but a color change that would only exist while the top borders overlap.
2.
I think that when you hover over a tab on a window it should change what is in the window to what is on the tap you are hovering over.
When you move your mouse away from the tab it should change back to the original window except if you actually click the tab. That should actually change the window to show that tab until another tab is clicked.
I do not think it is very useful to do a scale like thing for tabs to me it seems easier to just hover over a tab to see a preview in the widow it would occupy if you actually clicked it. This might just be my preference.
3. Put exit buttons on tabs
4. When you right click on a window border have an option to execute a command. Like left click, type firefox, and a fire fox tab appears.
5. delfick gave me an idea
What if you could select a portion of a window border. ( say by doing a right click hold and drag over a portion of a window border) And then do a left click and hold to drag that portion of the window border away from the window tabs and all to another location.
That location could be another window border where it would be combined with it.
Or That location could be another spot on the desk top where you could then click on a tab in that window border and a window for that tab be created(unshaded).[/quote]
1. We don't really understand what you mean but it sounds a bit complicated..
2. Hm.. nice idea for preview shouldn't be that hard to do since we already draw thumbs.
3. Yeah good feature.
4. No idea what you mean. oO
5. No idea what you mean too. :P
[quote="delfick"]also, allow an option to have a bar, unlike the tab bar in firefox, that you can attach to either the top or bottom of the window......and either between the window and the window borders or after the window borders (if you get what i mean) and then take on the colour and transparency of the window border
this way the pager won't get in the way of the window contents, and in comparison of having it on the titlebar, it won't mean the user is confused on exactly which window they are viewing (say they have multiple windows of the same application)
i think that would work very well :D
[b]EDIT1[/b] :: also have it so that either hovering over a tab for a user-specific amount of time, or rightclicking or hovering and pressing a certain key, etc, allows a the window menu to come up with a scaled preview of the window next to the window menu ....[/quote]
Hm yeah moving and attaching the tab bar to the window borders could be an option. Maybe we will do different modes for tab bar placement. After we have done the major work..
BTW. I should remind you that nobody has be to afraid. This rules are only for a better overview, its easier for us this way to read and implement your ideas. ;)