GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 304932
Tabs are inconsistent with other Gnome apps
Last modified: 2006-03-15 19:50:39 UTC
Version details: CVS 2005/05/20 Distribution/Version: Ubuntu 5.04 Tabs in Gossip 0.8.90 CVS chat windows are inconsistent with those found in other apps like, say, gedit. They take the whole width of the window and are all the same size, where it seems it should be as small as possible, like shown here : http://www.imendio.com/images/gossip-chat.png. Close tab button would be fine too.
With regards to the close button, I do think that should be on the tab (or perhaps there should be a button on the far right/left like Firefox has). That is one feature I do miss. Other people have mentioned to me that the text size is inconsistent with the regular tab text size seen in other apps too. About the size of the tabs, I am undecided on those, I don't like them too small because then the text is missed off (even if it is ellipsized) and there may still be width in the window to show the full name. Currently as they are it's OK, the only other way I would like to see how it looks is if the tabs were all different sizes to the width of text (until they fill the width of the window and then perhaps become evenly sized and ellipsized). Micke, what is your input on this, I am not really worried either way, the close button and the size of the text are more of interest to me.
The reason we removed the close button on each tab was that it simply takes too much space. In contrast to a web page (or a gedit document) a chat window tends to be small, with as you can see in the screenshot you only fit two chats in one window without having to grow it or split the chats out into seperate windows. As for the size of the text, it was done for the same reason and imho works very well. Regarding the width of a tab when there is only one contact in the window I couldn't really care less :)
Another idea would be to hide tabs when there are only one, which would make more space available and hide the tab, which is, imho, very disgraceful. That's the way gnome-terminal does (hide tab, homogeneous, on the whole width, without close button)
The reason we always have the tab is to have a drag point, for example if you want to merge two windows, you simple grab the tab of one and drag it into the other window.
I do miss the close button and would still like to argue for it. When managing one's chat windows, one is busy with the mouse and it is convenient to able to click chats away (the text in there isn't volatile anyway, a miss-click doesn't hurt). As for the size, they are indeed a bit large. Maybe when Cairo is used in Gtk+, you will be able to draw them smaller. As for the tab widths, I most of the times tend to close multiple tabs when feeling like managing the "mess" in Gossip, my browser etc. and it _is_ nice when the have a homogenic size. I find the chat windows to be a bit small, even on 1024x768 I resize them to 400x280 (it is 350x250 now) for IMO optimal readability. I set the DPI of GNOME Desktop fonts to a correct value, namely to the DPI found by X not the override 96. So I normally use 9pt or 8pt fonts, the fonts in the tabs now become 6pt, rather small...
It is fine the way it is, the only thing I might change is the 'x' being on the far right, but I am not really bothered about it. Paul if you are changing resolutions to see the text in the tab, you are probably not running at the recommended resolution for your monitor. It is perfectly fine here on my 1600x1200 monitor. Steve, with regards to hiding the tab, as Micke says, it is a valuable drag point. I use it ALL the time to drag tabs to/from chat windows together or from my roster to the chat window. Gnome terminal is almost 2x as wide on my desktop than a regular Gossip chat window, so space is not an issue. I am closing this report since I am happy with the way it is, and so is Micke.
I am very sad about the missing close tab button. i liked the button on every tab, because i also can easily close inactive tabs, without opening them. On firefox i sometimes close a tab, which i didnt want, because all tabs have only one button. for me this change is no improvement. the "full-size"-tab is, IMHO, also hiding the "drag-point-feature".
The widths of the tabs seesm to go against the gnome HIG, as can be seen on this page http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/controls-notebooks.html specifically this paragraph "Use tabs that are proportional to the width of their labels. Don't just set all the tabs to the same width, as this makes them harder to scan visually, and limits the number of tabs you can fit into the notebook without scrolling. For example:" By having one large tab it makes different gnome apps have a different look and feel with the way they handle tabs. Some sort of consesus across tabbed applications should be met so that it is consistant. As of right now I would personally go with the way epiphany and gedit operate as they tend to be the "larger" apps of gnome, but then again gnome-terminal works similar to gossip. Either way gnome apps should pick one and be consistant.
Close button has been added back. Regarding the size of the tabs. Epiphany has the same size of all tabs so it's broken too ;) I have tried really hard to get a usable behavior out of the tabs and it was as far as I could see impossible to get it to behave well with ellipsization and non-expanding, homogenous tabs. If anyone has a patch to make it work, I would be happy to accept it. It might be possible to get it to behave a little bit better by switching the expand property on and off depending on whether there is one tab or more, just to make it more clear that it's a tab in a notebook when there is only one tab.