GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 70575
Tabs are hard to use when there are more than 1 screen width worth
Last modified: 2011-02-14 13:06:43 UTC
Currently, when you have more tabs than fit on a single screen/window width, galeon puts a set of horisonal "scrolling arrows" just to the right of the tabs. I've found this to be horribly difficult to use. The usability folks suggested that instead of making the size of the "tabs" fixed, they could be sized dynamically, depending on how many tabs are currently being displayed, and the current width of the window. This seems like the best solution, but if you feel it's unworkable for some reason, let me know, as I have some ideas on how to improve the current behaviour, short of replacing it outright as I've just suggested.
Reassigning to me. I agree that the left and right arrows on the tab listing are awful from a UI perspective; they're not something that we added ourselves, but rather, the standard behavior of the GtkNotebook widget. Resizing the tabs to fit in the window would be a possible solution, and I'll try adding this at some point, but I have a feeling that it will cause more problems (see the bizarre tab switching delays, detailed at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59186 ). In the meantime, there's a handy listing of all the tabs in the context menu that shows up when you right-click a tab.
*** Bug 148469 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I'm not sure what we can really do with this, the behaviour comes from the GtkNotebook widget.
Any news on this one? I'd really like to see this "fixed". The current behavior is horrible and makes me miss Firefox. One Galeon window is really usable for max 7 tabs (with 1152x864 resolution). Furthermore the 'scrolling arrows' force the user to scroll trough the content of tabs too. I don't see why this couldn't be fixed as there are other gtk apps with variable width tabs, like xfce4 Terminal (not xfterm4). Or are they using some kind of nasty hack to get that tab behavior, and which Galeon devs would not consider? But, I also see a small problem with variable width tabs - it'd be more difficult to close a lot of tabs with the buttons located on the tabs. Those buttons would also take too much space with variable width tabs. I suppose these are the reasons why Firefox has just one button for closing tabs. Oh BTW... I don't see "a handy listing of all the tabs in the context menu that shows up when you right-click a tab" in Galeon 1.3.20...
I have 22 tabs open right now. If a change is made, please limit the resizing so that the tabs aren't smooshed into uselessness when used/abused to this degree.
#3: gnome-terminal might be worth a look, it does this when using tabs.
Suggestion: put a list of the window's tabs in the context menu for each tab (as Galeon used to do). I've been using this patch: diff -ruwN galeon-1.3.20/src/galeon-tab-menu.c galeon-1.3.20.ben/src/galeon-tab-menu.c --- galeon-1.3.20/src/galeon-tab-menu.c 2004-06-09 15:57:46.000000000 -0400 +++ galeon-1.3.20.ben/src/galeon-tab-menu.c 2005-03-13 02:59:51.000000000 -0500 @@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ #define TAB_MENU_PLACEHOLDER_PATH "/menubar/Tabs/TabMenuPlaceholder" +#define TAB_CONTEXT_MENU_PLACEHOLDER_PATH "/GaleonTabPopup/TabContextMenuPlaceholder" #define MENU_ITEM_MAX_LENGTH 40 static void @@ -192,6 +193,11 @@ name, gtk_action_get_name (action), GTK_UI_MANAGER_MENUITEM, FALSE); + gtk_ui_manager_add_ui (p->merge, p->merge_id, + TAB_CONTEXT_MENU_PLACEHOLDER_PATH, + name, gtk_action_get_name (action), + GTK_UI_MANAGER_MENUITEM, FALSE); + /* Make sure all widgets are in the same radio_gruop */ gtk_radio_action_set_group (GTK_RADIO_ACTION (action), radio_group); radio_group = gtk_radio_action_get_group (GTK_RADIO_ACTION (action)); diff -ruwN galeon-1.3.20/ui/galeon-egg-ui.xml galeon-1.3.20.ben/ui/galeon-egg-ui.xml --- galeon-1.3.20/ui/galeon-egg-ui.xml 2005-01-22 13:23:52.000000000 -0500 +++ galeon-1.3.20.ben/ui/galeon-egg-ui.xml 2005-03-13 03:00:42.000000000 -0500 @@ -227,12 +227,13 @@ </popup> <popup name="GaleonTabPopup" action="PopupToplevelAction"> + <menuitem name="TabPopupCloseTab" action="TabPopupCloseTabAction" /> + <menuitem name="TabsCloseOtherTabs" action="TabsCloseOtherTabsAction" /> <menuitem name="TabsReload" action="ViewReloadAction" /> <menuitem name="TabsClone" action="TabsCloneAction" /> <menuitem name="TabsDetach" action="TabsDetachAction" /> <separator name="GTPSep1" /> - <menuitem name="TabPopupCloseTab" action="TabPopupCloseTabAction" /> - <menuitem name="TabsCloseOtherTabs" action="TabsCloseOtherTabsAction" /> + <placeholder name="TabContextMenuPlaceholder"/> </popup> <toolbar name="pptoolbar">
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. Galeon developers won't be fixing or back porting any fixes for this version. Please upgrade to latest stable Galeon version to receive bug fixes. We are sorry it could not be fixed for your version.