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Bug 72170 - Add close button to tabs [Was: Clean up close/exit options]
Add close button to tabs [Was: Clean up close/exit options]
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 71444
Product: gnome-terminal
Classification: Core
Component: general
unspecified
Other other
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: GNOME Terminal Maintainers
GNOME Terminal Maintainers
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2002-02-21 19:55 UTC by Michael Petnuch
Modified: 2006-01-09 00:00 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Michael Petnuch 2002-02-21 19:55:08 UTC
The options in the file menu are "new window" "new tab" "close tab" "close
window".  IMHO instead of seprate close window/tab their should be a
generic close (which would close a tab if is tabed or close a window if
using windows) and then an exit.
Comment 1 Rodd Clarkson 2002-02-21 22:52:47 UTC
I'm not sure I agree.

The close window option closes the entire window regardless of whether
there are multiple tabs open or not.  The close tab option simply
closes the tab.  (Obviously, but worth stating I think).

Obviously, if you cut the list down to close, and it closed a tab if
multiple tabs and the window if no tabs then the user could close the
window by clicking the close window button.

However, there are other options that may be worth considering.

If you want to cut down on the number of options (there aren't that
many) then maybe you could have only a close window option in the
menu, but each tab could have a 'X' mark to close that tab.  This
would simplify the menu and allow for easy closing of any tab in the
window.

In fact it might be worth considering leaving the two close options
(tab and window) and adding the close 'X' to the tabs as well.
Comment 2 Luis Villa 2002-02-22 00:31:07 UTC
Something to file away for later, and maybe consult the usability
people on.
Comment 3 Anna Marie Dirks 2002-09-23 20:06:54 UTC
This bug is crying out for some UI-rubric applying. Bear with me. :) 

So, the more that UI elements (in this case, tabs and windows)behave
consistently across the desktop, the easier it is for users to master
the Ways of Gnome, right? (Since users can transfer knowledge from one
problem to another in a consistent desktop)

This said, tabbed windows (in Gnome) first appeared (or first achieved
mass popularity) in galeon (then mozilla), where they are closeable
via both a "Close Tab" and a little "x" in the upper right corner of
the window. 

Ergo, in my mind, the most sensible thing to do with this bug is to
add a little "x" for closing the selected tab directly above the
scrollbar on the terminal. Then, tabbed (working\browsing) would work
consistently across the desktop.. 

Comment 4 Calum Benson 2002-10-01 18:31:49 UTC
Except in gedit, which puts the close button on the tab, not above the
scrollbar :)  (Actually, isn't that what Galeon does too, or have they
changed it in the 2.0 port?)

FWIW, personally I prefer it on the tab, I can never find the damn
thing in Mozilla!
Comment 5 Havoc Pennington 2002-10-01 18:52:32 UTC
I like on the tab too, but you need a refinement where clicking an
unfocused tab never activates the close button, perhaps.

(Thinking about this, I really have a feeling there used to be a patch 
in here for doing the per-tab close buttons like this - but I don't
see any such patch anymore, or remember seeing it during recent bug
triage.)
Comment 6 Calum Benson 2002-10-21 16:47:17 UTC
Hmm, actually I think the 'never allow unfocused tabs to have their
close buttons clicked' could be annoying, but maybe justifiably so.  I
quite often close tabs in Galeon/Mozilla that way, though, I'm not
sure I'd like to have to focus them first.
Comment 7 Luis Villa 2002-10-24 15:13:36 UTC
FWIW, I discussed this a bit with marco (from galeon) the other day.
He was thinking about doing the 'only close if already focused' bit in
galeon2. I talked him out of it, since, like Calum, I frequently close
tabs that aren't focused, and I think I can recall maybe once (out of
the literally hundreds of thousands[1] of times I've switched tabs)
that I accidentally closed a tab that I wanted to switch to. So, at
least for me (admittedly an extremely atypical user) the irritation
caused by having to focus before closing is far outweighed by the
extremely slim risk of accidentally closing the wrong tab.

Anna: the behavior you've described is what mozilla does, and frankly,
I find it very confusing- it's often very hard to tell which tab is
going to be closed by the close button, since it's not directly
associated with a specific tab.

[1]All I do all day is switch back and forth between galeon-tabbed
bugs. All I Do. Yes, shoot me now. :)
Comment 8 Anna Marie Dirks 2002-10-24 15:32:40 UTC
Luis: Cool, that makes you a really useful test case. (And suddenly, I
don't feel so bad about spending all day, every day, recovering from
Glade crashes. :) 

My basic idea, which I should have expressed more clearly, is that we
should try to be consistent in how tabs are treated across the
desktop. You guys are totally right, I was misremembering galeon's
behavior.. so I guess the only odd-man-out is Mozilla, eh? (I wonder
why they picked a different closing mechanism than Galeon.) 

Anyway-- my concern about putting the close buttons on the tabs
themselves is just that they consitute a rather small target area. If
our test user (Luis) hasn't found any major problems with that, then
maybe this worry is unfounded. 
Comment 9 Dave Bordoley [Not Reading Bug Mail] 2002-10-25 13:57:24 UTC
>My basic idea, which I should have expressed more clearly, is that we
>should try to be consistent in how tabs are treated across the
>desktop.

I agree with this. I would think the best way to do this would be to
provide some sort of generic tab implementation built on top of
gtknotebook that all tabbed apps could use, good for consistency etc.
and we can avoid having to file bugs with every single app. (Although
I don't think we should be encouraging MDI in the general case).

>Anyway-- my concern about putting the close buttons on the tabs
>themselves is just that they consitute a rather small target area. If
>our test user (Luis) hasn't found any major problems with that, then
>maybe this worry is unfounded. 

I have to agree with louie on this one, close buttons on the tabs just
seems easier to me as well as a bug hunter.
Comment 10 Mariano Suárez-Alvarez 2004-05-01 09:37:50 UTC
Reflect the mutation occured to the bug in the summary.
Comment 11 Kjartan Maraas 2005-02-16 10:37:50 UTC
Isn't this a duplicate of bug #71444?
Comment 12 Guilherme de Siqueira Pastore 2006-01-09 00:00:41 UTC
It surely is, marking as such.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 71444 ***