GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 105076
Proposal for a small menu reorganizations regarding tab items
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
Proposal for a slight change in keyboard shortcuts and menu item locations 1. Remove New tab items from the file menu. s/New Window/New Browser. New window is an incredibly vague menu name (yes, I know nautilus uses it and i hate it). What type of window? Whats a window? In contrast New Browser is very clear, indicating this menu item creates a new browser. Similarly s/close window/close. The fact that the browser is contained in a window is an implementation detail right? Also use ctrl+w to close the window, because users of all other (sdi) apps expect that ctrl+w will close the current window (I think i just contradicted myself a little bit:) ). File |-New Browser Ctrl+N |.... |-Close Ctrl+W Move new tab and close tab to the tabs menu, if only because we should not force an mdi ui upon users who don't want it, or who are not use to it. Tabs |-New Tab Ctrl+T |... |-Close Tab Shift+Ctrl+W
Created attachment 14046 [details] [review] Just so you don't think i'm trying to give you extra work, here's a patch
I'm sort of favorable to the proposal but I'd like to get more input on it. Maybe it should be put on ephy-dev ? Maybe even usability list ? Thanks a lot about the patch, would be nice if you could also change FileNewTab ... to TabsNewTab ... and the func name ;)
Yeah i'll cook up a new patch with that fix and i'll fix up the context menu's to use New Browser as well....I'd say talk about it on epiphany-dev-list. FWIW seth is on that list and we can avoid some of the noise that is common on usability.
I dunno, I kind of hate the tabs menu.. I always hoped it would be gone sometime ;) Bunch of useless menuitems in there.. only needed for a11y I guess..
Looking at usability discussion: while the old behavior is more document oriented (and consistent with a multiple documents app like gnumeric) the new one isnt. Obviously you could argue that gnumeric does not have multiple windows, so it could be different. In addition people used to ctrl+w could easily close all tabs without willing, we would probably need a confirmation dialog in that case ? Just brain storming. I'd love this would be solved at an gnome level.
The difference that I can see from the gnumeric case is that you have the simmetry New document, Close document. While in galeon you would have New Browser (in window)/New browser (in tab) (with the second item being not about the document, but about it's placement), Close browser. Bah, Tabs are a mess, maybe having them living in their own menu and not disturb the other parts of the ui is better ;)
I've given this some thought, especially after using my modified patch. I can conceivably see an argument for keeping new tab and close tab in the file menu, for consistency reasons. I still think we should s/window/browser. Window is so so so so vague. (does close all windows in nautilus really close all windows, no it closes a certain subset). also i think we should drop "window" from close (it's redundant). as far keybinding. ctrl+w should close the current window. This is a standard keybinding, and we shouldn't confuse users by changing its behavior. User's expect that it will close the window from all other apps and it should. for close tab we could switch to shift+ctrl+w or shift+ctrl+t. In some ways i prefer shift+ctrl+t, but i don't care too much. In the end this should be worked out in the hig, though i suspect that there is little motivation to do so as we don't want to encourage mdi, because as you mentioned above tabs are messy (though in the case of web browser have their merits). Finally i don't think we should popup a dialog if tabs are open in the window, this will just get annoying and there really isn't that much risk of data loss, especially if we can provide a really good history system. I haven't had time to reply to the thread on usability but will try to later.
What about: New Browser New Tab Close (ctrl+w) Close would close tabs one by one, but would close also the window when on the last tab. It seem to me that Close all tabs functionality is not that important and can anyway be done with the wm close. Your proposal would work too though, I think.
Created attachment 14159 [details] [review] Another patch, keeps tab items in the file menu though.
ok i ask calum about a hig recommendation on this, and he reply quite succintly, "we do, don't use it." So i don't think we should hold out for one any time soon.
Created attachment 14161 [details] [review] fixed a mneumonic collision.
Looks good, please commit ! Thanks.
marco, could you commit this for me, my home internet connection seems borked right now :(
Done.