GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 72170
Add close button to tabs [Was: Clean up close/exit options]
Last modified: 2006-01-09 00:00:41 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.
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.
Something to file away for later, and maybe consult the usability people on.
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..
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!
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.)
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.
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. :)
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.
>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.
Reflect the mutation occured to the bug in the summary.
Isn't this a duplicate of bug #71444?
It surely is, marking as such. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 71444 ***