GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 75029
tabbing should behave more like galeon tabs
Last modified: 2006-03-08 16:15:38 UTC
tabbing should behave more like galeon tabs manditory bad ascii drawing --------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------ ------------ ------------ | | | X| | X| | X| | | | you get the point.
I don't really get the point, no. ;-) Which aspect of Galeon tabs do you want?
1. I would like each tab to have a close button. 2. In addition, tabs should have a maximum fixed width so that if i have only two tabs open and gnome-terminal is maximized each of those doesn't take up half the screen In all fairness though gnome-terminal's behavior on this might be correct as the hig doesn't explicitly specify how tabbing should be implemented. Please see bug 72101.
1. I really think the Mozilla behavior is better, to have the close button on the far right; it's too easy to accidentally hit close while activating the tab in Galeon, and there's already far too little space for the tab titles. However the Mozilla behavior is essentially impossible to implement with GtkNotebook. 2. If you make tabs have a max size you potentially truncate the title when there's space available for it; if you make tabs large enough to hold the entire title, they frequently take up the entire width of the window. So, I don't know.
The mozilla behavior would be fine with me as well. Would you please add comments to bug 72101 since this behavior should be standardized across all gnome apps using tabs.
should have read part 1 a little closer. In the event that mozilla behaviour is not easily implemented, can we add right click menus to each tab, with tabbing options ala mozilla (new tab, close tab, close other tabs). My main concern is that this should be implemented uniformly amoung gnome apps.
Agreed, personally, that uniformity would be aesthetically pleasing if nothing else. Don't really like the moz solution- it is too easy to accidentally close the wrong tab. /me trembles to suggest that maybe having or not having the galeon-style close buttons could be a preference for g-t :)
Hi, I just opened bugzilla to specifically request that gnome-terminal implement a Mozilla-style close button (e.g, one close button thaT closes the currently viewed tab pane and when there is only one tab, hide the tab and the close button). Luis, I personally think that the Mozilla solution is quite intuitive and once one is familiar with it, it is easy to close the pane you intended to close. I agree with Havoc that having a close button on each tab is much more likely to cause accidental closing. This is probably why Mozilla puts a bit of space between the tabs and the close button. It makes accidental closings even less likely. I would very much like to see this tabbed pane UI become a generic UI element that occurs whereever needed in Gnome2.
With mozilla solution is certainly harder to close tabs accidentally, but I feel it really unintutive ...
bug 71444 ? Or is this a request for mozilla-style closing tabs, then we will just decide between the two patches/interfaces? Or we could save some work and just say that the patch from 71444 looks good (IMO) and that this bug is a WONTFIX/INVALID/DUP/SOMETHING
Duping this. We only need one discussion of how to close tabs. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 71444 ***
What about the other problem proposed in this bug? The fact that gnome-terminals tabs always extend across the entire app instead of being an appropriate size. This goes against the HIG as you can see with this link 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:
WRT note 11, I must strenuously disagree. Unlike the tabs in a browser, the tabs in a terminal frequently change titles when that tab is in the background. (Many cli/tli apps use title changes to update the status of what they are doing.) It would be a disaster were the tabs to change width every time the text changes. On the X load front, there would be constant, otherwise unnecessary redrawing. On the usability side, it is important that the user know where each tab is when scanning for updates. For the same reason it is so important to know where all of the displays are on a vehicle’s dash (think motorcycles, race cars and aircraft more than a family sedan/van/suv) it is important to be able to quickly scan the titles and get back to work w/o significant distraction. The HIG as described in note 11 is actually anti-usability and flat out wrong where it claims “[fixed width tabs] makes them harder to scan visually”. In short, gnome-term’s tab sizing is exactly right the way it is, and should not change. As for adding an additional, global tab close button, that is not really necessary but won’t hurt either. The close button in each tab should be enough, but redundancy in moderation is OK, too.