Comments on: Why Tabbed Interfaces are so Popular

By: Eddie

Eddie — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:59:48 +0000

Speaking of how operating systems produce functionality by managing windows seems like it defeats the purpose on Windows. My perspective on a unix workstation would be fluxbox with a single window and tabs enabled. This makes for one lean mean tabs setup.

By: Stew Brennand

Stew Brennand — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 19:33:50 +0000

Firefox is of course a no brainer, been using that for two years or more.

However, when it comes to a premium example of how to make a program “tab-able” (say that five times!) Dreamweaver is my tabbed program of choice.

Everything is tabbed and to that end, you can pretty much create custom tabs for whatever you need. This is a huge advantage for code demons and designers alike.

Adobe can learn a thing or two here in this regard, and with them acquiring Macromedia (afik), I would expect to see more tabbing in future products. This of course would set a new trend with popular applications.

As far as I’m concerned, any application that requires multiple documents to be open at any given time /should/ be tabbed, it’s so much easier to browse open files this way.

Oooo, did I mention Directory Opus? Windows Explorer just doesn’t cut it for file management. Multiple directories open in, yes you guessed it, a tabbed interface! Thats the least of its features, but goes beyond the scope and topic of this entry. Go check it out. No I don’t work for them, but I do use the software as a replacement for Windows Explorer.

http://www.gpsoft.com.au

Can you tell I get excited over tabs? Hmm, I think I’ll call my first born girl, Tabitha. I just happen have a Tabby cat, and now I’m creeping myself out…

G’day!

By: xavier

xavier — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 16:23:29 +0000

Well, I’ve been hooked on FireFox for the past 3 months, and now that I’m hooked I rarely use IE, except maybe for validating web design.

Pretty frustrating that most of what I design works in FireFox, but not IE.

By: alexking.org: Blog

alexking.org: Blog — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 22:44:45 +0000

Tabbed E-mail

As discussed yesterday, I’m a fan of tabbed interfaces. The only application I use with regularity that isn’t tabbed is my e-mail client. I don’t like using any type of three-pane view for e-mail, instead I open each message in a new…

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:20:57 +0000

This is what I was getting at in point #1 above - each app can choose the “tab” representation that works best for their usage.

By: Lorin Rivers

Lorin Rivers — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:13:47 +0000

Where tabs fail is when there are very many of them, which is why I find drawers (like BBEdit uses) to work better for me.

By: mike: blog

mike: blog — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 14:07:40 +0000

Tabbing solution for Windows

By: Eirik

Eirik — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 10:59:21 +0000

My favourite tabbed application is (of course) Opera It has a really good implementation, with keyboard shortcuts to easily switch between tabs. On Windows, it makes a lot of sense to have tabs instead of windows, otherwise it would fill the task bar or whatever it’s called. It should just have one entry per application.

By: Kerim Friedman

Kerim Friedman — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:24:24 +0000

I rely upon Tab Mix Plus for Firefox. It not only allows multiple rows of tabs, but it also remembers what tabs were open if you quit or crash. Even better, it allows you to quickly re-open the last fewclosed tabs if you suddenly regret your decision.

I rely upon tabbed web browsers because of RSS feeds - I open all the stories I wish to read in multiple tabs. I would need it less if more sites offered full feeds, but that is a different story.

By: Brett

Brett — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 04:44:01 +0000

I have a new favorite, DVBisualizer, a java based SQL query tool. Until recently I mostly use Query Analyzer from MS. Not only are there multiple, tabbed query editors, you can also have multiple, tabbed, result sets. I’m in heaven.