I’ve written about tabbed interfaces in the past, and thankfully BBEdit, Path Finder and Transmit have all implemented tabs since then. Applications like Camino (and Firefox and Safari) and Adium already had tabs, so almost all apps I use now have tabbed interfaces. There is still one big hole in my tabbed arsenal, and I’ve got an idea for a potential solution. More on this in a later post.
I’ve been thinking about why tabbed interfaces have become so popular, and why I’ve grown to prefer them to the single-window model alternatives. I think it boils down to 2 main points:
- Operating systems do a bad job managing windows across applications. Each application knows how to manage its windows within that application in a more productive than the OS does.
- Computers can do more at once then they used to, so you can run more apps at once now (generating more open windows to manage).
Tim added a comment to one of my previous posts pointing at WinTabber, which looks like it could be useful. Of course, there are only screenshots up at the moment (what, no blog?), so who knows if it will actually work. 😉
What are your favorite tabbed applications? Why do you think tabbed interfaces have become so popular lately?
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. 🙂
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.
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.
Tabbing solution for Windows
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.
This is what I was getting at in point #1 above – each app can choose the “tab” representation that works best for their usage.
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…
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.
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!
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.
[…] King just posted about why tabbed interfaces have gained in popularity lately. On the solution end, he points out WinTabber. […]