Great debates! Tabs

I’d like to talk about a growing trend which has been displeasing me lately: Tabs. They’re everywhere! Well, maybe not everywhere. Really the kinds of tabs I want to talk about are the ones made common by web browsers like Firefox or Safari, etc. but which are also showing up in apps like Photoshop and other non-browser apps.

Now, I’m not talking so much about say, a Settings window for an app, where different settings are on different tabs, grouped by relevance. Grouping functions of an application together on a tab is not what my gripe is about. That seems fairly appropriate to me. My gripe is with grouping documents into tabs.

So let’s move on with the classic example: the modern web-browser. You can click a link and have it open (optionally) in a new tab (there are other ways of creating tabs but I’m sure we all know them, and it’s really unimportant here). This typically reveals a tab bar, with small rectangles titled for each tab you have open, also bearing a small icon for dismissing the tab. Most modern tab bar implementations allow you to re-order the tabs and also expand them into full windows (otherwise the tab acts as a child to its window). When a tab is selected in the window, it is the sole document the user may view in that window. This is the basic idea of tabs which I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

Here’s my problem with tabs: Let’s say I’ve got Safari open, one window containing 5 tabs. I want to switch from my email tab to my news tab. I’ll just use alt/cmd-tab to switch to new. Ironically, this functionality is busted because I’m using tabs. Also, things like Exposé on the Mac (and I’m sure Compiz on Linux) are broken when it comes to tabs because, they deal with windows and not tabs.

Let’s take a breather here. Yep, most every tab implementation I’ve seen has a keyboard shortcut for switching between tabs. Sadly, these are all different shortcuts most of the time. And even if they are the same in different apps, it’s still not the cmd/alt-tab we’re so accustomed to. And hey, Firefox is pretty extensible, so maybe there is a hack to get it to co-operate with alt-tab, but that only solves the problem for Firefox, not all tab apps.

If you don’t use a keyboard, you’ve now got to hit those ridiculously small rectangles in the tab bar. Let me explain ridiculously small, I’m comparing the target size of the tabs to the target size of entire windows (which, as you may remember, is what we had before tabs). So I’m saying, if I have three windows onscreen at once (tiled in some manner, not full screen), each one of those windows is orders of magnitude easier to hit (and therefor switch to) with a mouse than is a tab.

I don’t think tabs are all bad. I think the real problem lies in the paradigm associated with them. The general paradigm seems to be something like “My browser is fullscreen and I have 3 tabs open, one for every task I’m currently focusing on”. However, if you work more like “I have 3 windows open, one for each task with tabs briefly opened in each window when it is appropriate” then it’s much easier (as I’ve explained) to switch between them. I’m not saying “do away with tabs altogether”, but I am saying tabs should should only be used temporarily, and only when relevant to that window’s task.

It often happens one of my tasks is researching a certain topic. Given my paradigm for browsing, I’ve got a window open with Wikipedia and one with Google Docs. As I read wikipedia, I’ll sometimes open a new tab to read on a related subject, close it, and then switch to my Google Docs window to write something about my topic. The different areas of focus stay separate and tabs are only used briefly, like an extra buffer or scratchpad for any given task.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this one, because I know tabbed applications like browsers are one place we all spend a lot of time.

Getting Lost

I had a meeting with a company this morning at 10:30 in a part of the city I’ve never been to before. Between Google Maps and OC Transpo’s trip planner, I was about to figure out approximate times and buses I’d have to take. Since the meeting was at 10:30, I obviously didn’t want to be late, so I targeted to be there about 10:00. Both websites said the latest I could get there, without being late, was 9:00.

I woke up early at 6:45, and got up about 8:00, got showered, etc, and left by 8:30. I jumped on the 96 to Bayview, hopped off, and picked up the 182 to where I thought the building was (according to Google Maps). I started in search for a Tim Hortons, found one, but the line was ridiculously long. I started back to the building. When I got to the building, I remembered the email said suite 300. I get to suite 300, but it’s not that company. I try looking it up on my cellphone through webmail, the my phone was rejecting the webmail’s server certificate. Great. I do a quick google, and find a result for a building down the road, so with 20 minutes to my interview, I hike it about a kilometer to the other building. Upon reaching the elevator of this 7 storey building, and I got in and pressed floor 3. She started to press floor 3, then realized I already had. Knowing about the meeting today, she asked if I was the person whom had the meeting.

The meeting went fairly good, about 50 minutes long. I left the building, and went to the bus stop, and waited for about 15 minutes for a bus to arrive. A 15 minute bus ride to a transit terminal, and I took a bus back home. It took me about an hour and 20 minutes to get home, and in 30C heat with 35C humidex. I probably covered about 5.5 km (3mi) of walking today, but I could do with the exercise.

Questionable

One thing I’ve always said I was going to do, is read all the archives of Questionable Content, a daily web comic. When I first saw in on April 1st, I thought it looked really cool. I decided that I’d read right from the beginning, but with 1,200 comics, that isn’t an easy feat. I recently had a small three week vacation before I flew out to Ottawa, so I took 3 days, and read about 300 comics a day. I can safely say I’m caught up, and I highly recommend the comic to other people.

Also, sorry for the lack of content of late. The well of ideas is kinda dry right now. I start a new job on monday, so maybe that will give me something to talk about.