NationStates Jolt Archive

Mozilla Labs launched a design competition with the intention to find an alternative to 'tabbed' surfing.

Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin Internet, where ten browser sessions were "many browser sessions". Today, 20+ parallel sessions are quite common; the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application; we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive. However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless. And tabs don’t work well if you use them with heterogeneous information. They’re a good solution to keep the screen tidy for the moment. And that’s just what they should continue doing.

http://design-challenge.mozilla.com/summer09/

So what are you suggesting? Or do you want to keep tabs like they are presented today?

Hmmm, I withhold judgment until I see what they have to replace them. However, 20 browser windows as opposed to 20 tabs is not a solution.

Hmm... I have no ideas here, but if they can come up with another brilliant idea, more power to them.

Hmmm, I withhold judgment until I see what they have to replace them. However, 20 browser windows as opposed to 20 tabs is not a solution.

The head of user experience at Mozilla suggested already to move them to the side, below each other and grouping them according the activity (application, workspace, ...)

They are looking for something better, not equal and not worse :)

The head of user experience at Mozilla suggested already to move them to the side, below each other and grouping them according the activity (application, workspace, ...)

Sounds good.

The head of user experience at Mozilla suggested already to move them to the side, below each other and grouping them according the activity (application, workspace, ...)

They are looking for something better, not equal and not worse :)

You know, for those of us on 16 x 9 screens, they could trim the side of the browser window (when maximized) to a 4 x 3 ratio for viewing, and then use the extra space on the side to list the open tabs.

This would help when we're viewing pages that break on 16 x 9 screens, and provide a nifty place for tab selection.

replace tabs with pop ups that have ads built in.

I'm wondered why tabs are always visible. Why they don't show up, when your mouse is close by?

That way, they're still one click away and not wasting screen estate.

I'm happy with the tab system, don't take away the tab system!!

Looks like it's an attempt to turn the browser into an operating system-like environment, instead of what they currently are. Turn them into the central aspect of the users computer experience, rather than just "getting rid of tabs".

What a step backwards. I will stop using Firefox if Mozilla gets rid of the taps feature.

Looks like it's an attempt to turn the browser into an operating system-like environment, instead of what they currently are. Turn them into the central aspect of the users computer experience, rather than just "getting rid of tabs".

The OS is already not that important anymore. Most browsers are available in all popular Operating Systems.

And slowly but sure, the internet is becoming our desktop.

You don't use an OS application to post on NSG, but a browser one. And millions check their mail inside their browser, etc...

I don't think they want to get rid of the OS now, the tabs will do, currently.

I'm happy with the tab system, don't take away the tab system!!
Complacency is the second largest obstacle to advancement of any kind. :mad:

What a step backwards. I will stop using Firefox if Mozilla gets rid of the taps feature.

Firefox never played Taps for me. Is that a plugin?

I normally have over 100 tabs open, using TabMix+ to manage them. My only complaint is that I can't keep them grouped by the site, and they tend to turn into a mess.

Half these tabs could be replaced by bookmarks, but keeping them as tabs 1) keeps me from forgetting about them, 2) provides a "snapshot".

The functionality can certainly be improved. For instance, 2 levels, placing multiple open links on one tab. Enhanced merging of tab and bookmark functions. Collapsible tab/bookmark groups with renew/no renew settings.
And BTW no one is getting rid of tabs, they're complementing or enhancing them.

You know, for those of us on 16 x 9 screens, they could trim the side of the browser window (when maximized) to a 4 x 3 ratio for viewing, and then use the extra space on the side to list the open tabs.

This would help when we're viewing pages that break on 16 x 9 screens, and provide a nifty place for tab selection.

16x9 :eek:

I have a resolution of 1280x1024 :p

16x9 :eek:

I have a resolution of 1280x1024 :p

Ratio.

I'm running 1680 x 1050.

Ratio.

I'm running 1680 x 1050.

Is this an episode about who is having the biggest? :)

Complacency is the second largest obstacle to advancement of any kind. :mad:

Bah, just because it's old doesn't mean it should be done away with!

Is this an episode about who is having the biggest? :)

I have 1680x1050 also.

Is this an episode about who is having the biggest? :)

:D
Lol! Burn! They're men, they always got those episodes.

:D
Lol! Burn! They're men, they always got those episodes.

Oh please, like women don't do the same thing.

"My boobs are bigger, no mine is."
"Do you think she's prettier than me?"

Y'all just don't do the "size" game in public. There is a motivational poster on this topic, but it's NSFW.

Dell 3008WFP, but I never run the browser to full width or more than half the width, for that matter.

If I need to, I run two browsers on two halves of the screen. Too much width sucks.

I normally have over 100 tabs open, using TabMix+ to manage them. My only complaint is that I can't keep them grouped by the site, and they tend to turn into a mess.
You really should cut down on your porn surfing.

It doesn't download itself.

It doesn't download itself.
Now THAT'S something Mozilla should be looking into fixing.

The day porn starts downloading and watching itself is the day the humanity has fulfilled its purpose and is free to cease to exist.

"Porn Push Technology inside" isn't that difficult, I guess.

The day porn starts downloading and watching itself is the day the humanity has fulfilled its purpose and is free to cease to exist.

We still have to make porn, you know.

Unless..........

You know, even if they were to do away with tabs and their new idea sucked....

Firefox is open source, so somebody would just make a version that uses tabs.

The OS is already not that important anymore. Most browsers are available in all popular Operating Systems.

And slowly but sure, the internet is becoming our desktop.

You don't use an OS application to post on NSG, but a browser one. And millions check their mail inside their browser, etc...

I don't think they want to get rid of the OS now, the tabs will do, currently.

I'm not entirely sure what you're attempting to communicate. Are you trying to emphasize my point, or are you disagreeing with me? It's hardly clear.

Ratio.

I'm running 1680 x 1050.

Native resolution? Hmm, that makes it an widescreen LCD, with a 22" display doesn't it?

Oh noes, I fear change! :eek:

If they manage the find something better, then I'm all for it, but they should do change just for the sake of it.

Oh, I think I've finally seen what they're trying to do. They don't want to do away with tabs. Instead they want to do away with how tabs are organised. The current system is analogous to throwing everything into a heap and hoping there isn't too much in the heap to prevent you from finding the thing that you want. Works alright for a small amount of data, but when you get to loads of tabs then it becomes quite inconvenient (needle in a haystack sort of problem).

I guess one alternative is to use the system that Firefox 3 uses with the history and address bar, but with two rows -- one for history, one for currently open tabs.

Add to that a file tree browser system so you can see what you have open when you're not quite sure anymore.

I suppose you could also have a ctrl-tab selection as well, that instead of switching to another webpage it switches to another website and previews a thumbnail of all the related webpages -- including a readable title.

Mozilla Labs launched a design competition with the intention to find an alternative to 'tabbed' surfing.

Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin Internet, where ten browser sessions were "many browser sessions". Today, 20+ parallel sessions are quite common; the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application; we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive. However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless. And tabs don’t work well if you use them with heterogeneous information. They’re a good solution to keep the screen tidy for the moment. And that’s just what they should continue doing.

http://design-challenge.mozilla.com/summer09/

So what are you suggesting? Or do you want to keep tabs like they are presented today?

Tabs were an absolute breakthrough in browser features.

There have been many breakthroughs in browsing but most were server-side (eg caching,) or server and browser-side (eg Flash). Other than the first browser itself, I can't think of any innovation in browsers alone which rivals Tabs for empowering the browser user. Addblockers, I guess, maybe ... given that without people opting out when the ads get too much, popups and bandwidth-intensive ads would be worse now than they generally are ...

I do, however, get too many tabs open to manage easily. And I tend to leave the browser (ff) open when I shut down or suspend, because I will want some of those pages again. The lovely feature to restore the previous session ... is a bit of a pain for 200+ tabs. And I feel kind of wasteful re-loading all those pages, if I do need to restart the browser.

Most of the pages I will never even look at. Sad but true. I new-tab all sorts of things, in case I might have the time later while offline, or in case by the end of the paragraph I decide it is something I want to view ... it will be loaded already. It's kind of an old habit, from the dialup days when so much good stuff was on "dirt roads" and took minutes to get. Sometimes, you had to try a few times to get them at all. That kind of habit: click early, click often.

I do think a lot of pages could easily be cached locally (ie, on the users HD) for reloading. The tabs could be marked a different colour, to show that they are old versions, restored from the HD cache not freshly downloaded.

If I understand correctly, web proxies (eg Squid) have a way of querying a server for whether the page has changed from the last time they got it, without having to go get the whole page again. The browser itself could do that, at a fraction of the bandwidth to restore pages that haven't changed.

But really it's the arrangement of tabs which needs some new thinking. Sometimes, I do actually use "open in new window" because I intend to open a whole bunch of other pages which are related to it. (fourteen pages of an nsg thread to read offline for instance) Then I go into that other window and open new tabs there, so they are all in one place.

So the tabs could go into another dimension: up as well as sideways. I'm looking at the top of my browser now: it has a window bar I don't need (box in one corner for minimizing etc would be fine), it has a menu bar I use once a year, when I need to do something I don't know the keyboard shortcut for, it has a "navigation" toolbar where URL's can be typed in, I use it a hundredth of a percent of the time and think it should just popup when required, by keyboard shortcut also. I don't have a stinking bookmarks toolbar at all, if I need something from my bookmarks (and hell, that's a big stinking mess right there) I hit ALT-b.

My point: I'm clicking and dragging and right-clicking that tabs bar all the time, and above it is three times the same space which is pretty much a vacant lot, completely fucking useless apart from two or three times a day when I need to type in, or edit an already up, URL. There could be three more lines of tabs there: four times as many tabs clickable at any one time, without making them narrower so they're harder to identify by text.

Those lines of tabs, one above the other could be sorted differently. (The default sort is according to time of opening, so new tabs always open on the far right.) If you wanted, you could have one row, which sorted tabs alphabetically when you dragged the tab up there. You could rate the tabs as you opened them, or rate them after looking at them, and the browser could sort them so the ones you liked best were easiest to find. You could link tabs together in a pattern like a "mind-map", or the browser could do it for you based on the order you looked at them and any links you followed between them.

They want ideas, I'll give them ideas. They should change the name of their browser to Eventoed Ungulate and add two more stomachs, call it a "generational upgrade" from a Browser to a Ruminant.

Native resolution? Hmm, that makes it an widescreen LCD, with a 22" display doesn't it?

Close but no cigar. Want to try again?

No! I love tabs!

I guess one alternative is to use the system that Firefox 3 uses with the history and address bar, but with two rows -- one for history, one for currently open tabs.
I sure fucking hope not. The changes to history fucking suck. It is harder to find anything unless it is something you can just closed so you can reopen it.

If they manage the find something better, then I'm all for it, but they should do change just for the sake of it.
Methinks they might be changing for the sake of Chrome (http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/).

No! I love tabs!

I think the idea is to find something which does everything tabs do, but takes the idea of a "portfolio" of pages a little further. Structures them a bit more meaningfully than a stack of pages, sorted according to when you put them on the stack.

I know it can't be implemented browser-side only, but I do wish there was some way of stopping looking at a page, which was somewhat more emphatic than closing it's tab or opening some other page in its place. A "Leave, slamming the door" button.

Close but no cigar. Want to try again?

Widescreen 19".

The changes to history fucking suck. It is harder to find anything unless it is something you can just closed so you can reopen it.
Really? What's the specific problem?

I've found the new history changes rather useful, both for finding in the history sidebar and the address bar. Keywords do the trick.

Widescreen 19".

Smaller.

So what are you suggesting?

I hate tabbed browsing. It just confuses me as to where my various browser pages are.

What a step backwards. I will stop using Firefox if Mozilla gets rid of the taps feature.
Contrary to the thread title, Mozilla aren't getting rid of tabs, they're looking into making them better.

Personally I rarely have more than 10 tabs open, so this probably won't make much of a difference to me. Woot, insulated from change.
It doesn't download itself.
Yet
Smaller.

Mobile phone.

more ability to drag and drop tabs into groups would be good. like tabs and sub-tabs. eg tabs for email, research, work, fun, etc, and you drag your tabs into one of those. so each header-tab would act like opening a different browser. that would be good for me, as currently i have one browser, two windows open, and 26 tabs between them (earlier it was more like 40+ before i closed loads) and there's no way to intellectually/contextually seperate them apart from using different windows... they're just a big jumble of stuff. i also end up using different browsers for different stuff (Opera as main, Firefox as personal, IE as business, Chrome as a light one without loads of tabs and extras, etc)
my $0.02

I really like the tabs. However, if they could group them better, that would be nice. I have entire folders of links I open at once; if those could stay grouped under one "super-tab" that would be an improvement.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

(No joke ^)


Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin Internet, where ten browser sessions were "many browser sessions".
Sounds like my system.


I'm happy with the tab system, don't take away the tab system!!
This.


Looks like it's an attempt to turn the browser into an operating system-like environment, instead of what they currently are. Turn them into the central aspect of the users computer experience, rather than just "getting rid of tabs".
My computer crashed at me just contemplating such an idea.... :|

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

(No joke ^)



Sounds like my system.



This.



My computer crashed at me just contemplating such an idea.... :|

*creates Idea loop sends to you watches computer crash repeatedly.*

I'm happy with tabs, though I use IE7, not Firefox. But if they come up with an even better system, then that's cool.

I'm happy with tabs, though I use IE7...

*ejects from thread*
Out, vile one! The power of open source compels thee!






:p

I really like the tabs. However, if they could group them better, that would be nice. I have entire folders of links I open at once; if those could stay grouped under one "super-tab" that would be an improvement.

That would be cool. What I like about my linux machine is I can have separate desktops, I can open all my work on one, all my procrastination on another and yet on another open other sundry things........it would be cool if supertabs worked like that but also if when one page failed the whole supertab didn't.

That would be cool. What I like about my linux machine is I can have separate desktops, I can open all my work on one, all my procrastination on another and yet on another open other sundry things........
also great for keeping track of time, that.

So a kind of 2 layered TAB solution would do the trick for most of us?

What I have in mind is just easy. You want to organise tabs like you want?

OK, just drag and drop them over another tab. If you select that specific tab, you'll get a screen with small dumbnails of all the sites under that tab. Something like the start screen in Chrome, but I would make the dumbnails smaller.

That way, you are more organised, you'll find easier what you need and it's not fighting your performance a lot. In 2 clicks you can access most sites.

It also should have a memory. If you leave your browser and return, all TABS should be intact.

What do you think of this idea?

I'm not entirely sure what you're attempting to communicate. Are you trying to emphasize my point, or are you disagreeing with me? It's hardly clear.

Well you're worried about something which is almost a fact: the OS is for many people not an issue anymore. Million people use their browser as their desktop.

And no, I don't think Modzilla will kill the OS today, but maybe later (BTW, also Google is going in that direction). The current situation is about improving TABS, that's all.

Hmm... I have no ideas here, but if they can come up with another brilliant idea, more power to them.

Tabs were on Opera first.

=======

So a kind of 2 layered TAB solution would do the trick for most of us?

At least two.

It's kind of awkward the way tabs like that work in other applications. If you select a tab from, say, the second row up, that whole row moves down to be the bottom row.

I don't like that, several things moving from one place on the screen to another, when you really only selected one thing.

It also should have a memory. If you leave your browser and return, all TABS should be intact.

Close the browser?? Next you'll be saying we should kick puppies.

Yes of course it should remember how the tabs were arranged.

I was pretty astounded to discover that restoring a ff3 session includes restoring text I typed in but never actually submitted. If it can do that ... I wonder if it could log everything that the user does (interacting with flash-thingies, inputting text, etc) and have that in a sort of "history." You could also pull sequences of keystrokes, mouseclicks etc out of that "visual history" and assign a key for them ... this isn't really about tabs I guess.

Tabs were on Opera first.

=======



At least two.

It's kind of awkward the way tabs like that work in other applications. If you select a tab from, say, the second row up, that whole row moves down to be the bottom row.

I don't like that, several things moving from one place on the screen to another, when you really only selected one thing.



Close the browser?? Next you'll be saying we should kick puppies.

Yes of course it should remember how the tabs were arranged.

I was pretty astounded to discover that restoring a ff3 session includes restoring text I typed in but never actually submitted. If it can do that ... I wonder if it could log everything that the user does (interacting with flash-thingies, inputting text, etc) and have that in a sort of "history." You could also pull sequences of keystrokes, mouseclicks etc out of that "visual history" and assign a key for them ... this isn't really about tabs I guess.

I wasn't expressing myself clearly. I just want ONE row of tabs (let it be horizontal or vertical). You can arrange TABS like you want. If you drop a tab (and thus a site) on another tab then it will return a screen with 2 or more dumb nails representing images (and text) of the websites. Now you click once more to get what you want. So the TABS will work as now, except when they hold 2 or more websites.

Tabs were on Opera first.

=======

Silence your Communist Propaganda!:p