6 ms·

Redesigning the browser window

307 points by Oestrogen 15y ago

fsniper 15y ago
This left hand side vertical tab bar is how I used my firefox with some addons. (well my last installation has that addon. I'm not using it now). And this layout is a real screen saver for widescreen laptops.
ristretto 15y ago
i would vouch for a "page-only" browser window with hover controls. like a video player
- jokermatt999 15y ago
  This is probably possible through some extensions and Firefox. The much loved TreeStyleTabs already has an option for "autohide the tab bar". If Pentadactyl/Vimperator don't already have an option for autohiding, it's probably pretty easy to script something up.
  - shapoopy 15y ago
    Pentadactyl/Vimperator do absolutely have that (set showtabline=never). I use Pentadactyl, and a Shift-B (show buffers) followed by a <tab_number>gt will get me to wherever I need to go. This is, of course, not discoverable, and therefore not really suitable for the demographic whose problems this article is hoping to solve, but for someone who's willing to put some time into learning a program (or who already uses vim), it's pretty spot-on. I, for one, love it. I should add that the problems this article is trying to solve really ought to be solved through a thorough integration of the browser tab-system with the window manager. That, of course, necessitates a thorough rethinking of the window manager, also. But that was the problem tabs alleviated in the first place, right? The WIMP model really is the walking dead.
    - mun2mun 15y ago
      Pressing b also opens show buffer window and you can select tab by pressing tab. You can also filter by title which is not possible in shift+b way.
  - ristretto 15y ago
    Is there a similar extension for chrome / does chrome allow such modifications?
    - jokermatt999 15y ago
      No, Chrome's extensions are basically the same as GreaseMonkey scripts (at least, that's the frequent comparison I've heard). Firefox's extensions have the full power of XUL and can radically change the browser. engage beating a dead horse here The lack of functionality in Chrome extensions is why I (and judging from the comments I've seen in most Chrome vs Firefox threads, many other HNers on Firefox) refuse to switch to Chrome despite its much touted speed. Until I can get Pentadactyl and TreeStyleTab, its just a downgrade in usefullness.
- losvedir 15y ago
  Yes, this is exactly what I would like, too. The vast majority of the time, I don't interact with the chrome of the window: the back and forward buttons, the address bar, tabs, etc, so why not get that out of my face while I'm not interested?
- adimitrov 15y ago
  Video player's hidden controls react to mouse movement in the screen area though, a web browser would need a different heuristic — like moving the mouse close to where the controls should be or somesuch. There's people arguing, of course, that that's really poor usability, because you can't see what you can do. I guess it's a matter of taste as much as anything, and it's probably more of a power-user thing.)
- rplnt 15y ago
  Some browsers do that in full-screen mode now. By the way, in Opera you can configure browser that way so toolbars will auto-hide. You can assign shortcut or a gesture to them. Hovering isn't a good idea because it will eaither have to move the page (which is distracting and annoying when you do it on accident) or cover the page (which could block some content). So having it on gesture and/or shortuct would be the best way in my opinion. If you want the toolbarless experience. (I personally don't)
- sirn 15y ago
  It's no longer in development, but Plainview[1] seems to fit that description. [1]: http://www.barbariangroup.com/software/plainview http://www.barbariangroup.com/software/plainview
beaumartinez 15y ago
The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages. In similar iOS style, screens should be rotatable and shift their content accordingly. Watching a video? Great, put the screen to horizontal. Browsing the web? Writing a letter? Coding? Put the screen to vertical.
- dorian-graph 15y ago
  > The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages. This is why I suggest to [some] others to vertically mount a monitor.
- jannes 15y ago
  Good luck with trying that on a laptop.
  - dagw 15y ago
    Asus Transformer styled detachable screen with two connectors (one one the long side, one on the short) should do the trick.
  - starwed 15y ago
    This article was not about laptop displays.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
    - CoryMathews 15y ago
      Thats a pretty strong assumption. I for one, code on a laptop pretty often.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
lloeki 15y ago
I like this very much. Safari 5.x suddenly feels aged compared to those screenshots. It also goes a long way showing how the iOS tabbed Safari is awful on the iPad. In Firefox realm there has been Tree Style Tab, which I personally loathe, but for a take strikingly similar to the article description, there's apparently Vertical Tabs[0] available. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...
ejones 15y ago
That, or use a split-frame browser extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-formerly-split-br/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-...) (http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view/ http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view...)
- hnbla 15y ago
  Those features should really come with the OS. Not with every program.
nhoss2 15y ago
I don't see how most computer screens - even the large widescreen ones are a problem when reading webpages. I sort of like scrolling... It would be weird for me to read from the top of the screen, move down to the middle and then make my way to the bottom. What I usually do when reading is keep my eyes in a relatively fixed position and I just scroll down very slowly. This thing is pretty cool, but it might be a little annoying to have tabs on the side just to save 10-20 pixels of vertical screen. And while I don't find it difficult to click on tabs (keyboard shortcuts!) I really like the idea of having the url inside tabs - adding that firefox/chrome and then getting rid of the url bar would be pretty cool.
- mindhunter 15y ago
  it's not about saving 10-20 pixels vertical screen. way more space is needed to make the adressbar readable on bigger screens.
derefr 15y ago
Regarding the use of horizontal space: This is what the Reading List feature of Safari 5 is for. (Example for comparison: http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png) Tabs are really only supposed to be used for things you're actually looking at simultaneously; any time you're just middle-clicking everything on a page (e.g. the HN frontpage), in order to queue those pages up for reading after you close the index page, you should be putting them in the reading list instead. It's kind of sad that Apple hasn't made a larger push to get people to notice it; it's a much better solution for the bottom-80% of what people use tabs for today. Things you might not know about the Reading List: 1. It has quite a bit of accelerator support (you can put any link into the reading list by Shift+Clicking it; you can put the page you're on into the reading list with Command+Shift+D; and Command+Alt+Down is "I'm done reading this; advance to the next thing in the list.") 2. The reading list (as part of your bookmarks menu) gets iCloud-synced. Your open tabs don't. That alone was worth consciously forcing myself to re-learn my "eh, later" behaviour, because now I can just forget what I had "open" and read the rest on my iPad/iPhone/etc. (I suppose this might be why it hasn't been advertised much as a feature; they might be waiting to use it as part of the iCloud release pitch.) --- On a separate note/rant, regarding the use of "tab groups": it seems like the author simply wants to re-invent the Springboard/Launchpad-style application management paradigm within the browser. Why bother? I don't want to have two different ways of managing my applications, depending on whether they're "web" applications or not. I want my applications in Launchpad, and my running applications in the Dock, with notification badges on them. It shouldn't matter that Gmail requires Webkit-et-al, just like it shouldn't matter that an app requires Java. Safari, just like Mobile Safari, should simply have an "Add To Home Screen" button and be done with it. Apps that have been added as such should perhaps be able to access extra resources. (Their HTML5 offline-browsing manifests should be automatically downloaded, for one; they should have accelerated WebGL enabled, with shader support, for another; and this would also be an obvious place to adopt something like Google's NaCl.) I'm guessing, though, that we sadly won't see any of this support, because anything that integrates with the OS well-enough as a web-app is something that doesn't have to make a Mac App Store app instead.
- albertzeyer 15y ago
  This sounds interesting. I use Chrome. Does somebody know if there is a similar feature there?
skrebbel 15y ago
Opera allows you to set the tab bar on your left (with little page screenshots) for years already. Works pretty well on large, wide screens.
- matmann2001 15y ago
  And Opera has tab groups as well. OP needs to stop using Safari and get a decent browser.
- quanticle 15y ago
  As does Firefox with the "Tree Style Tabs" extension. I think Safari is just late to the game on this one.
  - lean 15y ago
    And Chrome (using a flag)
    - missing_cipher 15y ago
      "--enable-vertical-tabs" for those interested.
      - lamby 15y ago
        Not on Linux.
    - tom9729 15y ago
      Not on mac (in canary: yes, but not well).
- Tomek_ 15y ago
  It's quite buggy though, e.g. with many tabs opened the "open new tab" button disappears or that you can't switch easily between thumbnails/no-thumbnails view, etc. Hope the good guys and girls at Opera will take notice of the OP and will work on some improvements in this area. PS. also worth noting that Opera allows for easily grouping of tabs in the manner similar to the one described in OP (no naming though, fortunately (in my opinion at least)).
natesm 15y ago
I don't get it. Is a single huge browser window seriously considered "good" now? I thought that the whole point of the "useless" green button in Mac OS X was that you should never maximize anything. Two browser windows side-by-side are much more useful than one of twice the size. Are we really moving away from multitasking on the desktop?
- lukifer 15y ago
  Given the prevalence of wide screens, I really wish Apple would have embraced dual split-screen application windows in addition to full-screen applications. As it is, we're still stuck with hacks and workarounds.
- ja2ke 15y ago
  I think most people moved away from it before they knew they had it, when their copy of Microsoft Works for Windows 3.1 opened up in a maximized window. Apple is heavily promoting use of gestures, multiple desktops, and other OS features to promote fast switching and passing of data between running full screen apps. It's different than the pile-of-windows approach of the last few decades but the intent is still to have a ton of user-opened programs running and interacting. I think casual users genuinely prefer full screen apps, even after 20 years of pro users trying to lecture them and slap their wrists over the potential they're ignoring. Lion seems to be trying to give them their full screen, while also teaching a "safe" feeling way to multitasking and present a bunch of apps.
  - MatthewPhillips 15y ago
    I'm not sure gestures are ever going to be more than a power-user feature. They are the keyboard shortcut of touch devices. My girlfriend still uses the browser scrollbar even though I've showed her the awesomeness of two finger scroll many a time.
    - Joeri 15y ago
      The ipad disproves your claim about gestures. Gestures work just fine, as long as you do them on the screen itself and make them tightly correspond to real-world behavior. The usability problem occurs when the display and the touch interface are decoupled. The intuitive aspect of direct manipulation hinges on the manipulation actually being direct. The trouble with mice is that they are a double proxy. You move the mouse in absolute terms, the mouse moves relative to a surface, and that relative movement is translated to the screen. The mind after a while abstracts away the mouse into a piece of your hand, so touchpads aren't really an improvement over mice, because you're just making relative movements on a proxied surface in both cases. In my experience the big usability issue with touchpads vs mice is that the area for relative movement is too small, requiring frequent repositioning. Apple gets it right by making the touchpad surface huge, so that you reposition your fingers less. I expect that the current form factor is just an in-between until most computing devices look like ipads with external keyboards, with the mouse reserved for precision work (or perhaps we'll have dual finger/pen touchscreens).
4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago
Couldn't be Apple-ier.
extension 15y ago
Maybe use Google's index for the tab group names? Use the top keyword common to all the sites.
buro9 15y ago
I was with you up until Tab Groups. Then I disagreed strongly.
adimitrov 15y ago
I'm already doing this with Opera, and I think Opera has it figured out a bit better, too. The curious thing here is, I guess, that I not only don't have an Apple Cinema display, I don't have a wide-screen display at all, and I even pivot my monitor by 90 degrees (the one I browse the web on.) I've made the experience that having a tall browser window is much more useful than having a wide browser window. See the screenshot: http://imgur.com/3lFAN http://imgur.com/3lFAN I like the big pictures on the tab buttons — gives me a visual idea of what I'm clicking on. I also like the tab stacks Opera implemented a while ago, even though I still have a couple of peeves with 'em. One thing he's totally right about, though: address bars are largely wasted screen space. I'd like to only see them on newly opened tabs or so…
- justinschuh 15y ago
  The address bar is the only security indicator you have in the browser. Hiding it to the extent you're suggesting leaves you pretty much defenseless against phishing attacks.
  - adimitrov 15y ago
    One could imagine some sort of indicator on the tabs. Or some sort of indicator around input/form fields, etc.
username3 15y ago
Application independent HiDPI would be useful in this situation.
mtogo 15y ago
> Reportedly, Google has been experimenting with this [hideable address bar] as well. FWIW, Firefox and Opera had this long before google started "experimenting" with it.
- CoryMathews 15y ago
  Both firefox and opera have had it for as long as I remember. Chrome is making news because they are experimenting with it that way by default.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    That was a rumor.
joeyespo 15y ago
I was not initially a big fan of vertical tabs. But this article is very persuasive. I'd very much like to see the contextual grouping and this looks like a good way to do it.
mdonahoe 15y ago
I like fullscreen Chrome because, unlike Safari, the tabs are above the url bar and thus benefit from the hard edge of the top of the screen. (see Fitt's law)
blahedo 15y ago
I don't know the future prognosis of OmniWeb---it's been a while since they've released anything but bug fixes---but they've had side-tabs since they introduced tabs close to a decade ago. The advantages of this are many: they take up no vertical space, they can spread out vertically and show you thumbnails (of the actual page, not a favicon), and they can be in a scrollable pane. After years and years of using this, it's downright painful to use the top-tabs found in any other browser, which are cramped and information-light, and as you get many tabs going, not only are most of them not visible on-screen but the ones that are have just one or two letters and a favicon, making them indistinguishable as well. All of which is to say, yes yes yes to side-tabs.
rch 15y ago
I find myself using the browser in full-screen mode more and more often. If you want to give me better access to tabs (or other browser ui), how about being able to open (and transfer focus to) a hierarchically organized list when I alt+(tab, `)? Oh, I guess the alt+tab shortcut is Opera only... Give it a try to see what I mean - it would work. edit: when I say full-screen, I mean cmd-F, exclusive mode, not just 'maximized'.
mwill 15y ago
I totally dig the osx lion full screen paradigm thing when I'm using my laptop screen, in fact I switch to safari just for that, but when I have it hooked up to my main screen, it just feels 'wrong' with safari. The first mockup made me long for this functionality. Anyone know of a way to make the reading list load pages in the background, so selecting a page shows it instantly?
matmann2001 15y ago
Opera has already implemented the ability to dock your tabs on the left or right of the page, as well as the ability to stack tabs into groups. Sure, it may not be all Apple-fied like your design, but it works really well.
notatoad 15y ago
it's like this article was written just to prove the relevance of the title text in xkcd.com/934: "It's fun to watch browsers fumblingly recapitulate the history of window management. Someday we'll have xmonad as a Firefox extension." seriously, just about everything mentioned in here should be the responsibility of the window manager. why not let the window manager do its job? i can see why chrome wants to implement it's own window manager, because it actually is trying to be an OS. but apple has built a good WM, why aren't they using it?
Kwpolska 15y ago
No way I'm gonna use this. I want to stay with my REGULAR browser interface. I use a 5:4 display and it would suck.
kragen 15y ago
I've thought for a while that we need to switch to multicolumn views for web browsing: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-November/000839.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-Novembe..., "multicolumn web browsers": > So the solution generally adopted --- in newspapers, dictionaries, and research papers --- is to lay out the text in multiple columns. > With Apple's 30-inch-diagonal 100dpi display widely available and > multiple-screen solutions becoming common, it's well past time to > adopt this solution for web browsers as well. http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2000-August/000626.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2000-August/..., "Phone browsers suck": > On the other front, ever-growing screens on PCs present the opposite problem --- how to usefully use a screen the size of two sheets of A4 paper side by side? Interface idioms that worked well on smaller screens --- a menubar along the top, single-column text filling the screen, icons sized by pixels --- become clumsy. I agree that moving tabs to the left side of the screen is a good idea, too. --enable-vertical-tabs doesn't seem to work for me in Chromium. Tree Style Tabs in Firefox gives you both tabs on the left and tab groups.
- abdullahkhalids 15y ago
  Agreed. He isn't saying something that isn't already present in firefox with a simple extension.
- etcet 15y ago
  I'm going to use this opportunity to shamelessly plug a hack of Readability that I call Horizontability[0]. It just displays the usual Readability output in multicolumns with some javascript hooks to help navigation. For whatever reason, I can't seem to drag the bookmarklet in Chrome anymore[1]. Chrome's side tab implementation really needs some help. I appreciate being able to read more of the tab title, but they really don't save much space (the window bar is still present but it shrinks by like 2 pixels). I'm surprised it still doesn't work on Linux[2]. I checked out the source earlier and it's easy enough to understand but there's no way I can get chromium to build on my box. [0] http://etcet.net/projects/horizontal/index.html http://etcet.net/projects/horizontal/index.html [1] maybe related to http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12290 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12290 [2] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763
plainOldText 15y ago
To be honest, I don't like this setup with the tabs on the left side. It is not a good way to make efficient use of the the real estate on your screen. If you have opened only a few tabs there is so much more unused real estate below the tabs, which is just a waste of space IMO.
tjoff 15y ago
You don't run applications maximized. You just don't. Sure there are exceptions, such as photoshop and similar but for browsing there is a reason for why the only thing you might miss with a width of no more than 1024 pixels (or even less) are commercials, and for why we have columns in newspapers... Thats why, even with widescreens, the horizontal real estate is very important and why you can't waste it. Sure, the vertical real estate is _very_ important as well (and boy is it neglected) and sure that has become a real problem with 16:9 but not enough to start wasting real estate just for the sake of it. Buy a 16:10 monitor (or 4:3) and you basically get that adress-bar, tab space and other goodies for free. Even on a widescreen the browser-window really shouldn't be wider than it's height. Or maybe it's just me...
- crazygringo 15y ago
  Maybe it's you and large monitors. On my laptop, I run everything maximized, and Alt+Tab is my best friend. My biggest gripe about OSX is that it's not built for this -- I literally need to define a separate space for every application I use, just so I don't have a horrible jumble of windows. And unfortunately still can't Alt+Tab between windows of the same app... :(
  - a5huynh 15y ago
    I'm sure if you're talking about Windows or OSX ( due to the Alt+Tab ambiguity ) but in OSX you can do Cmd + ` to tab between windows of the same app.
    - crazygringo 15y ago
      Thank you!
  - Deadsunrise 15y ago
    try Crtl+tab
nazgulnarsil 15y ago
this looks sort of like treetabs with a nicer GUI. I suppose that's what I really have been wanting.
jrockway 15y ago
2009 called. It wants conkeror and xmonad back: http://web.mit.edu/nelhage/Public/conkeror-dir.png http://web.mit.edu/nelhage/Public/conkeror-dir.png (In other words, this browsing experience has been available for years. While that's not a picture of my desktop, that's pretty much what it looks like. No tab bar, no window chrome. Just the content and a tiny bit of state information. Emacs has also looked like this for ... 30 years or so.)

307 points by Oestrogen 15y ago

This left hand side vertical tab bar is how I used my firefox with some addons. (well my last installation has that addon. I'm not using it now). And this layout is a real screen saver for widescreen laptops.

ristretto 15y ago

i would vouch for a "page-only" browser window with hover controls. like a video player

jokermatt999 15y ago
This is probably possible through some extensions and Firefox. The much loved TreeStyleTabs already has an option for "autohide the tab bar". If Pentadactyl/Vimperator don't already have an option for autohiding, it's probably pretty easy to script something up.
- shapoopy 15y ago
  Pentadactyl/Vimperator do absolutely have that (set showtabline=never). I use Pentadactyl, and a Shift-B (show buffers) followed by a <tab_number>gt will get me to wherever I need to go. This is, of course, not discoverable, and therefore not really suitable for the demographic whose problems this article is hoping to solve, but for someone who's willing to put some time into learning a program (or who already uses vim), it's pretty spot-on. I, for one, love it. I should add that the problems this article is trying to solve really ought to be solved through a thorough integration of the browser tab-system with the window manager. That, of course, necessitates a thorough rethinking of the window manager, also. But that was the problem tabs alleviated in the first place, right? The WIMP model really is the walking dead.
  - mun2mun 15y ago
    Pressing b also opens show buffer window and you can select tab by pressing tab. You can also filter by title which is not possible in shift+b way.
- ristretto 15y ago
  Is there a similar extension for chrome / does chrome allow such modifications?
  - jokermatt999 15y ago
    No, Chrome's extensions are basically the same as GreaseMonkey scripts (at least, that's the frequent comparison I've heard). Firefox's extensions have the full power of XUL and can radically change the browser. engage beating a dead horse here The lack of functionality in Chrome extensions is why I (and judging from the comments I've seen in most Chrome vs Firefox threads, many other HNers on Firefox) refuse to switch to Chrome despite its much touted speed. Until I can get Pentadactyl and TreeStyleTab, its just a downgrade in usefullness.
losvedir 15y ago
Yes, this is exactly what I would like, too. The vast majority of the time, I don't interact with the chrome of the window: the back and forward buttons, the address bar, tabs, etc, so why not get that out of my face while I'm not interested?
adimitrov 15y ago
Video player's hidden controls react to mouse movement in the screen area though, a web browser would need a different heuristic — like moving the mouse close to where the controls should be or somesuch. There's people arguing, of course, that that's really poor usability, because you can't see what you can do. I guess it's a matter of taste as much as anything, and it's probably more of a power-user thing.)
rplnt 15y ago
Some browsers do that in full-screen mode now. By the way, in Opera you can configure browser that way so toolbars will auto-hide. You can assign shortcut or a gesture to them. Hovering isn't a good idea because it will eaither have to move the page (which is distracting and annoying when you do it on accident) or cover the page (which could block some content). So having it on gesture and/or shortuct would be the best way in my opinion. If you want the toolbarless experience. (I personally don't)
sirn 15y ago
It's no longer in development, but Plainview[1] seems to fit that description. [1]: http://www.barbariangroup.com/software/plainview http://www.barbariangroup.com/software/plainview

beaumartinez 15y ago

The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages. In similar iOS style, screens should be rotatable and shift their content accordingly. Watching a video? Great, put the screen to horizontal. Browsing the web? Writing a letter? Coding? Put the screen to vertical.

dorian-graph 15y ago
> The real problem isn't the browser. It's the screen. Large horizontal 16:9 screens are great for video but poor for text and pages. This is why I suggest to [some] others to vertically mount a monitor.
jannes 15y ago
Good luck with trying that on a laptop.
- dagw 15y ago
  Asus Transformer styled detachable screen with two connectors (one one the long side, one on the short) should do the trick.
- starwed 15y ago
  This article was not about laptop displays.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
  - CoryMathews 15y ago
    Thats a pretty strong assumption. I for one, code on a laptop pretty often.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]

lloeki 15y ago

I like this very much. Safari 5.x suddenly feels aged compared to those screenshots. It also goes a long way showing how the iOS tabbed Safari is awful on the iPad. In Firefox realm there has been Tree Style Tab, which I personally loathe, but for a take strikingly similar to the article description, there's apparently Vertical Tabs[0] available. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs...

ejones 15y ago

That, or use a split-frame browser extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-formerly-split-br/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fox-splitter-...) (http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view/ http://www.chromeplugins.org/plugins/google-chrome-dual-view...)

hnbla 15y ago
Those features should really come with the OS. Not with every program.

nhoss2 15y ago

I don't see how most computer screens - even the large widescreen ones are a problem when reading webpages. I sort of like scrolling... It would be weird for me to read from the top of the screen, move down to the middle and then make my way to the bottom. What I usually do when reading is keep my eyes in a relatively fixed position and I just scroll down very slowly. This thing is pretty cool, but it might be a little annoying to have tabs on the side just to save 10-20 pixels of vertical screen. And while I don't find it difficult to click on tabs (keyboard shortcuts!) I really like the idea of having the url inside tabs - adding that firefox/chrome and then getting rid of the url bar would be pretty cool.

mindhunter 15y ago
it's not about saving 10-20 pixels vertical screen. way more space is needed to make the adressbar readable on bigger screens.

derefr 15y ago

Regarding the use of horizontal space: This is what the Reading List feature of Safari 5 is for. (Example for comparison: http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png http://i.imgur.com/x2tkl.png) Tabs are really only supposed to be used for things you're actually looking at simultaneously; any time you're just middle-clicking everything on a page (e.g. the HN frontpage), in order to queue those pages up for reading after you close the index page, you should be putting them in the reading list instead. It's kind of sad that Apple hasn't made a larger push to get people to notice it; it's a much better solution for the bottom-80% of what people use tabs for today. Things you might not know about the Reading List: 1. It has quite a bit of accelerator support (you can put any link into the reading list by Shift+Clicking it; you can put the page you're on into the reading list with Command+Shift+D; and Command+Alt+Down is "I'm done reading this; advance to the next thing in the list.") 2. The reading list (as part of your bookmarks menu) gets iCloud-synced. Your open tabs don't. That alone was worth consciously forcing myself to re-learn my "eh, later" behaviour, because now I can just forget what I had "open" and read the rest on my iPad/iPhone/etc. (I suppose this might be why it hasn't been advertised much as a feature; they might be waiting to use it as part of the iCloud release pitch.) --- On a separate note/rant, regarding the use of "tab groups": it seems like the author simply wants to re-invent the Springboard/Launchpad-style application management paradigm within the browser. Why bother? I don't want to have two different ways of managing my applications, depending on whether they're "web" applications or not. I want my applications in Launchpad, and my running applications in the Dock, with notification badges on them. It shouldn't matter that Gmail requires Webkit-et-al, just like it shouldn't matter that an app requires Java. Safari, just like Mobile Safari, should simply have an "Add To Home Screen" button and be done with it. Apps that have been added as such should perhaps be able to access extra resources. (Their HTML5 offline-browsing manifests should be automatically downloaded, for one; they should have accelerated WebGL enabled, with shader support, for another; and this would also be an obvious place to adopt something like Google's NaCl.) I'm guessing, though, that we sadly won't see any of this support, because anything that integrates with the OS well-enough as a web-app is something that doesn't have to make a Mac App Store app instead.

albertzeyer 15y ago
This sounds interesting. I use Chrome. Does somebody know if there is a similar feature there?

skrebbel 15y ago

Opera allows you to set the tab bar on your left (with little page screenshots) for years already. Works pretty well on large, wide screens.

matmann2001 15y ago
And Opera has tab groups as well. OP needs to stop using Safari and get a decent browser.
quanticle 15y ago
As does Firefox with the "Tree Style Tabs" extension. I think Safari is just late to the game on this one.
- lean 15y ago
  And Chrome (using a flag)
  - missing_cipher 15y ago
    "--enable-vertical-tabs" for those interested.
    - lamby 15y ago
      Not on Linux.
  - tom9729 15y ago
    Not on mac (in canary: yes, but not well).
Tomek_ 15y ago
It's quite buggy though, e.g. with many tabs opened the "open new tab" button disappears or that you can't switch easily between thumbnails/no-thumbnails view, etc. Hope the good guys and girls at Opera will take notice of the OP and will work on some improvements in this area. PS. also worth noting that Opera allows for easily grouping of tabs in the manner similar to the one described in OP (no naming though, fortunately (in my opinion at least)).

natesm 15y ago

I don't get it. Is a single huge browser window seriously considered "good" now? I thought that the whole point of the "useless" green button in Mac OS X was that you should never maximize anything. Two browser windows side-by-side are much more useful than one of twice the size. Are we really moving away from multitasking on the desktop?

lukifer 15y ago
Given the prevalence of wide screens, I really wish Apple would have embraced dual split-screen application windows in addition to full-screen applications. As it is, we're still stuck with hacks and workarounds.
ja2ke 15y ago
I think most people moved away from it before they knew they had it, when their copy of Microsoft Works for Windows 3.1 opened up in a maximized window. Apple is heavily promoting use of gestures, multiple desktops, and other OS features to promote fast switching and passing of data between running full screen apps. It's different than the pile-of-windows approach of the last few decades but the intent is still to have a ton of user-opened programs running and interacting. I think casual users genuinely prefer full screen apps, even after 20 years of pro users trying to lecture them and slap their wrists over the potential they're ignoring. Lion seems to be trying to give them their full screen, while also teaching a "safe" feeling way to multitasking and present a bunch of apps.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  I'm not sure gestures are ever going to be more than a power-user feature. They are the keyboard shortcut of touch devices. My girlfriend still uses the browser scrollbar even though I've showed her the awesomeness of two finger scroll many a time.
  - Joeri 15y ago
    The ipad disproves your claim about gestures. Gestures work just fine, as long as you do them on the screen itself and make them tightly correspond to real-world behavior. The usability problem occurs when the display and the touch interface are decoupled. The intuitive aspect of direct manipulation hinges on the manipulation actually being direct. The trouble with mice is that they are a double proxy. You move the mouse in absolute terms, the mouse moves relative to a surface, and that relative movement is translated to the screen. The mind after a while abstracts away the mouse into a piece of your hand, so touchpads aren't really an improvement over mice, because you're just making relative movements on a proxied surface in both cases. In my experience the big usability issue with touchpads vs mice is that the area for relative movement is too small, requiring frequent repositioning. Apple gets it right by making the touchpad surface huge, so that you reposition your fingers less. I expect that the current form factor is just an in-between until most computing devices look like ipads with external keyboards, with the mouse reserved for precision work (or perhaps we'll have dual finger/pen touchscreens).

4J7z0Fgt63dTZbs 15y ago

Couldn't be Apple-ier.

extension 15y ago

Maybe use Google's index for the tab group names? Use the top keyword common to all the sites.

buro9 15y ago

I was with you up until Tab Groups. Then I disagreed strongly.

adimitrov 15y ago

I'm already doing this with Opera, and I think Opera has it figured out a bit better, too. The curious thing here is, I guess, that I not only don't have an Apple Cinema display, I don't have a wide-screen display at all, and I even pivot my monitor by 90 degrees (the one I browse the web on.) I've made the experience that having a tall browser window is much more useful than having a wide browser window. See the screenshot: http://imgur.com/3lFAN http://imgur.com/3lFAN I like the big pictures on the tab buttons — gives me a visual idea of what I'm clicking on. I also like the tab stacks Opera implemented a while ago, even though I still have a couple of peeves with 'em. One thing he's totally right about, though: address bars are largely wasted screen space. I'd like to only see them on newly opened tabs or so…

justinschuh 15y ago
The address bar is the only security indicator you have in the browser. Hiding it to the extent you're suggesting leaves you pretty much defenseless against phishing attacks.
- adimitrov 15y ago
  One could imagine some sort of indicator on the tabs. Or some sort of indicator around input/form fields, etc.

username3 15y ago

Application independent HiDPI would be useful in this situation.

mtogo 15y ago

> Reportedly, Google has been experimenting with this [hideable address bar] as well. FWIW, Firefox and Opera had this long before google started "experimenting" with it.

CoryMathews 15y ago
Both firefox and opera have had it for as long as I remember. Chrome is making news because they are experimenting with it that way by default.
- mtogo 15y ago
  That was a rumor.

joeyespo 15y ago

I was not initially a big fan of vertical tabs. But this article is very persuasive. I'd very much like to see the contextual grouping and this looks like a good way to do it.

mdonahoe 15y ago

I like fullscreen Chrome because, unlike Safari, the tabs are above the url bar and thus benefit from the hard edge of the top of the screen. (see Fitt's law)

blahedo 15y ago

I don't know the future prognosis of OmniWeb---it's been a while since they've released anything but bug fixes---but they've had side-tabs since they introduced tabs close to a decade ago. The advantages of this are many: they take up no vertical space, they can spread out vertically and show you thumbnails (of the actual page, not a favicon), and they can be in a scrollable pane. After years and years of using this, it's downright painful to use the top-tabs found in any other browser, which are cramped and information-light, and as you get many tabs going, not only are most of them not visible on-screen but the ones that are have just one or two letters and a favicon, making them indistinguishable as well. All of which is to say, yes yes yes to side-tabs.

rch 15y ago

I find myself using the browser in full-screen mode more and more often. If you want to give me better access to tabs (or other browser ui), how about being able to open (and transfer focus to) a hierarchically organized list when I alt+(tab, `)? Oh, I guess the alt+tab shortcut is Opera only... Give it a try to see what I mean - it would work. edit: when I say full-screen, I mean cmd-F, exclusive mode, not just 'maximized'.

mwill 15y ago

I totally dig the osx lion full screen paradigm thing when I'm using my laptop screen, in fact I switch to safari just for that, but when I have it hooked up to my main screen, it just feels 'wrong' with safari. The first mockup made me long for this functionality. Anyone know of a way to make the reading list load pages in the background, so selecting a page shows it instantly?

matmann2001 15y ago

Opera has already implemented the ability to dock your tabs on the left or right of the page, as well as the ability to stack tabs into groups. Sure, it may not be all Apple-fied like your design, but it works really well.

notatoad 15y ago

it's like this article was written just to prove the relevance of the title text in xkcd.com/934: "It's fun to watch browsers fumblingly recapitulate the history of window management. Someday we'll have xmonad as a Firefox extension." seriously, just about everything mentioned in here should be the responsibility of the window manager. why not let the window manager do its job? i can see why chrome wants to implement it's own window manager, because it actually is trying to be an OS. but apple has built a good WM, why aren't they using it?

Kwpolska 15y ago

No way I'm gonna use this. I want to stay with my REGULAR browser interface. I use a 5:4 display and it would suck.

kragen 15y ago

I've thought for a while that we need to switch to multicolumn views for web browsing: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-November/000839.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2006-Novembe..., "multicolumn web browsers": > So the solution generally adopted --- in newspapers, dictionaries, and research papers --- is to lay out the text in multiple columns. > With Apple's 30-inch-diagonal 100dpi display widely available and > multiple-screen solutions becoming common, it's well past time to > adopt this solution for web browsers as well. http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2000-August/000626.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2000-August/..., "Phone browsers suck": > On the other front, ever-growing screens on PCs present the opposite problem --- how to usefully use a screen the size of two sheets of A4 paper side by side? Interface idioms that worked well on smaller screens --- a menubar along the top, single-column text filling the screen, icons sized by pixels --- become clumsy. I agree that moving tabs to the left side of the screen is a good idea, too. --enable-vertical-tabs doesn't seem to work for me in Chromium. Tree Style Tabs in Firefox gives you both tabs on the left and tab groups.

abdullahkhalids 15y ago
Agreed. He isn't saying something that isn't already present in firefox with a simple extension.
etcet 15y ago
I'm going to use this opportunity to shamelessly plug a hack of Readability that I call Horizontability[0]. It just displays the usual Readability output in multicolumns with some javascript hooks to help navigation. For whatever reason, I can't seem to drag the bookmarklet in Chrome anymore[1]. Chrome's side tab implementation really needs some help. I appreciate being able to read more of the tab title, but they really don't save much space (the window bar is still present but it shrinks by like 2 pixels). I'm surprised it still doesn't work on Linux[2]. I checked out the source earlier and it's easy enough to understand but there's no way I can get chromium to build on my box. [0] http://etcet.net/projects/horizontal/index.html http://etcet.net/projects/horizontal/index.html [1] maybe related to http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12290 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12290 [2] http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763 http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763

plainOldText 15y ago

To be honest, I don't like this setup with the tabs on the left side. It is not a good way to make efficient use of the the real estate on your screen. If you have opened only a few tabs there is so much more unused real estate below the tabs, which is just a waste of space IMO.

tjoff 15y ago

You don't run applications maximized. You just don't. Sure there are exceptions, such as photoshop and similar but for browsing there is a reason for why the only thing you might miss with a width of no more than 1024 pixels (or even less) are commercials, and for why we have columns in newspapers... Thats why, even with widescreens, the horizontal real estate is very important and why you can't waste it. Sure, the vertical real estate is _very_ important as well (and boy is it neglected) and sure that has become a real problem with 16:9 but not enough to start wasting real estate just for the sake of it. Buy a 16:10 monitor (or 4:3) and you basically get that adress-bar, tab space and other goodies for free. Even on a widescreen the browser-window really shouldn't be wider than it's height. Or maybe it's just me...

crazygringo 15y ago
Maybe it's you and large monitors. On my laptop, I run everything maximized, and Alt+Tab is my best friend. My biggest gripe about OSX is that it's not built for this -- I literally need to define a separate space for every application I use, just so I don't have a horrible jumble of windows. And unfortunately still can't Alt+Tab between windows of the same app... :(
- a5huynh 15y ago
  I'm sure if you're talking about Windows or OSX ( due to the Alt+Tab ambiguity ) but in OSX you can do Cmd + ` to tab between windows of the same app.
  - crazygringo 15y ago
    Thank you!
- Deadsunrise 15y ago
  try Crtl+tab

nazgulnarsil 15y ago

this looks sort of like treetabs with a nicer GUI. I suppose that's what I really have been wanting.

jrockway 15y ago

2009 called. It wants conkeror and xmonad back: http://web.mit.edu/nelhage/Public/conkeror-dir.png http://web.mit.edu/nelhage/Public/conkeror-dir.png (In other words, this browsing experience has been available for years. While that's not a picture of my desktop, that's pretty much what it looks like. No tab bar, no window chrome. Just the content and a tiny bit of state information. Emacs has also looked like this for ... 30 years or so.)