6 ms·

Show HN: Bonsplit – Tabs and splits for native macOS apps

245 points by sgottit 8mo ago

jofzar 8mo ago
I don't know why, but I thought this was going to sandbox style tab/split support for the all the baselines macos apps. This is very cool, but somehow got myself disappointed that something I didn't know I wanted doesn't exist.
- ziml77 8mo ago
  You're not the only one. I first assumed it was a library when I was scanning the headlines, but then when I started opening up tabs moments later I thought it added tabs and splits to existing apps. I remember something that brought tabs system-wide to Windows so it's not even too crazy of an idea.
  - krispyfi 8mo ago
    Yes, I assumed it was a macos equivalent to suckless-tabbed. https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/
goranmoomin 8mo ago
This is very interesting, I haven’t touched macOS development for quite a while but it’s good to know that libraries are still being written for both AppKit and SwiftUI on macOS. I do feel that this library would benefit from an explanation on why this was needed. AFAIR AppKit already provides a native tabbing API where you can “just” (that “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting) implement a few delegate methods and you get tabbing behavior for free, especially on document-based apps. (Sorry, I do not remember the specifics, it might have been a tad more difficult) I’m not updated on the SwiftUI equivalent, but I would imagine that a similar API would exist much alike API for multiple windows or multiple documents. I think everyone would benefit from a “why” explanation (which I definitely think would exist, since I’ve used too many AppKit APIs in pain), and also some screenshots for a demo app (so that we can expect how it would look and how much the look and feel would deviate from the native counterparts).
- zapzupnz 8mo ago
  The website already has a demonstration of what this does that native tabs don’t do and how they look.
  - goranmoomin 8mo ago
    Yeah I realized that only now, for some reason when I was on mobile and I was looking into this the demo video was not loading at all. I would love to retract my comment :(
    - brianfryer 8mo ago
      I totally missed the video on mobile too.
      - msephton 8mo ago
        Yes, just blank space instead of video on mobile. Edit: opening in Safari worked
- saagarjha 8mo ago
  Native tabs work at the window level.
- atombender 8mo ago
  I've tried the native tab support several times, and my impression is that it's good for very little. It may be OK for certain types of document-oriented apps, but there's a reason most apps (Chrome, iTerm, even Safari uses its own native tabs, I believe) don't use it. It's underbaked and awkward to fit into a model where your "tab data model" doesn't neatly fit the document data model that the framework wants. I recently made an app where I wanted tabs, and I just ended up abandoning tab support for this reason, and adding a todo item to use an off-the-shelf tab UI library in the future.
loceng 8mo ago
Easter egg: Click the logo!
iLoveOncall 8mo ago
The title really should include "library"...
- publicdebates 8mo ago
  Honestly yeah. I clicked it thinking it was an MDI app.
publicdebates 8mo ago
This is excessively beautiful, both the website and the library's UI. But I have to ask: what's the rationale on dedicating such an elaborate and gorgeous website for just a library? Are you hoping to get hired for web design? Are you seeking fame and repute? Do you merely do it for the love of the game? Why, for the love of all that's good, pray tell why put all this effort into mere documentation?
- chris_st 8mo ago
  To set the bar for other websites, to show how it should be done? Or maybe just "for the love of all that's good"?
- drewradcliff 8mo ago
  Just look at his website and you'll see why. https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ https://www.alasdairmonk.com/
  - Hnus 8mo ago
    Author seems to be one of the colleagues you are like I wish to be more like him.
  - port11 8mo ago
    I’m jealous of how prolific they are, with a good taste for design and number of side projects. Well done.
- dozerly 8mo ago
  I don’t think he needs the experience on his resume lmao. He’s an experienced design professional that’s worked at a bunch of big name companies as a lead designer.
- jitl 8mo ago
  Why make good things? I guess we should make bad things. Or no things.
treetalker 8mo ago
- library - functionality/effect looks like Sublime Text origami mode
dmoose 8mo ago
This is quite beautiful. I had a somewhat similar use case last year and built something that wasn't this polished. The only feature that seems to be missing for what I needed then is the ability to tear off tabs into new windows that could also be dragged back into the frame to reattach. Will definitely be keeping this project in mind for future needs.
iamcalledrob 8mo ago
Love the attention to detail here. Getting drag and drop right is hard, it's so much more complex than you might think.
jbverschoor 8mo ago
“Tabs and splits” should be something the window manager takes care of
- ggoo 8mo ago
  Really depends on the application, no? I wouldn't want my IDE opening every file in a new window.
  - jbverschoor 8mo ago
    That’s why the windows manager and user should be in control I’d love to be able to arrange different tabs of different apps in one window
rob_ 8mo ago
My favourite window manager in linux was always ion3 that then became known as notion. I'm not sure if it was one of the first tiling/tab/split window managers but I started using it around the year 2000 and loved it. One feature that it seemed to have that a lot of other tiling windowmanagers didn't have is tabbed splits. Really nice to see this.
0xb0565e486 8mo ago
I love how beautiful and creative the website header is while being a fragment of what it does. Fantastic work!
jen20 8mo ago
This looks like a great library, and I'm happy to see focus on proper native Mac apps over Electron. One odd thing, the library doesn't have a license associated with it (in the repo, at least).
kocialnews 8mo ago
This is interesting
ahmadyan 8mo ago
This is an awesome library, thank you so much for making it. I just ported it to my IDE, agentastic.dev, and works like a charm. https://assets.agentastic.ai/agentastic-dev-assets/videos/0.6/splits.mp4 https://assets.agentastic.ai/agentastic-dev-assets/videos/0....
w10-1 8mo ago
Fantastic! Managing views in eclipse like this is one of the things that keeps me using eclipse. From looking at the demo and the docs... What I didn't see in the demo was changing the order of a tab within a panel via drag-and-drop (no "allowIntraPaneTabMove"?). Also presuming you can close tabs to left, right, or all other tabs (would need tabs as list to implement this in application). Also might like to somehow manage title elision when there are multiple tabs. Also want to change pane proportions on the fly. Also assuming one can have two views of the same document in different tabs. So many possibilities! I'll try it in some app...
bartvk 8mo ago
What was the thinking of putting the close button on the right of the tab?

245 points by sgottit 8mo ago

I don't know why, but I thought this was going to sandbox style tab/split support for the all the baselines macos apps. This is very cool, but somehow got myself disappointed that something I didn't know I wanted doesn't exist.

ziml77 8mo ago
You're not the only one. I first assumed it was a library when I was scanning the headlines, but then when I started opening up tabs moments later I thought it added tabs and splits to existing apps. I remember something that brought tabs system-wide to Windows so it's not even too crazy of an idea.
- krispyfi 8mo ago
  Yes, I assumed it was a macos equivalent to suckless-tabbed. https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/ https://tools.suckless.org/tabbed/

goranmoomin 8mo ago

This is very interesting, I haven’t touched macOS development for quite a while but it’s good to know that libraries are still being written for both AppKit and SwiftUI on macOS. I do feel that this library would benefit from an explanation on why this was needed. AFAIR AppKit already provides a native tabbing API where you can “just” (that “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting) implement a few delegate methods and you get tabbing behavior for free, especially on document-based apps. (Sorry, I do not remember the specifics, it might have been a tad more difficult) I’m not updated on the SwiftUI equivalent, but I would imagine that a similar API would exist much alike API for multiple windows or multiple documents. I think everyone would benefit from a “why” explanation (which I definitely think would exist, since I’ve used too many AppKit APIs in pain), and also some screenshots for a demo app (so that we can expect how it would look and how much the look and feel would deviate from the native counterparts).

zapzupnz 8mo ago
The website already has a demonstration of what this does that native tabs don’t do and how they look.
- goranmoomin 8mo ago
  Yeah I realized that only now, for some reason when I was on mobile and I was looking into this the demo video was not loading at all. I would love to retract my comment :(
  - brianfryer 8mo ago
    I totally missed the video on mobile too.
    - msephton 8mo ago
      Yes, just blank space instead of video on mobile. Edit: opening in Safari worked
saagarjha 8mo ago
Native tabs work at the window level.
atombender 8mo ago
I've tried the native tab support several times, and my impression is that it's good for very little. It may be OK for certain types of document-oriented apps, but there's a reason most apps (Chrome, iTerm, even Safari uses its own native tabs, I believe) don't use it. It's underbaked and awkward to fit into a model where your "tab data model" doesn't neatly fit the document data model that the framework wants. I recently made an app where I wanted tabs, and I just ended up abandoning tab support for this reason, and adding a todo item to use an off-the-shelf tab UI library in the future.

loceng 8mo ago

Easter egg: Click the logo!

iLoveOncall 8mo ago

The title really should include "library"...

publicdebates 8mo ago
Honestly yeah. I clicked it thinking it was an MDI app.

publicdebates 8mo ago

This is excessively beautiful, both the website and the library's UI. But I have to ask: what's the rationale on dedicating such an elaborate and gorgeous website for just a library? Are you hoping to get hired for web design? Are you seeking fame and repute? Do you merely do it for the love of the game? Why, for the love of all that's good, pray tell why put all this effort into mere documentation?

chris_st 8mo ago
To set the bar for other websites, to show how it should be done? Or maybe just "for the love of all that's good"?
drewradcliff 8mo ago
Just look at his website and you'll see why. https://www.alasdairmonk.com/ https://www.alasdairmonk.com/
- Hnus 8mo ago
  Author seems to be one of the colleagues you are like I wish to be more like him.
- port11 8mo ago
  I’m jealous of how prolific they are, with a good taste for design and number of side projects. Well done.
dozerly 8mo ago
I don’t think he needs the experience on his resume lmao. He’s an experienced design professional that’s worked at a bunch of big name companies as a lead designer.
jitl 8mo ago
Why make good things? I guess we should make bad things. Or no things.

treetalker 8mo ago

- library - functionality/effect looks like Sublime Text origami mode

dmoose 8mo ago

This is quite beautiful. I had a somewhat similar use case last year and built something that wasn't this polished. The only feature that seems to be missing for what I needed then is the ability to tear off tabs into new windows that could also be dragged back into the frame to reattach. Will definitely be keeping this project in mind for future needs.

iamcalledrob 8mo ago

Love the attention to detail here. Getting drag and drop right is hard, it's so much more complex than you might think.

jbverschoor 8mo ago

“Tabs and splits” should be something the window manager takes care of

ggoo 8mo ago
Really depends on the application, no? I wouldn't want my IDE opening every file in a new window.
- jbverschoor 8mo ago
  That’s why the windows manager and user should be in control I’d love to be able to arrange different tabs of different apps in one window

rob_ 8mo ago

My favourite window manager in linux was always ion3 that then became known as notion. I'm not sure if it was one of the first tiling/tab/split window managers but I started using it around the year 2000 and loved it. One feature that it seemed to have that a lot of other tiling windowmanagers didn't have is tabbed splits. Really nice to see this.

0xb0565e486 8mo ago

I love how beautiful and creative the website header is while being a fragment of what it does. Fantastic work!

jen20 8mo ago

This looks like a great library, and I'm happy to see focus on proper native Mac apps over Electron. One odd thing, the library doesn't have a license associated with it (in the repo, at least).

kocialnews 8mo ago

This is interesting

ahmadyan 8mo ago

This is an awesome library, thank you so much for making it. I just ported it to my IDE, agentastic.dev, and works like a charm. https://assets.agentastic.ai/agentastic-dev-assets/videos/0.6/splits.mp4 https://assets.agentastic.ai/agentastic-dev-assets/videos/0....

w10-1 8mo ago

Fantastic! Managing views in eclipse like this is one of the things that keeps me using eclipse. From looking at the demo and the docs... What I didn't see in the demo was changing the order of a tab within a panel via drag-and-drop (no "allowIntraPaneTabMove"?). Also presuming you can close tabs to left, right, or all other tabs (would need tabs as list to implement this in application). Also might like to somehow manage title elision when there are multiple tabs. Also want to change pane proportions on the fly. Also assuming one can have two views of the same document in different tabs. So many possibilities! I'll try it in some app...

bartvk 8mo ago

What was the thinking of putting the close button on the right of the tab?