Tabs
 

Any chance for normal tabs. The thumbnails are cute and all, but waste considerable horizontal screen space.

I've seen a couple posts here and there saying you can remove the thumbnails, etc.. however it still doesn't change that even in list view with 10 or more tabs open.. you have a giant white box of wasted space on the side of your browser.

[QUOTE=precision;21758]Any chance for normal tabs. The thumbnails are cute and all, but waste considerable horizontal screen space.

I've seen a couple posts here and there saying you can remove the thumbnails, etc.. however it still doesn't change that even in list view with 10 or more tabs open.. you have a giant white box of wasted space on the side of your browser.[/QUOTE]

This has been brought up every couple weeks for the last several years. Omni has no interest in listening to its users on this issue.

I apologize if it seems like we haven't been listening! We certainly have, but we haven't been making any UI changes because we've been working on engine updates throughout the 5.x development sequence. (We try to minimize changes to our UI within a single major version of the software, as a rule.)

We will (of course) be making UI changes in OmniWeb 6, and as we do that we'll consider and explore some alternate layouts for our tabs.

[QUOTE=diamondsw;23427]This has been brought up every couple weeks for the last several years. Omni has no interest in listening to its users on this issue.[/QUOTE]

"last several years" is an extreme exaggeration... not even going to mention "every couple weeks." OW has barely had tabs for "several years." Prior to this forum, I only saw it brought up a handful of times.

Whatever is done for 6.0, I certainly hope the option (at least) to use normal tabs is in there. It's the one single thing that keeps me from using OW full-time. I hate the drawer, especially since it stays open even after you have closed all the additional tabs. Perhaps if it slid closed automatically, it might be livable.

I know many people like the thumbnails, but I'd rather just keep track of my tabs mentally and not have them waste space. Perhaps a roll-over-tab thumb like Opera is a compromise.

Tab wants
 

I use several other OmniGroup packages, but I've been using Firefox as my primary browser for quite a while, and there are a few features of that that I would really want before switching.

Where tabs are concerned, what I would really want are:
1) ability to un-close tabs (right click in tab drawer, and a list of the last, say, 10 tabs closed would be part of the pop-up menu there). And this wouldn't just be last page, but the whole page stack.
2) indicator of whether or not the latest page in a tab has been read yet
3) progress bar on tabs still loading
4) control of to which tab focus goes when creating a new tab, or closing an old one (only sometimes want to switch to new tab immediately)

I'll throw other ideas in other topics.

Thanks,

Dave

OmniWeb does 2 and 3 now. 1 is a very popular request and something we will certainly be considering in future versions and there is some control for 4 now, but only for opening tabs.

troy, as far as #3 goes, I think he wants an actual bar as oppose to a wheel - so there's a greater indication of how much is left. Pretty sure you saw the thread on this that was discussed ad nauseum.

Oh fair enough. He wasn't specific but I guess I should have at least specified what we do here.

2 cents worth... Given that all current Macs are widescreen, it arguably makes more sense to have tabs on the side rather than in a bar - just like 'power users' will often have the dock on the left or right rather than at the bottom. And if you reduce the thumbnails to text, you'll end up with a lot more in the OW tab draw than would be possible in a bar, with a scrolling option to boot. For my taste the draw and thumbs are far superior, and I hope Omni won't be abandoning them any time soon (even if a bar option would keep some people happy…)

[QUOTE=mjharper;23512]2 cents worth... Given that all current Macs are widescreen, it arguably makes more sense to have tabs on the side rather than in a bar - just like 'power users' will often have the dock on the left or right rather than at the bottom. And if you reduce the thumbnails to text, you'll end up with a lot more in the OW tab draw than would be possible in a bar, with a scrolling option to boot. For my taste the draw and thumbs are far superior, and I hope Omni won't be abandoning them any time soon (even if a bar option would keep some people happy…)[/QUOTE]

I am definitely in this camp. This is one of the primary reasons I bought OW. I love how tabs work.

Why not have both? NetNewsWire 3 does tab/sidebar very well, as you can switch between the two. The tabs are fairly pedestrian; but the sidebar uses space quite economically, allowing for vertical display of many selected items.

I'd like the option of tab focus, too; it is a major feature for me that keeps me trying Safari (until they implement their next dumb "backwards" version) and Foxfire (until I realize how clunky it is).

The Safari 4 beta offered Tabs on to which saved a lot of screen real estate. Unfortunately, they got rid of it in the final version - which is why I'm back to OW. If OW ever offers Tabs instead of the Drawer, I hope they offer a Tabs on Top option. Takes a little getting use to but is worth the effort!

[QUOTE=Forrest;23446]"last several years" is an extreme exaggeration... not even going to mention "every couple weeks." OW has barely had tabs for "several years." Prior to this forum, I only saw it brought up a handful of times.[/QUOTE]

Considering that Omniweb 5 has been around since 2004 and the sneaky peeks and betas well before that, it has indeed been several years. In fact that's longer than most Mac browsers, and this topic has been discussed [I]ad-nauseum[/I] both here and on the old mailing list. It's not that Omnigroup doesn't listen. On the contrary, they have been very responsive to user feedback over the years, and the user community has been pretty outspoken that they prefer the drawer implementation.

I'm in that camp. I use OW as my primary browser, and the visual tab drawer is one of the key features I can't live without. I don't find the top-oriented tab implementation in other browsers to be very useful for navigation at all, unless they are all from different sites. If you're looking at 5 or 12 pages from the same site, chances are you can't tell one tab from another without a visual representation. There's also a lot of powerful functionality built into the drawer that is absent in other tab imlementations. I also agree that with widescreen monitors being the norm, vertical screen real estate is far more valuable. Apple doesn't get this about the Dock, either, but at least it is possible to move it out of the way.

MORE suggestions for OW's Tabs (plus a whole lot more!)
 

[SIZE="2"][QUOTE=Ken Case;23435]We will (of course) be making UI changes in OmniWeb 6, and as we do that we'll consider and explore some alternate layouts for our tabs.[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][B]Hi, Ken[/B][/SIZE][/COLOR]
I'm a NEW OmniWeb user (only about an hour [IMG]http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif[/IMG]ld!).

After my exclusive use of the Opera browser on PCs running Windo$z from 1999 to 2007 (from its v3.6x days to v9.5x or so), at which time I FINALLY got just completely fed up with the MutherSucking Windo$z O.S. and went back to Mac, from whence I began in the mid 80's, I began using Opera's Macintosh version on my Mactop, my Mac laptop. It worked OK in v10.4.11 Tiger usually, but recently Opera got v10RC & shortly after that v10.00 out & methinks (i hate the use of that word by others, but it seemed apt here) that for the first time I can remember, the Opera engineers rushed things. The develpment & customer-listening time between the RC (Release Candidate) & the "final release" v10.00 was toooo short. v10.00 is buggy & has a feeling of having been 'rushed' out to publishing. Actually, the RC was buggy, too.

But anyway, so I'd occasionally use Safari or Firefox when my Opera wouldn't render a page properly & Safari's OK, but its developers are just not progressing the browser to be competitive with others, especially in the area of Tabs. In this area, one of Opera's benefits (the Opera engineers originated the "multiple-tabs-within-1-running-window," by the way) is that Tabs can be set to remain as is (tabs will become narrower with the addition of more tabs), extendable tabs (clicking on a right-pointing arrow shows overflowed tabs), or stacked tabs (rows & rows of tabs, with each new successive row stacking in a descending direction).

Now, as far as OmniWeb goes in this browser usability area, the inflexibility of how OmniWeb's Tabs may be displayed is surprising to me, considering that the OmniWeb Preferences are AMAZINGLY extensive. I loooove that about OW. As it is, however, I appreciate that I can change the Tab List appearance from "Thumbnail Picture" to "Text List." With "List" I can get alot more sites vertically stacked up. I also like the fact that I can rearrange the opened sites in the vertical list, also.

I understand from your post that ya'll have been working on the rendering engine, etc & not the GUI but hey.... especially how the tabs can be handled in the GUI is at LEAST as important as how fast sites show up. People are comforthungry. Generally, folks like things "as they are." And as far as Tabs in browsers these days go, Tabs located up along where the other menu items are is pretty much the de facto standard. 'Tabs on top' is pretty much expected. OmniWeb's 'tabs to the side' is kinda cool-looking, and is in fact useful in terms of ease of use, but practically speaking, 'tabs to the side' cuts down on horizontal space. Perhaps ya'll are being forward-looking though, as screen dimensions are in fact becoming more & more wider than their predecessor screens. For example, my Mactop's screen dimension is 1280px X 854px, which is nearly 1.5:1. And generally, screens & monitors are going into the widescreen display dimensions. So with that in mind, perhaps a couple years down the road when most screens & monitors will be widescreens, depletion by OmniWeb of the horizontal dimension will be OK & completely acceptable. But until then, ya'll need to add the option to your customers to move the tabs to the top of the window. IF you are interested in picking up Safari customers........

As far as other browsers for Mac are concerned generally, I looooove the hyperspeed of Shiira but its "tabs" area suck bigtime, they're just buggy as heck (try moving them around within the tab-row), and I like the stability of Safari, and I like the status-quo standardness of Firefox for Mac (though it reminds me of Windo$z... yyyuck...), & my longtime fav Opera is 98% of the time superfast & is always superflexible and I can have more sites open with Opera & the Opera app & the OS still remaining stable than I can with ANY other browser I've tried (160+ sites I've had open, divided up within 3 or 4 Opera windows), but as of v10.00 I think it's finally happened: "Selling out & rushrushing to please the people," at the expense of quality of function. Never thought I'd see that..... Stainless is for the new Intel Macs, which I don't have, but I can see that OmniWeb is going to probably become my Safari replacement. And...dunno... maybe even my Opera replacement on my PPC Mac TiBook.

One thing I was happy to find out about OW is the fact that down-clicking my mouse's scroll wheel will open a link in a background tab, something I absolutely must have with any browser. So that's nice. Now, as far as right-clicking (context menu) is concerned, WOW....... WHAT the hay were yoooz guyz thinking?? I mean, the list is just plain odd, & mostly unusable 95% of the time. At the top of OW's context list,[I] the location that is most quickly available to one's mouse arrow[/I], are *4* options for opening *the current page* into [I][B]4[/B][/I] different ways.[B][I] huh? [/I][/B]It's already open!! But I [I]CAN[/I] see only 1 of those 4 being useful in the quick-access context menu: "Open page in a new Window." That'd be useful when one got into a site that was completely unrelated to other tabs one has up & one wants to separate the new subject matter from all the rest & open a bunch of new tabs relating to that new subject in a new Window.
NEWS BULLETIN: [U][B]I just recovered from an OmniWeb bug, Ken[/B][/U]..... Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to have periodically been saving this text with a Command-A & Command-C to copy all that I'd typed in this post to the clipboard (I learned that that's kinda useful alotta times!, and the superb JumpCut clipboard utility that I use mooch-o helps out alot for text copying & pasting).
OK, here's what happened: I right-clicked on this page, out in whitespace & got the context menu. I selected "Open Page in Background Tab," which happened. BUT.... I then clicked on the "X" in that new duplicated page/tab, and [B][U]BOTH[/U][/B] that duplicate AND this original page FROM WHICH the duplicate was made DISAPPEARED! BUG!!! So I got into this forum again, got the Quick Reply window up again & Command-V pasted all my text back into it.
whew.
ok. tell ya what. I'm done for now.
But Ken, please email the developers these few requests:
1. Give the tab bar locations these 3 options: On the Left side, on the Right side, or ON THE TOP.
2. Change the context menu's list of options. Dump the superfluous stuff that doesn't belong in the quick-access context menu; instead, move that rarely-used stuff up into the menu somewhere.
And in the context menu, I believe the list should be in this order, from top to bottom: Go Back, Go Forward, Close Tab (this is a command that I'd like to see ADDED to the context menu), Add Page to Bookmarks, Download Page As, Open Page in Background Page (but fix the bug I described up above first!), Copy Page Address to Clipboard, View Page Source, & maybe Stop Animations, too. All the rest of the stuff could go up in the menu somewhere.
ok. I'm done.
But convey to the developers for me that a new user (moi) thinks that their OmniWeb browser creation is, so far, top-notch for the most part. Now, it's time to tweak the usability. And to listen to OmniWeb's new users/customers for usability suggestions......
P.S. - I LOVE this vBulletin forum software OmniGroup uses, by the way.... REALLY stable & flexible & full of options. Nice..... [IMG]http://forums.omnigroup.com/images/smilies/smile.gif[/IMG]<G>
[/SIZE]
[COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][B]Kevin Kendall[/B][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[QUOTE=technomage;65910]Considering that Omniweb 5 has been around since 2004 and the sneaky peeks and betas well before that, it has indeed been several years.[/QUOTE]
Fwiw, the post you responded to was posted back in Oct 2007 ... I'll assume that this thread was revived by a spammer (since deleted) and you failed to notice the dates ;)

[QUOTE=Handycam;23454]Whatever is done for 6.0, I certainly hope the option (at least) to use normal tabs is in there. It's the one single thing that keeps me from using OW full-time. I hate the drawer, especially since it stays open even after you have closed all the additional tabs.[/QUOTE] Well if it's an option, I'm all for it. I really do prefer Omniweb's current graphical tabs on the side. I use Omniweb at home and at work as my main browser. Having an option would be great. Ditching the drawer and graphical tabs would be a mistake.

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090913-bt8uw83apa8kufwauj2uiwa8iu.jpg[/IMG]

or

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090913-d4tj99wnpbk5ypwfamijhf4yrq.jpg[/IMG]

or

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090913-k6jydjr68ss29jjk4rme2dipue.jpg[/IMG]

Equals [b]real options[/b]. This is what I'd like to see.