New Opera tabs
 

The latest Opera 10 beta has a nice way of dealing with tabs.

First of all, it shows regular tabs by default:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-fs4feigfn8r7k385khww7a2ypd.jpg[/IMG]

Which show a large thumbnail when hovered over:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-1xtgx8jhh4nacc51d7k1wckt9w.jpg[/IMG]

Or, you just drag the divider bar down to turn the tabs into thumbs:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-fi8r548kwy9uy2fs6rwggb7fct.jpg[/IMG]

Awesome.

I agree! This is a nice view for horizontal tabs!

Maybe it is worth to think about this for OmniWeb 6.

Personally i prefer OmniWeb's vertical tabs. I have more free space on the right or left side of a window, than i have on top of it.
Every pixel of window hight i lose, means more scrolling! But usualy it is no problem to add width to the browser window until no horizontal scrolling of the page is necessary. I have even more free space on the right or left side of the window, which can be used for the tabs.

In addition to that, horizontal tabs just get unusable when 10+ tabs are opened in one window and thumbnails are just a "must have"!

I know there are many people who have a different opinion. So it would be good to have the option to position them on top, or on the right side of the browser window.

I don't know, these thumbnails still seem pretty useful even with a lot of tabs open:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-khx7iba32x96qdsfr9fdfig1au.jpg[/IMG]

Oh, and that icon at the far right pops up a menu of ALL recently closed tabs.

The alt-tab switcher is nice too, when you have a lot of tabs:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-qxtp1p8iu6fft6jcqwkrgba4bg.jpg[/IMG]

Its definitely an improvement. Jon Hicks' design mojo has clearly gone a long way to improving the interface as well. But still, it seems like putting lipstick on a pig, doesn't it? Just opening a preferences pane or using the mail interface betrays the many layers of UI mistakes that still exist. I get the same feeling when I use Firefox on the Mac. Wonderful browser technically, but the interface just does not work.

With the "Mac native" skin, I think it looks pretty good.
[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-cy7naeawseqkfwc4xpq4qmyks2.jpg[/IMG]

And if the true measure of the interface is utility, it has that. Mouse gestures, the many ways to use tabs, lots of shortcuts, etc. A lot to like. I am pretty impressed.

Opera's UI is horrendous. They couldn't pay me to use it. (I admit, I'm a long-time Mac user that demands and appreciates "better-made" applications.)

[QUOTE=frankiec;60802]Opera's UI is horrendous. They couldn't pay me to use it. (I admit, I'm a long-time Mac user that demands and appreciates "better-made" applications.)[/QUOTE]

I always used to agree with this, and have used Macs since the 1980's.
But using 10b1, with the Mac Native skin doesn't feel any different from other browsers on the Mac. All the dialogs, panels, etc just look like Mac now. They have done a nice job.

My point for bringing all this up is to show some of the thinking that has gone into a different approach to features that everyone has, as well as adding new and innovative features that enhance browsing.

Can't please everyone...! :)
 

Ironically enough, given the complaints that have sometimes been levelled at OmniWeb's tabs, there are more than a few Opera users looking for their new tabs on the side, a la OmniWeb.

[URL="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=277908"]http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=277908[/URL]

OW's tabs aren't perfect, but to my mind, on a widescreen vertical tabs simply make the most sense.

While there's an aesthetic, and familiar, appeal to horizontal trip of thumbnails, this is most suited to horizontally oriented content, like video and images (i.e. iMovie, iPhoto), whereas websites do still tend to be longer than they are wide.

As at least one of Opera user in the thread above would like to see the Tab preview pane to be shown on mouse-over, akin to iPhoto's Full Screen mode, where the Photo Album contents is shown in a 'filmstrip' along the top of the screen, when you move the mouse to the top of the screen.

This would balance the space-saving of traditional text-only tabs, with the visual recognition of tab previews. While I quite like OW's Tab Drawer, if the Drawer were to hypothetically become an integrated sidebar, a la iTunes, there might be the possibility of a similar collapsed/expanded mouse-over toggle, as an option to maximise space for the web page.

Finally, FWIW I'd really like to see a Full-Screen mode in OW, very much like the iPhoto Full-Screen mode above, though with the 'pop-out' tabs appearing on the left or right.

BTW - Shirra's method of showing a loading progress-bar in the tab-preview is a nicely visible loading display, esp. in Expose mode, that would be a nice addition to OW (with some refinement.)

[QUOTE=Handycam;60783]I don't know, these thumbnails still seem pretty useful even with a lot of tabs open:

[IMG]http://img.skitch.com/20090603-khx7iba32x96qdsfr9fdfig1au.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]

ok, i agree, that there go more than 10, maybe about 20 to 25 horizontal tabs into one browser window, if you size it the whole screen width. A lot more than i initially thougt, so "tab capacity" seems not to be a problem for most of the people.
But expanding the width of a browser window to the whole screen width is going to produce much free (white) space on right an left of most web pages, or make lines of text unreadable long.

I still believe, that horizontal tabs cause a massive loss of usable space in the browser window, even on the whole screen.
They just don't fit for the common format of web pages, as most of them are relatively narrow but often very long.

Vertical tabs need to stay, at least as an option!

I have to say that this looks like a good solution to the horizontal tab problem. If the next version of OmniWeb was to offer this and vertical tabs (but not both on the screen at the same time), then I suspect that a lot of people who complain about the vertical tab only interface would be pleased. Vertical tabs are still far more logical to me with respect to scrolling so I definitely wouldn't want them to go away...

[QUOTE=andreas_g;60819]ok, i agree, that there go more than 10, maybe about 20 to 25 horizontal tabs into one browser window, if you size it the whole screen width. A lot more than i initially thougt, so "tab capacity" seems not to be a problem for most of the people.
But expanding the width of a browser window to the whole screen width is going to produce much free (white) space on right an left of most web pages, or make lines of text unreadable long.[/QUOTE]

BTW, that screen shot was with the browser window at the width I always have it at, maybe 1200px wide. The screenshot looks huge for some reason. So I got all those previews on top of a normal web surfing view.

The main thing the Opera horizontal thing has "over" the OW vertical way is that [B]they can be reduced/converted easily to "normal" non-graphical tabs[/B].

Just to prevent any confusion for people who are not familiar with OmniWeb, what you mean is that the Opera ones can be converted into "normal", [I]horizontal[/I], non-graphical tabs. OmniWeb offers easy conversion to vertical, non-graphical tabs too, don't forget - just a click of the button in the tab drawer.

[QUOTE=JKT;60839]Just to prevent any confusion for people who are not familiar with OmniWeb, what you mean is that the Opera ones can be converted into "normal", [I]horizontal[/I], non-graphical tabs. OmniWeb offers easy conversion to vertical, non-graphical tabs too, don't forget - just a click of the button in the tab drawer.[/QUOTE]

Yes, that is exactly what I meant.

I requested this feature [url=http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=8868]before[/url].

I think height is too precious (because most websites have a vertical flow) to use horizontal visual tabs. But if you can use both, why not.

Otherwise it's nice to see this feature implemented in a more mainstream browser (at last). Opera have done a terrific job with their UI (well if you don't look at the clunky preferences) compared to version 9.