[George the Flea]

Perhaps this has been requested before, but I would love to see an option to put OmniWeb's tabs in a pane (integrated part of the window, like the most recent Mail.app) instead of a drawer. Personally, I'm not a big fan of drawers and would much prefer a unified window with a pane. Just having an option in the preferences to switch between the two would be awesome.

[climbingtractor]

Something like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/climbin...7594181679299/

There have been a number of topics on the subject where numerous reasons are cited as to why drawers are better, but personally I think it comes down to choice. I like the cleanness of the pane whereas others love the drawer for other reasons.

A preference would be a great solution.

Mike

[George the Flea]

That screenshot is exactly what I was thinking of. And I definitely think the choice should be in the user's hands.

[JKT]

Sadly, I suspect Apple is going to take any choice out of people's hands. I very much doubt that drawers are going to be a permissible feature of 10.5 and we'll all be lumbered with panes, no matter how much worse they are feature-wise and aesthetically.

[xiamenese]

Originally Posted by JKT

Sadly, I suspect Apple is going to take any choice out of people's hands. I very much doubt that drawers are going to be a permissible feature of 10.5 and we'll all be lumbered with panes, no matter how much worse they are feature-wise and aesthetically.

I didn't know that about 10.5. <sigh> I too like drawers; I like the ability to shut them out of the way when I don't need to reference them, and I don't think panes—are "panes" not aptly named?—have any greater practical value or aesthetic appeal ... then I am not one to follow what style-gurus tell us we have to like. I actually positively dislike the appearance of the current version of Mail, but I accept that that is a matter of personal taste.
Mark

[climbingtractor]

There's no reason why a pane can't be shut to get it out of the way when it's not in use. Try pressing Shift , Apple and M in Mail.

[JKT]

Originally Posted by xiamenese

I didn't know that about 10.5.

I know no more than you do, I just suspect it is likely given the way Apple appears to be heading (i.e. from the current version of Mail, to the leaked screenshots of iCal, etc). It seems likely to me that drawers are to be deprecated as an UI paradigm in favour of panes and if they are, OmniGroup will be forced to use them in order to remain good UI citizens.

FWIW, here's one of the earlier threads about panes versus drawers - although it is in the context of OmniOutliner rather than OmniWeb, my points in favour of a drawer are just as valid for OmniWeb as they are for OmniOutliner:

http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?t=179

I can add a 7th and 8th item to my list of positives of a drawer over a pane (as implemented by Apple):

7. When the contents of the drawer exceed the vertical height of the drawer, because a placeholder already exists for it, the appearance of the scrollbar does not affect the drawer contents. With a pane, the drawer contents have to shrink to accommodate the newly appeared scrollbar.

8. The visual distinction between the contents of the drawer and that of the window is much stronger due to the drop shadow at the edge of the content window onto the drawer. Apple's panes have very little to distinguish them visually (a faint black line and a barely distinguishable faint blue tone and that is it). This has the effect of making the contents of a drawer appear (correctly) as being something other than the contents of the window.

See SafariStand for how annoying 7. is, and how less distinctive 8. is.