467851 - Floating Tab Previews

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Camino Graveyard :: Tabbed Browsing, enhancement)

Description

[Christopher Henderson]

Attachment: Screenshot

On a whim, I coded up a proof of concept of tab previews. When the mouse hovers over a tab, a preview of the tab will pop up in a window. Uses |snapshot| and a modified ThumbnailView to display the previews.

Before I go any further with this, I would like to get others' opinions on this feature. It duplicates part of Tabspose's functionality, but is distinct. This is a quick, non-modal way of seeing the content of a background tab.

Comment 1

[philippe (part-time)]

Is the action immediate ? ... if one accidentally mouses over the tab ... Or move the mouse to the location bar ... Shudder.

A bit similar to what Opera 9.6 does ? They used to have a delay before the preview pops up, but that seems gone now.

Comment 2

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Ooh, neat.

Comment 3

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

A delay is worth considering (SeaMonkey does this when showing tab previews which I just notice seems partly broken on trunk)

Comment 4

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

After my initial hate for this, I thought it out and, if we can get the UI right, I don't see why it can't be a niche feature we have. We'd definitely need a preference for it, of course.

Comment 5

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Could we insert the tab preview into the existing tooltip somehow (or combine them)? The OS-native tooltip appear/disappear logic is pretty good and probably alleviates any concerns philippe might have had in comment 1.

Comment 6

[Christopher Henderson]

I think we'd need to come up with our own logic, based on an NSTimer or somesuch.

Comment 7

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

hendy, can you attach the work-in-progress patch you coded up in comment 0, if you still have it? Just for posterity's sake, etc.

Comment 8

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

From IRC:


[12:18am] <sauron> fwiw, i have no problem confirming AS re-arrange any more, but tab previews i think are a cheap gimmick, so I'd only support them with a pref
[12:19am] <cl> k
[12:20am] <sauron> i tried them in iCab when the first came out, and turned them off PDQ
[12:20am] <sauron> they're only still on in Opera because I can't figure out how to turn them off

Confirming contingent on a (disabled by default?) pref allowing users control over this.

Comment 9

[Christopher Henderson]

Attachment: Proof of concept

Here's what I did to get the proof of concept working. Patch is for posterity's sake and can't/shouldn't be applied. Uses a modified version of ThumbnailView.m to make the previews.