111880 - Different style for untitled tabs

Status: NEW

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[xyzzy]

Marking new tabs with a simple "(Untitled)" text string is somewhat hard to
visually distinguish from an actual title.  It would be nice to have a different
style for these tabs.

Italics or spacing the letters out (half-space?) might create the right effect.
 Whatever it is, it needs to be distinguishable from <title>(Untitled)</title>,
<title>Untitled</title>, <title>U n t i t l e d</title>, or other "styling" with
just text.

Comment 1

[Killian Breslin]

I disagree,
I think that instead of displaying (Untitled), the url should be
displayed (http://blah.blah.com/whatever/).

It's much more useful when you have multiple untitled tabs open.

Comment 2

[xyzzy]

I don't particularly like "Untitled", but I have no reason to believe it's going
away soon.  Until there is a better alternative to "Untitled", this is an
independent and live issue.  If you have such an idea, please file a bug to
implement it!  :)

Comment 3

[David Hyatt]

Reassigning to new component owner.

Comment 4

[Jason Bassford]

Why not just replace "(Untitled)" with "?"  A question mark is only a single
character and will remain visible much longer than would other titles when you
open a lot of tabs.  It stands out from other titled sites much better.

Comment 5

[Adam Hauner]

"?" looks bad and may confuse user - is it tab with any question? with any dialog?

Comment 6

[Jason Bassford]

Okay, try "n/a".  What I'm getting at here is that no matter what text is used,
if it's longer than only a few characters it won't be "easily" distinguishable
from other tab titles.  The only wording that WILL make it stand out is if we
only use a very few characters.

I think that italics, spacing, and (God forbid) text colour are all the wrong
approach.  The actual "font" should be the same.  We're not talking about a tab
that has something intrinsically different about it (as we are in Windows when a
task button flashes for attention - or, conceivably, if a tab were trying to get
our attention with an error/warning message) but rather just a title like all of
the rest.

If you REALLY wanted to be technically accurate about it - don't give the tab
any title text at all.  Just leave it totally blank.  The fact that there is no
text shown should quite self-evidently point to the fact that it's not titled...

Comment 7

[Adam Hauner]

"n/a" - tab (or content of tab) is not available? IMHO it's more confusing than
text"?". 

'(Untitled)' is the best textual solution, because document is really untitled.
I agree with Jason, that changing font style, color or letter spacing is wrong,
changing color or style of tab is same bad way. 

Because I disagree with totally blank tab, I'm nominating this bug for WONTFIX.

Comment 8

[Jason Bassford]

Another alternative: "Tab x".

It's shorter (so it stays readable in a sea of increasing tabs longer) and it
actually does give a description that has SOME kind of bearing on what's being
seen.  Currently, there's absolutely no distinguishing one "(Untitled)" from
another "(Untitled)".  If we name it via its tab number, at least we're relaying
something somewhat useful to the user.

Comment 9

[Jason Bassford]

Since bug 144431 has been fixed, no Web site will any longer display
"(Untitled)".  The only time we will *now* see "(Untitled)" is when a new, blank
tab is opened.

However, since there actually *IS* no content being displayed on such a page (at
least not until bug 109551 is addressed), "(Untitled)" is misleading.  It's not
the case that there's something there and it simply has not been named - there's
nothing there at all.

So, I think that either something like comment 8 should be adopted for such
cases, or we should change rename "(Untitled)" to "(New)", "(Blank)", or
"(Empty)".  Personally, I like "(New)" best since it's the shortest and it
accurately describes what you've just done - open a new tab.

Comment 10

[xyzzy]

I agree that "(Untitled)" now seems out-of-place, however, "(New)" has the same
problem I suggested in the initial report, using text to style text.  This is
great in text only environments, but we have access to a variety of text
emphasis techniques, and I'd like to see an appropriate one used here.

I am not really opposed to "New" except that it has no style altogether, which
is a step in the wrong direction, IMHO.  The "Tab X" notation seems simple and
appropriate, but we still need to make it stand out.

Comment 11

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

Why do we need to do this at all?

Comment 12

[Jason Bassford]

Because "(Untitled)" is both misleading and shoddy looking.

Comment 13

[Alex Tanner]

How about putting website icons and text on tabs that have sites loaded? How
about putting neither icons nor text on new tabs? How about using a thicker
border line around tabs so they are easier to distinguish from each other?