Closed
Bug 168564
Opened 22 years ago
Closed 22 years ago
Closing Tab should select next tab instead of previous one
Categories
(Camino Graveyard :: Tabbed Browsing, enhancement)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
VERIFIED
FIXED
Camino1.5
People
(Reporter: me, Assigned: mikepinkerton)
References
Details
Closing a Tab currently goes to the previous tab after it is closed. It should
instead go to the next tab. This is from a usability perspective. Perhaps there
could be an option to decide this in Tabbed Preferences.
Comment 1•22 years ago
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This was reported by many for previous Mozilla releases too.
It was addressed and resolved for Mozilla 1.1 (See the "What's new section"):
http://www.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla1.1/
(I don't find the bug-id, maybe 'cause its closed now)
Cortland, what build ID are you reporting this bug against?
(The bug referred to in comment 1 may be bug 123563.)
It's far too esoteric a thing to add a pref for.
Assignee | ||
Comment 3•22 years ago
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our usability testing couldn't adequately answer whether prev or next tab should
be selected. i think we need to do more testing.
Target Milestone: --- → Chimera1.1
Comment 4•22 years ago
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*** Bug 175576 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5•22 years ago
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Just downloaded Chimera 0.6, and this behavior is one of the first things that I
noticed. Most annoying is that the behavior is different from Mozilla 1.1.
With regard to usability testing, it may be helpful to understand how people use
tabs. My own use case is to go to the front page of a news site, e.g. nytimes or
slashdot, and start opening links in new tabs as I scan down this frequently
updated front page. I then start reading the stories that I have opened. New
links are opened in tabs on the right, and I often like to read the stories in
the same order that I opened them in. So I am progressing through these tabs
from left to right.
Comment 6•22 years ago
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pink: This got implemented in Mozilla 1.1 due to high user demand. I'd consider
having Chimera act differently a bad idea.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Just to give you yet another opinion on this... I personally would like tabs to
remember which other tab it was opened from, at least as long as I haven't
loaded another page in the opened tab.
Confusing? Here's an example. I have a "daily Mac news" bookmark which opens
four tabs:
| Mac OS X Hints | VersionTracker | MacFixIt | Think Secret |
MOSXHints will be the one that is shown first. So, I'm there reading the latest
hints and see an interesting one that I want to read more about. I ctrl-click a
link and Chimera opens a new tab to the right side of Think Secret tab. I have
set up tabs to open in the background, so I still see MOSXHints front page. So,
I go and click the tab I just opened and see that blah, this story is boring and
press cmd-W to close the tab.
Because currently Chimera opens the previous tab, it now shows me Think Secret.
In this situation I would rather see Chimera to go back to the MOSXHints tab
where I just came from.
This feature should probably be made so that if I load a new page either to the
original tab or to the spawned tab, Chimera will then forget which tab was the
parent and which was its offspring.
Comment 8•22 years ago
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My browsing style is similar to Daniel Dulay's - open a number of tabs in the
background from one main page, read from the first tab and then close it, read
the second tab and close, etc.
If one thinks of browsing as constructing a tree and closing tabs as marking a
node as 'visited', then it would be nice to perform a depth-first traversal of
the tree by just closing tabs (no mouse interaction required).
Comment 9•22 years ago
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I also have a similar browsing style to Daniel Dulay and further would like to suggest that
a bonus preference might be to open a tab "quietly" eg, that it should open but not
become active - you should remain on the page you opened it from. That way when I'm
openning a number of tabs from the same page, I don't have to keep clicking back to the
first tab.
Comment 10•22 years ago
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"Quiet tabbing" is already implemented ("Load ... in background").
Summary: Closing Tab should select next tab in → Closing Tab should select next tab instead of previous one
Comment 11•22 years ago
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i also suggest a window history so that when i close a TAB it goes back to the
last TAB i was viewing. my reason is this, i regularly visit many forums, at the
forum index i can click up to 20 threads to open in new tabs. within a thread
may be a link to another site, which i open in a new tab which loads in the
background. i read the rest of the thread and then switch to the tab for the
site that was linked. after reviewing this site i want to close it (the TAB) and
return to the thread that linked to it so i can post my comments if any. With
such a large amount of threads open i may not be able to see easily which TAB is
the thread i want, so i will have to go searching for it. i then want to close
this tab and move to the next thread. this will be the next TAB to the right, i
will have closed the forum index TAB so there will be no previous TABS i nthe
history, so i think a default of next TAB to the right when no history is the
correct behaviour.
Assignee | ||
Comment 12•22 years ago
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*** Bug 184818 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Assignee | ||
Comment 13•22 years ago
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i don't use tabs, so mind you, i'm not the best person to comment, but it seems
to me that when I close a tab, i expect to see what's "under" it, which to me is
the tab to the left (the "previous" tab). why do people expect what is on the
right (the "next" tab)? maybe it's my western left-to-right bias, the past is to
the left.
as for a tab history: no, no, no, no, and no. there would be no visual way for a
user to understand why tabs close in the order they do and it would simply
appear as magical to them. magic is bad.
Comment 14•22 years ago
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Mike, I think the reason is people seem to like the focus to stay where it is
and the tabs kind of shift into the focus. I don't really know why people like
that, but I admit I like that way better too.
One situation where I like the proposed way better is when you kind of 'stem'
tabs off a page. You are reading one page and you open some links in new tabs.
Then you go and read the first tab you opened. When you are done with that you
close it. You want to go straight to the next one, but instead it takes you to
the original page.
That might be a reason.
Comment 15•22 years ago
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I agree with comment #11. To me that is not magic at all; it is what I logically
expect. Think about the paradigm that tabs represent: If I have a number of tabs
open and I am reading one, then click on another, I am in effect taking that
second tabbed file folder from the stack of tabbed file folders and moving it to
the top so I can read it. If I then decide to remove that tabbed file folder
from the stack and throw it away, I expect to see the one that was on top
before: that is, the one I was reading previously.
Thus, I normally expect to see my previous tab when I close another, and am
confused when this does not happen. If all my previous tabs are closed already,
then I expect to see the one that is on the top of the stack. If I am using tabs
opened in the background, then this would be the left-most tab (since as I open
them I am putting them behind the current stack of tabbed file folders). If I am
using tabs opened in the foreground, then this would be the right-most tab
(since as I open them I am putting them on top of the current stack of tabbed
file folders). Completely logical and intuitive.
Comment 16•22 years ago
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comment #6 says it all. Please get this in soon before I go completely bonkers.
Comment 17•22 years ago
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I agree with what Mike says in comment #13, but I come to a different conclusion.
I use the "open new tabs in the background" feature, which opens tabs behind all
other tabs - and right of them. I.e. the tabs right of the activated one are
*behind* it.
I also agree with the "left-to-rigth-bias" thing, but for me this is a good
reason to make the software work to match the bias: I read tabs from left to
right, which means that the ones I have not read yet are to the right, and
therefore should be activated if a tab is closed.
Tabs to the left are those I might have left open for further use, but not those
which are interesting in the moment.
Assignee | ||
Comment 18•22 years ago
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fixed.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 22 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Comment 19•22 years ago
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pink, fyi check out the discussion in http://bugscape.mcom.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21927
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