70245 - Allow splitting of content area (MDI GUI Tiles) in a browser window

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[James Green]

Here's a whacky idea that came to mind while I was trying to juggle two browser
windows for viewing seperate websites simulatiously:

Take idea of frames in webpages. They allow the loading of more than one webpage
into the browser window view at a time. Now apply that idea to the web browser
itself. Each frame inside the browser window could independantly load a webpage.
With a high resolution display device and the browser covering a wide enough
area, you could easily load perhaps four seperate webpages in one mozilla window.

Diagram:

+-----------------------------------+
| toolbar                           |
+------------------+----------------+
|                  |                |
|                  |                |
| webpage #1       | webpage #2     |
|                  |                |
|                  |                |
+------------------+----------------+
|                  |                |
|                  |                |
| webpage #3       | webpage #4     |
|                  |                |
|                  |                |
+-----------------------------------+

This might be implemented using the same method used to create the sidebar... a
bar that could be moved up or down, left or right, to alter the space given to
each view. It could be that the user chooses only a left-right display, or only
a top-bottom display even. These are all possibilities to keep browsing within
the one window where the content of the pages are visible on screen all the time
without having to move windows about.

You could navigate within each one by having the normal mozilla navigation
features react to whichever webpage 'pane' currently has focus. For this to work
a pane must be in focus all the time, regardless of which it is.

This would prove a major enhancement for those who like viewing multiple pages
simultaniously who don't like the screen estate taken up by a new window.

CC netdemon who has positive thoughts on this. Assigning to UI: Design Feedback
for lack of better component. I'm sure mpt can think of gotchas in this one.

Comment 1

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

For people like me who are very soon going to have 1600x1200 resolutions or 
higher, this feature will almost be a must.

James recommended, having a menu option of split horizontally/vertically. I 
believe that if you keep splitting in one direction, you should keep creating 
new frames and the other frames should be pushed over. So there would be no 
limit on how many frames you could have. When you are done with the frames, you 
could click on a little close button provided( as opposed to normal frames). 
Each frame could also have its own url bar and wouldn't have a sidebar. I'm 
voting for this bug.

Comment 2

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

I guess the limit on number of views would be once they get down to one pixel 
widths. Adding a new view would work like this:

Say you had two views, one 40% of the width and one 60%. If you added a new 
view, that one would be 50%, and the other two would be their old percentages 
times their new percentages. Therefore, you would have 20%, 30%, and 50%.

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

So is Mozilla now not only an operating system but also a window manager?

Comment 4

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the 
owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard 
work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

Comment 5

[timeless]

yes, and i'm sure someone will make sure it can make you toast and breakfast in 
bed too. =>nobody, helpwanted, future.

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Reassigning nobodied UI:DF bugs to me ...

Zach, I'm pretty sure this is a dup.

Comment 7

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

I can't find  a dup for this :(

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 107075, a version of this enhancement request that involves the 
tabbed browser.

Comment 9

[Roy Yokoyama]

*** Bug 130099 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Alan]

I wrote a bit of javascript to do something like this, i want more image
viewing/manipulation functions built in mozilla but for now javascript will do.  
http://matrix.netsoc.tcd.ie/~horkana/dev/javascript/index.php#split

March issue of Linux Journal has an article comparing various browsers, i learnt
Konquerer (the KDE web browser) does split windows.  (could not find a link so
here's a relevant one on Linux Planet instead)
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/1901/2/

I figured there must be someone who wanted this in mozilla and i had better
check it out and share my javascript, so enjoy.  
(It worked better about two weeks ago when wycywig URLs were display, but some
of the wyciwyg functionality seems to have been changed/turned off/broken and
now the wyciwyg urls are hidden).    

 

Comment 11

[Marius Gedminas]

Konqueror does it perfectly.  In fact this feature is the only reason I
sometimes start Konqueror.  (And I started prefering Konqueror to MSIE thanks to
this feature -- much like I switched to Mozilla thanks to tabbed browsing).

Konqueror presents this functionality to the user with three menu items:
- Split view left/right
- Split view top/bottom
- Remove active view
I think these are self-explanatory.

Aditionally you can link several panes so that clicking on a link in one of them
opens the page in another one.  (IMHO the interface for that part is not very good.)

Windows, tabs, and panes all have their uses.

Comment 12

[andreww]

wonder if getting the "not fetching from server " bug might help with this 
too http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40867

Such that when you split the page the browser doesnt try to refetch the 
page from the server for the new area.

Comment 13

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 137457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Daniel Wang]

Attachment: Use Case Example(s): examples of different possible implmentations of and similar to multi-view interface

if Mozilla.org is going to do this, then we need more usability testing:

  For every UI feature like this, there are probably many alternatives,
  and for every alternative, there are probably many implementations
  possible. (See my attached picture.) I don't know if Mozilla.org has
  a usability test lab or not, but its decisions should be based on
  sound experiments. (btw, does anyone know of any usability test on
  tabbed browsing?)

if not, then this thread should be left to third-party component builder (I
believe there's an Alternative UI project out there).

---

possible use cases:
- browse multiligual webpages: allow people to be able to split
  the window into two (or more) frames, each containing a different
  language versions of the same content. The user should be able to
  lock the scrollbar so that scrolling of the different frames are
  synchronized. (note: can be (and should be) implemented by the
  authors using javascript and frames)
- view different sections of a long Web page at the same time:
  allow people to split a long document into different views for easy
  cross-referencing. (note: still can be implmented by the author)
- view different Web pages simulaneously: obvious, isn't it? However,
  will this cause cognitive overload? Some serious experiments needed
  to prove (or disprove) that this will help the users.
- more use cases to show the absolute necessity of this feature?

issues to be resolved
- who gets to access the status bar?
- if a split-view opens a modal dialog, should the entire window be
  frozen?
- if an inactive split-view opens a modal dialog, should it receive
  the focus (so to update the window title and url bar, for example)?
- separate instance? Use case 1 (UC-1) and UC-3 call for multiple
  instances, but US-2 call for single instance. Which one fits people's
  natural expectation?
- need to ensure that the user knows which is active split-view,
- which leads to this: what if a split-view contains frames?
- need shortcut to jump from one split-view to another. The shortcut
  should be easy to remember, should be similar to shortcuts used to
  jump, but preferably not easily confused:
  i.e. ctrl+j, t for tab, ctrl+j, v for view, ctrl+j, f for frame
- freeze animation in inactive split-view?
- timer, oh dear timer, how doth we do with thee?
- security: confused about which split-view the cookie-alert message
  box and the like refer to? Confused about form-filler?
- synchronize browsing? for multilingual sites, this feature should
  obviously be left to the authors.

btw, since bugzilla doesn't count "against" vote, I will case my "against" vote
here

btw, I still believe usability test should prevail over popularity of a
feature.

Comment 15

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

I propose we WONTFIX this as it is the job of the window manager to give us this
kind of feature (it's also the window manager's job to give us tabs, but at
least multiple panes are somewhat supported).

Comment 16

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 158407 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[Blake Ross]

This is just ridiculously geeky to make it into a mainstream browser... if
anyone has the coding skills to do it, it'd be welcome at mozdev.org.

Comment 18

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Verified ridiculously geeky.

Comment 19

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Attachment: A picture of konquerer's split window

Comment 20

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Attachment: Adobe Photoshop Tiles

I this bug is asking for is a way to tile the content area of mozilla instead
of tabbing.

Hixie states:
> I propose we WONTFIX this as it is the job of the window manager to give us >
this kind of feature (it's also the window manager's job to give us tabs,
> but at least multiple panes are somewhat supported). 

Why is it the window manager's job to give us tabs when our MDI GUI is
operating system independent and doesn't depend on operating system widgets?
Tiling of MDI documents is a common part of many applications. For instance,
adobe Photoshop (See attachment). Our tabs are the equivalent of minimizing the
documents, and what this bug seeks for is the equivalent of tiling.

Why is this geeky? If you have a large monitor, you might want to see more than
one tab at once in a window without having more than one browser window open.

Comment 21

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Geeky is not a proper reason to WONTFIX a bug. Mozilla is used by geeks... 
supposedly. ;-)

This bug has many duplicates and votes.

I don't agree this bug should be WONTFIX.

Comment 22

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

-> Reporter

James: Can you please find someone who is willing to work on this bug? This 
would probably be good for Mozdev as Blake said.

Comment 23

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

*** Bug 107075 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

*** Bug 108589 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Hixie: Not all window managers allow for tiling. Furthermore, it is a memory 
hog to have multiple copies of the chrome open when you don't need them.

Comment 26

[Alex Peng]

Since Opera 7 can split window view, why mozilla catch up?

Comment 27

[Sam Katz]

Unless I missed something.. (and WinXP supports it), you can tile *all* windows 
but not a specific applications windows.

This is why Word has functionality to do it (XP), in addition to MDI support. I 
do not wish to start a flame war.. just to point out what Microsoft does.

Many of us are only familiar with open source software.

Comment 28

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Yes, that's what MDI tiles are. MDI = Multi document interface. If you look at
how the sidebar and the main document are separated, we could simply do
something on the lines of that behavior.

Comment 29

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

WONTFIX. This is way too geeky to be accepted into the main Mozilla trunk,
especially with us moving towards a Firebird world. However, it would probably
be a great feature to have in an add-on.

Comment 30

[Brian 'netdragon' Bober]

Geeky? I thought we were all geeks ^-^ I think this would be a great feature, so
someone else can verify.

Comment 31

[Jo Hermans]

(In reply to comment #30)
> Geeky? I thought we were all geeks ^-^ I think this would be a great feature, so
> someone else can verify.

See bug 111891 for a window-splitter without the window-manager.

Comment 32

[Ross Shannon]

*** Bug 270376 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***