unity-design team mailing list archive

[Tyler Brainerd <tylerbrainerd@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here are two screen shots of two areas that have tabbed interfaces in
default applications in ubuntu, nautilus and an option menu. I think the
option menu is a good example of simply subcategorizing different options
into different areas, while nautilus is multiple instances of the
functionality spread over several tabs of content.

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 8:21 AM, Dylan McCall <dylanmccall@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:05 AM, Tyler Brainerd <tylerbrainerd@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > Haha. I guess what I'm getting at is theres plenty of apps (like Empathy)
> > that have tabs available, but they work on different rules. Not to
> mention
> > that some apps are on top, others on bottom, some are full featured tabs,
> > some are content only and not tool bars and so have
> > inconsistent appearance....
>
> There is also some variety in what tabs feel like; what they mean, and
> how they relate to windows. Lots of apps (Empathy, Firefox, gedit)
> have tabs representing toplevel windows, to the extent they can be
> dragged / dropped to expand into new toplevel windows.
>
> Reinteract is a neat alternative case. The application lets you do
> math with Python and you get results in-line (plotting graphs, etc).
> It has Notebooks, which contain Worksheets. Each notebook is
> represented by a new window, and all the worksheets in a notebook
> appear as separate tabs in its window. It makes no mention of tabs in
> the surrounding chrome (there isn't a Tabs menu), and it is impossible
> to drag a tab to create a new window. This isn't a problem of any sort
> because they are a distinctly defined part of the user interface; they
> represent something in a concrete way and they don't conflict with top
> level windows. The tabs are just there.
>
> I think I have seen a few other apps like this, but Reinteract is the
> one I remember. I think it is a nice example of tabs done right,
> because it doesn't feel like they're just throwing tabs in for the
> sake of it.
>
> Not that ”tabs are like windows, but inside of them” is inherently
> tabs done wrong, but it _is_ a kludgey design as it is, and
> inconsistent with how tabs are used elsewhere. Right now both designs,
> even though they are completely different, go through the GTK Notebook
> widget. Maybe that could be reconsidered. A new widget that
> semantically and visually represents a separate document inside a
> toplevel window may be worth exploring.
>
> I think becoming consistent with tabs will be difficult when we have
> some applications (like Firefox) that treat tabs as features by
> themselves that the user needs to think about directly; and other
> applications (Reinteract, most configuration dialogs :/) where a tab -
> as in, that exact same GTK widget - represents a section, or some
> other unique and tactile thing where the important part is what it
> represents, not the tab itself.
>
>
>
> Dylan
>

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