I can’t wait to hear what Michael and Gruber have to say about this really good mock-up.
I’m torn on this idea. As presented, it takes up too much screen real estate. Okay, fine, but it’s like a drawer, you might say. It’s hidden, much like the Safari bookmarks are.
But that takes away the immediacy of getting to multiple sites, which you have with tabs. I know Michael is a little put off by the tab implementation seen in the leaked build of Safari, but to me, the tabs beat this approach. Controls appearance aside, tabbed browsing offers maximum screen real estate with immediate access to multiple pages. The drawer/hidden panel system doesn’t do that.
One poster in the thread mentioned on the mock-up page had a brilliant point: he would like to see the tab implementation extended. That is, make the tabs so they can be renamed, repositioned, and able to be hidden. I would like to see those. Another good idea from the board thread: booklists, i.e., you can bookmark an entire list of pages you have in your pane.
Again, for me, tabbed browsing is the best implementation thus far. It has room for improvement, but nothing right now beats it for real estate savings and immediate action. Flame on, boys!
(props to Michael S. for the link)
posted on March 6, 2003 5:13 PMDave Hyatt doesn't like it :P
Posted by: Jon at March 6, 2003 7:19 PM
I am , in no way, pooh-pooing your feeling that this behavior takes up a lot of window real estate. It does. Those of us with G4 PowerBooks or Apple Cinema Displays, however, would not have quite so much of a problem since many people I know (myself included) only have the browser window roughly 4:3 dimensions which would leave plenty of room on the side of a 16:10 display for this UI.
Posted by: Lee Bennett at March 6, 2003 11:59 PM