Straight from the horse’s mouth (or developers, I should say).
One thing I forgot to mention in my last rant on tabbed browsing was that ALT+TAB is actually better than CTRL+TAB, since CTRL+TAB is only left to right (or right to left if you do SHIFT+CTRL+TAB), whereas you can use ALT+TAB to quickly switch between the two most recent windows, regardless of how many others are open; much more logical and useful.
6 Comments
i thought i should mention that, i use tabbed browsing and new windows for different tasks. for example, i opened that article link in a new window so i could read it and then return right to this post. at the same hand i have this window with 8 tabs. 6 are blog entries i haven’t read yet, one is the v for vendetta trailer i haven’t watched yet, and one is rojo which i plan to try out.
i’ll get to some of these tabs now, but it may be hours before i find the time to watch the trailer and try out rojo. so i can minimize this window when i’m done with the blogs, get some work done, then pop it back open when i’m ready to check out the rest of this stuff. i’ll open a new browser window when i test the pages i’ll be editting in a few minutes.
Tabbed browsing is VERY usefull if you can find a use for it. The real problem is not tabbed browsing it finding how to use them to benifit your use of the internet.
I guess that kind of makes sense (it’s useful if you make it useful?); I’ve just never found a use for it that separate windows wouldn’t do better.
PS - regarding having a list of sites that you want to check out further later on, I think that’s why they invented bookmarks. Especially with blogs, it would be better to load the page fresh anyway after waiting six hours, since there would likely be new content (comments, etc), and if there isn’t, it should load from your cache.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to stop using tabbed browsing; I’m more just explaining why I don’t use it. If it floats your boat, then have fun.
I also just read the article and it doesn’t say anything bad about the usability of tabs just that the dumb can’t figure ‘em out. Also, Firefox didn’t do the majorusability test Google did. Wonder if Google has a version of Firefox coming out similar to Flock.
Yes, but the first comment does bring up the point (usability issue, in my book) I made about the order of switching when using CTRL+TAB.
ALT+TABing between windows is much better just because of this. If you have 8 tabs open, you can’t easily switch back and forth between number 2 and number 6; you have to do 4 CTRL+TABs through all the other ones (either direction, with CTRL+SHIFT+tab) every time.