Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 16th Aug 2008 16:50 UTC
This is the eighth article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms [part I | part II | part III | part IV | part V | part VI | part VII]. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. In part VIII, we focus on the tab.
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Member since:2005-07-06
"For my own usage patterns at least, I find it fairly helpful to have a global app-switching mechanism that lets you select individual apps, then a local/app-specific mechanism that lets you select documents within those apps.
An additional fact worth mentioning is that different applications tend to handle tabbing control differently (different locations, different behaviour to mouse clicks and different key bindings). While you are usually familiar with how your favourite window manager changes content globally, you mostly need to have a look at which application is running at the moment and how to change its content through tabbing. "
By and large I've found that the keyboard shortcuts are usually consistent, at least. On my Windows box, I currently have 4 apps open that use either a tabbed UI or MDI with an internal taskbar (Firefox, MySQL-Front, EditPlus, and "Microsoft SQL Management Studio Express"). In all of them, Ctrl-Tab (or Ctrl-Shift-Tab) works for switching between document windows.
Ideally, I would prefer SDI in combination with floating palette that lists the child windows & lets you switch between them. But I've never seen that outside of some old NeXT apps and an old BeOS tool called "Active App".
"There is a fairly simple, logical explanation: people are willing to put up with a bit of extra complexity if there's a significant added benefit.
Oh yes? :-) "
Ya rly. Srsly.
Member since:2006-10-08
By and large I've found that the keyboard shortcuts are usually consistent, at least. On my Windows box, I currently have 4 apps open that use either a tabbed UI or MDI with an internal taskbar (Firefox, MySQL-Front, EditPlus, and "Microsoft SQL Management Studio Express"). In all of them, Ctrl-Tab (or Ctrl-Shift-Tab) works for switching between document windows.
Because I'm not using any "Windows", I can't confirm this. Regarding different applications that use tabbing on UNIX, Ctrl+Tab (performing the same kind of operation locally that Alt+Tab does globally) behaved differently in Opera (brings up tab selector) and Firefox (switches tabs) and GNotepad+ (does nothing).
It's not that I am a consistency guy - in fact, it doesn't matter to me at all because I'm using applications through all imaginable toolkits -, but that's something I just noticed. Of course, keyboard behaviour isn't important when you're only using the mouse.
Furthermore, the corresponding menu items are often missing. While windowing applications had something like a menu "windows" containing "next" and "previous", associated with shortcut key combinations (I remember Ctrl+PF6 / Ctrl+Shift+PF6 being such shortcuts), today's tabbed applications don't seem to have such "next tab" and "previous tab" menu items inside a "view" or "tabs" menu or submenu.
Ideally, I would prefer SDI in combination with floating palette that lists the child windows & lets you switch between them. But I've never seen that outside of some old NeXT apps and an old BeOS tool called "Active App".
I do see this in Windowmaker all the time. :-)
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Member since:
2006-10-08
An additional fact worth mentioning is that different applications tend to handle tabbing control differently (different locations, different behaviour to mouse clicks and different key bindings). While you are usually familiar with how your favourite window manager changes content globally, you mostly need to have a look at which application is running at the moment and how to change its content through tabbing.
Oh yes? :-)