Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th May 2009 22:42 UTC
Tabbed browsing is pretty much the norm by now, with even someone like me (who disliked it vehemently for a long time) finally giving in and start using tabbed browsing (thanks to Chrome, by the way). Well, apparently, Mozilla thinks its time to move on. They believe tabbed browsing has become obsolete, and are asking users to come up with a better alternative.
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Member since:2005-11-16
To a certain extent, yes, but still makes it harder to distribute pages between the browser windows or keep track of which window contains which set of web pages.
I'd argue that with Opera's window management features the opposite is true, at least compared with the virtual desktop software I've used. The Windows Panel lists all the open tabs in all open windows and can be filtered to only show certain sites. Multiple tabs can be selected and dragged to a different browser window as a group. I think it works better than a thumbnail based virtual desktop representation would when dealing with primarily text based web pages.
The point would be keeping all the browsing stuff in a single virtual desktop, else I would need like 10 desktops instead of the 5 I currently use. If I was to use Opera's MDI I'd rather open every page in a new window and rely on my window manager to switch between them.
But then you'd miss out on many of Opera's own window management features. Like being able to cascade and tile pages within the browser window, or the ability to create follower tabs that load any links clicked on another tab, allowing one tab to be used for navigation while its follower displays content.
I think the reason why most browsers use a form of MDI these days (albeit a crippled version where all child windows are maximised) is that window managers generally aren't designed to deal with such a large number of open windows from one application. Spreading them over virtual desktops is one solution, but I don't see really how it's better than Opera's MDI and tab management features.
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Member since:
2007-03-06
You have multiple individual web page windows contained within separate browser windows. Is that so different from having individual SDI application windows within separate virtual desktops?
To a certain extent, yes, but still makes it harder to distribute pages between the browser windows or keep track of which window contains which set of web pages.
The point would be keeping all the browsing stuff in a single virtual desktop, else I would need like 10 desktops instead of the 5 I currently use.
If I was to use Opera's MDI I'd rather open every page in a new window and rely on my window manager to switch between them.