Submitted by All BeOS users rejoice as Stephan Assmus (‘Stippi’) has recently checked in code which allows sliding window tabs for Haiku. Sliding tabs are undoubtably one of the most-loved features from BeOS. Sliding tabs allow multiple windows to be overlayed on top of each other, where individual windows can be accessed by selecting their appropriate tab. Sentimental value, almost.
The link for this submission has almost no information.
I’ve messed with a few different window managers for the X Window System that allow you to have tabbed windows. I think it’s a very useful thing. (Unfortunately the window managers that provide tabbed windows are otherwise unappealing to me.)
But just having sliding tabs doesn’t seem that interesting/useful to me if the windows themselves are still independent of each other. Because if you reposition 1 window by even 1 pixel, they are no longer lined up. Not to mention the work involved in getting them perfectly lined up in the first place.
The B II frame style for KDE has sliding tabs. It’s convenient. Lining up is not a problem, at least horizontally. The titlebars (or “tabs”) relocate along to the top of the windows so that neither appears on top of the other.
If you haven’t already tried it, check out PekWM. After I discovered it a few years ago, it took over the throne from OpenBox3 as the window manager I keep going back to. I’m currently on WindowMaker because of GNUstep, though.
Now, to get back on topic: This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, here’s to sliding tabs!
PS: I’d like to see better window management in Haiku as well, but for R1 we shouldn’t expect behaviour to differ much from BeOS R5.
..the next step would be grouping of windows. Why the heck has the user to move around the windows, then the tabs, and so on?
In fluxbox, you can just throw a window over another, using the middle mouse button, and they will group. The tabs will arrange automatically. One can also move the position of the window (i.e.) the tab, with accelerators.
You don’t need to use your mouse to cycle windows in a group on fluxbox, too. You can set accelerators for “switch to previous/next window in group” and so on.
Also, there is an auto-group-feature, so you can define which windows are groupped to already open ones (and which ones) automatically, by window identifier.
This would fit very well to beos/haiku.
Regards,
Ford Prefect
well if you like that, you can go a step further and try something like wmii, or ion (I prefer wmii myself though). there, the user doesn’t have to do anything (but can if you want) for positioning windows, it happens automatically.
Thanks for your suggestion, indeed it’s already on my “roadmap” to switch to one of these
I used this all the time in BeOS, especially when coding or doing research and had multiple windows open. Yes, it takes a little bit of time to line them all up, but once they are, I used it all the time.
There were two commits for sliding tabs:
http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/OpenBeOS/.message/2131bb
http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/OpenBeOS/.message/21399c
From these commits, it looks like most of the work on the sliding tabs for Haiku was done by Francois Revol (mmu_man), and Stippi just gave the finishing touches.
Maybe they could borrow some code from Compiz for some added window effects? Such as grouping and transparency. That would definitely be cool…
Not being a BeOS user, I am unsure what’s being referred to here. It sounds interesting, but I need to see it.
In BeOS, the titlebars are more like the tabs on the top of a manilla filing folder.
And if you hold down shift you can actually click and drag the tab accross the top of the window so you can click through like 10 different windows and have them all stacked on top of each other.
Here’s a shot by one of Haiku’s testers:
http://flickr.com/photos/johndrinkwater/152400976/
You’ll see the tabs are movable to different parts of the window-top.
One of the things that made BeOS stand out.
Slide, slide. into the past
One of the most-loved features of BeOS makes its return. Haiku is coming closer and closer to R1 on a daily basis, and I for one am very excited.
If only the USB stack was further along …
While the sliding tabs are nice, they represent possibly <1% of 1% of ….. of the project code base, so we have thousands more itty bitty features to go at that rate, although any news is good news.
I do hope they will think to add a pref to snap the tabs or windows on say every 8th or 10th x,y pixel. Manual pixel alignment really isn’t workable on hi rez monitors yet 1 pixel off looks ugly. I guess the better thing to do would be to add precision mouse control by say temporarily slowing the mouse motion with some modifiers which is then useful for other tasks. Perhaps there already is a Tracker addon for that I missed.
Still Haiku will be much welcomed when I can get my hands on it nearer R1.
An *input_server* add-on would probably be much more effective. 😉
Possibly something like Edge Resistance would work out well?
Your idea sounds a lot like a recent discussion on haiku.org.
Sadly, it’s still http://www.haiku-os.org. :/
Naturally. *Sigh* Me and my memory. That’s what you get from using browser shortcuts…
Not really familiar on how this feature is executed, but to my understanding you will have to manually arrange windows using your pointer. It’d be so much easier if there’s a hotkey for this.
Am I the only person who tried to install the BeOS version that could be installed on the same windows partition and failed?
I believe that method of installing BeOS R5 PE doesn’t work well on NTFS… and then booting BeOS R5 on recent hardware tends to be a challenge anyway.
1GB ram or more tends to be an issue
AMD processors tend to be an issue
SATA controllers that don’t emulate ATA tend to be an issue
For the first 2, there are patches that can be applied to the R5 kernel – but they’re messy, and you have to boot with a patched kernel (boot floppy) in order to apply them.
It is generally far easier to install BeOS Max V3 or Dev Edition to their own partition which I believe are already patched.
I thought BeOS’s sliding tabs was an “easter egg” of sorts. Some people found it useful. Others didn’t. But it’s one of those things you can play with when you’re bored and can’t let go of the mouse&keys.
Back when this feature was introduced I asked Be to implement tab-grouping of windows, but it wasn’t meant to be.
So, in short, this is BeOS culture/heritage more so than a useful feature (in it’s current form) IMHO. I wouldn’t have guessed Thom would pick it up as a news item. 🙂 But this is OSNews after all. The alternative channel.
I thought BeOS’s sliding tabs was an “easter egg” of sorts.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the alternative window decors? Now, that was an easter egg – you had to hold down a combination of keys for the menu item to appear in the Deskbar menu.
So, in short, this is BeOS culture/heritage more so than a useful feature (in it’s current form) IMHO. I wouldn’t have guessed Thom would pick it up as a news item. 🙂
Then you don’t know which OS is still my OS of choice, and has been for years
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http://sikosis.com/haiku/slidingtabs.divx