On Oct 15, 2005, at 16:14, Edmundo Ortega wrote:
This issue is dear to my heart and has been discussed both in this list and on the wiki:
http://macromates.com/wiki/pmwiki?n=Suggestions.TabsVersusPullDownMenu
I think that the last sensible conclusion was that there are two kinds of users:
- The kind that close tabs when they are done with them.
- The kind that don't.
Seems to me either way the tabs are a waste of precious vertical space. The only time I use the tabs is to occasionally close the open files. To navigate between files I typically use the 'Go to File...' dialog, or sometimes the project drawer.
I don't like a pull-down menu as an alternative either. I think a hierarchical 'Window' menu would be a better solution. In the olden days of NeXTSTEP the context menu actually was the windows menu. That was a quick way to navigate between windows, but I believe the context menu is quite useful for actual contextual actions (though currently under-utilized in TM), and that may be a better use for it. Either way, wether windows menu or pulldown menu, neither are well suited to quickly close a selected set of open files.
Maybe a list (actually a table) in a drawer would be a better choice. Every entry should have a close button, and an icon representing the revision control status (svn/Perforce/whatever). If the list gets to long it'll have a scroll bar, and if you want to see longer filenames you can adjust the size of the drawer.
The drawer(s) is/are pretty valuable screen real-estate too, so sooner or later there will also be a need to have a UI that selects/ switches what is visible in the drawer(s).
BTW jEdit has plugins for most of the above solutions, and as far as I can tell none has crystalized as superior. Each has many users.
Gerd