[TxMt] multi-row tabs

[Jonas Witt]

On 07.12.2005, at 16:43, Jamal Johnson wrote:
> i understand that the apple ui guidlines discourage this kind of  
> paradigm and being an interface engineer myself, in most cases i  
> agree that if you have to have multiple rows of tabs you should try  
> to organize your information in a more efficient way. but these are  
> _guidlines_, not laws to follow. for instance a preference pane  
> should not have multiple rows of tabs (which are the examples  of  
> windows apps most people have used as bad design decisions). i've  
> used both windows and linux machines for a long time, before  
> switching to a mac a year and a half ago, and they both offer  
> multiple lines of rows in most cases. but i don't think that just  
> because it's evil microsoft and apple says it's a "bad way to do  
> it" that it's true in all use cases. for text document like  
> applications i definitely don't think it's a bad design decision  
> for the use case of being able to see ALL my documents that i have  
> open with a quick glance. i work on many files in parrallel all the  
> time, and leave files open i know i have things to do in. i'm a  
> neurotic user of Cmd-T to open files, but if the file is already  
> open i'd like to see that it is and not have to jump thru the hoops  
> of opening the "find file" dialog, typing the name of the file and  
> choosing it. it's simply much faster / easier to glance at the tabs  
> and click the one i want, imho.

To maximize the amount of open files you can see at a glance, it is  
IMHO much better to put the files not in a horizontal list (tabs, see  
max. 15 files), but in a vertical list (see ~40 files). Of course you  
can't have vertical tabs, as this probably comes right after having  
multiple lines of tabs, design-wise.

But wouldn't it be cool to have the very list that Cmd-T gives you in  
the drawer? So you can switch the drawer between project view and  
open files view, or maybe have 2 drawers (with the possibility to see  
them both?). Cmd-T would focus the open files drawer (if its visible,  
otherwise bring up this small window) and work as it does now. But  
instead of it disappearing, you could have this list open all time.  
It would be sorted by name, and if you focus it by pressing Cmd-T, it  
would be sorted as a history (current behaviour). Is this worth  
thinking about, Allan?

Jonas
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