[TxMt] UI suggestion for tabbed file names

[Allan Odgaard]

On 23/2/2006, at 7:16, Eric O'Brien wrote:

> One problem is that the "close" widget on the tabs is doing double  
> duty by also indicating whether the file has been saved or not.   
> That's "overloading an affordance" ... or something.  I think it's  
> illegal!  ;)
>
> It would probably be MUCH easier to quickly scan a number of tabs  
> and understand which files were dirty if the "dirty" indicator were  
> separated from the "click here to close this tab" indicator.  For  
> example, if "click here to close" ALWAYS showed as an "x" and  
> "dirty" was indicated by underlined or bolded text in the tab.

The close button on the tabs mimic the window close button with one  
exception: the tabs always show the x, where the window only show it  
when you hover the mouse near it.

This is done because there is no outline/button in the tabs which  
indicate “you can click here” as with the window’s close button.

I don’t follow your accusations of overloading the button with status  
indicators, or how it differs from the flight control panel. The  
button has exactly two states: safe (cross) or unsafe (circle).

You neglect the principle of consistency with the rest of the UI.  
Making text bold or underlined to indicate that something is unsaved  
or unsafe, is not drawing on the users experience with the rest of OS X.

If anything should be changed, I would say the cross should be  
replaced with an open circle, to make the two symbols more distinct  
(and then show the cross inside the circle, when the mouse hovers  
over the button) -- but I think the loss in aesthetics from this does  
not make up for what is gained in usability.

You might btw be interested to know that the file manager image shown  
at my blog [1] has the list header pop-up contain an “open files”  
option, which show only open files in the list, where modified status  
is generally easier to pick up from skimming it.

[1] http://macromates.com/blog/archives/2006/02/15/future-directions/