7 ms·

Close Tab Behaviour in Google Chrome

133 points by solipsist 16y ago

drivebyacct2 16y ago
Fantastic tear down on one of my favorite things about Chrome. I love that I can middle-click tabs away rapidly and they stay the same size.
jessriedel 16y ago
> In placing the close button on the right, Google have assumed that in the majority of cases, users are going to be wanting to close the most recently opened tabs first (likely to be the ones to the far right of the tab group) and have accordingly placed the close button on the right. Really? Doesn't it make more sense that Chrome is primarily a Windows/Linux program where the close-window buttons are at the top-right, and Safari is primarily Mac where the buttons are at the top-left.
- danteembermage 16y ago
  Is Arabic language Chrome more likely to be installed on a Mac? That would support your theory.
  - soamv 16y ago
    A quick google image search for Arabic versions of windows shows that they have the close button on the left and the window title on the right. So it is possible that chrome is simply mimicking windows behaviour.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    Why? My theory is just that browsers are developed primarily for English, and that both Safari and Chrome put the close-tab buttons on the same side as the close-windows buttons for their respective primary operating system. Chrome in Arabic was developed as an afterthought, and it was just easier to flip the whole UI around.
- eklitzke 16y ago
  While this seems plausible to me -- I'm on Linux, and other tabbed apps like gnome-terminal place the close-window button on the right -- I think that Chrome's behavior makes the most sense anyway. When you close a tab, tabs shift towards the left. Meaning that the left-most tab in your browser is always the oldest tab, and generally speaking tabs on the left are older than tabs on the right (precluding the possibility that you manually rearranged the tabs). So since tabs on the left tend to be the oldest, they're also the least likely to be closed soon, and tabs on the right tend to be younger, so they're more likely to be closed soon. Hence the close-on-the-right behavior.
  - alanfalcon 16y ago
    Except that by default, Chrome opens new browser tabs adjacent to the tab you're reading. When I command-click a link in an older session of HN, the new tabs don't show up on the far right (unless all the tabs to the right of the HN tab were opened from this window in this way). I would actually prefer all tabs open on the far right because I tend to use tabs in a very random access way and Chrome forces me to think more.
- axod 16y ago
  I'd assume they measured it with real user usage. You're much more likely to close recently opened tabs though.
- rudd 16y ago
  Why would they save work on the in-tab UI and make the close-tab X button on the right? The window control buttons are on the left like any other Mac app, and the same goes for the closing X button on the Developer Tools frame. Both of those are on the right in Windows. As you saw with the Arabic screenshot, they've already done the work to allow the closing X buttons to be on the left; if they wanted the Mac tab closing buttons to be on the left, they'd be on the left. It's not just a holdout from Windows.
simonw 16y ago
Chrome's tab behaviour is superb. I also /love/ the Shift-Apple-T shortcut, which re-opens the last tab you closed with its Back button history intact. I use that several times a day.
- shadowpwner 16y ago
  Firefox also has this, and I presume Safari does too (I don't use it, so excuse inaccuracies).
  - spicyj 16y ago
    Safari does; the shortcut is Cmd-Z, because you're "undoing" the closing of the tab.
    - chaz 16y ago
      But it doesn't resurrect the whole tab's history like Chrome does. Safari simply opens a new tab with the last-viewed site in the killed tab.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- statictype 16y ago
  Also, you can middle-click on the back/forward buttons to open the previous/next page from the history in a new tab. Another really nice touch.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    the other browsers have this, but its only in chrome that the new tab retains the entire history stack of the original tab. so you hold cmd and press the back button, then in the new tab you can continue pressing back multiple times! only chrome does this, firefox fails. only problem is, i have to cmd+click, i cant middle click the back button. edit: you can also cmd+long click on the back button and get the same behaviour from the menu. why cant everything be this comprehensively functional?
51Cards 16y ago
I personally don't like either. First thing I do in Firefox is set it so I have one close X at the far right end of the bar. I realize this does require it to be fairly visible which tab is current but I still like that this button is always where I want it to be. My mouse always heads to the same location to close any tab, I can close multiples by clicking multiple times in the same place, and I don't waste space on every tab with X buttons when I could be seeing more of the tab title. Just my personal preference but feels far more efficient to me.
- wahnfrieden 16y ago
  More efficient than Cmd-w (or Ctrl-w)?
  - 51Cards 16y ago
    No, not more efficient than Ctrl-W for closing, I use that frequently. However when discussing UI design and wasted space, putting an X on every tab is much less efficient than just one at the end.
- StuffMaster 16y ago
  Close button on the right is one of the many reasons I use Seamonkey.
toolate 16y ago
While the tab behaviour is good, the close buttons are hopelessly small. They are a tiny 12px by 12px on Windows. Compare this to the close window buttons, which are 64px by 24px. Compounding the error is the poor choice of middle-click as the alternative close mechanism. Many older mouses and most laptops don't have middle click. When browsing on my laptop I can't use the touchscreen to close a tab, as the hit area is much to small to accurately hit. Likewise, using the trackpad to land the pointer on the button is something I find difficult to do reliably. I don't understand why the hit area can't be increased. There is little penalty for incorrectly closing a tab, as Chrome has a handy "Recently closed tabs" menu. Edit: A search turned up the newer "Chrome Toolbox" plugin, which brings the missing double-click-to-close behaviour to Chrome tabs.
- oakenshield 16y ago
  I disagree about middle-click being a "poor" method. Middle-clicking is essential to mouse-based browsing these days, both for opening links in a new tab and for closing tabs. With middle-click, the whole issue of close button placement becomes moot. Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-clicking. I also haven't come across a mouse in quite some time that does not have a middle-click (I use a including an 8 year old microsoft mouse).
  - brownleej 16y ago
    Do most laptops come with middle click buttons? I can't remember ever seeing one that does, and I've used plenty of non-Apple laptops.
    - Prolorn 16y ago
      My own anecdotal observations suggest most laptops don't have a dedicated middle-click button, though most do emulate a middle click when the right and left buttons are simultaneously pressed.
  - underwater 16y ago
treblig 16y ago
Thank God the red close button is gone.
leppie 16y ago
A bit off topic, but why can't tabbed browsers detect accidental (double) middle clicks when closing a tab?
- statictype 16y ago
  Well, it goes both ways. Often, I have a whole lot of tabs open that I want to get rid off so I just rapidly middle-click on the left-most one and keep doing it until they're all gone. Of course, you can always right-click and say 'Close all tabs to the right' but I usually forget about that option at the time when I'm doing it.
  - leppie 16y ago
    The annoyance lies in the pain to recover a lost tab.
    - pkamb 16y ago
      Chrome has a couple good options, fyi: Right-Click tab strip. or Ctrl-Shift-T or List of closed tab at the bottom of the new-tab page.
ronnier 16y ago
I use vimium. I press "t" to open a new tab. When done, I press "d" to close a tab. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...
jazzychad 16y ago
Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988411 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988411 with lots of discussion
- solipsist 16y ago
  My bad. I tried looking ahead of time to see if this had been posted before on HN and didn't find anything. I think it's because of the post's title, which differed from the article's. I was also under the impression that HN didn't allow repeat submissions, but I guess that feature expires after a certain amount of time. Does anyone know a close to fool-proof way for searching to see if an article has already been posted before?
  - jazzychad 16y ago
    No problem. I guess "dupe" was a bit harsh. I just remember seeing this on here before and that there were a lot of comments which others might enjoy seeing. You're right, the post permalink has been changed. HN allows repeat submissions after some amount of time, though. I use searchyc.com to search for previous submissions, but it's not completely fool-proof.
    - solipsist 16y ago
      Great, thanks for the link. This seems to be a better alternative to a Google search on HN.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    You might have tried something like http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=theinvisibl.com/2009/12/08/chrometabs http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=theinvisibl.co... But I don't think that works here either. It looks like they changed the page name from "http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lo... as that is the name cached by Google. Perhaps some clever cloaking for SEO purposes ...? Ordinarily a Google search for "link:http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lo... site:ycombinator.com" would do it I think.
pak 16y ago
Two other Mac projects that bring the excellent Google Chrome tab UI into other contexts: TotalFinder, a Finder mod that adds tabs to Finder windows (http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/), and Kod--still in beta--which will be a text editor somewhere in the ballpark of the mythical TextMate 2 (http://kodapp.com http://kodapp.com).
nowarninglabel 16y ago
Ctrl + W or Ctrl + F4 I'm making it a pledge to teach one non-technical friend a month to use these keyboard shortcuts.
X-Istence 16y ago
Along with being Fireballed today, it seems wherever that site is hosted on is currently not returning DNS records for the domain. Shame, as I have yet to see the content and would like to.
cobralibre 16y ago
This close tab behavior would indeed be fantastic if the most important tab behavior use case was "user should be able to close multiple tabs in rapid succession using the mouse." But really, how often would a typical user need to do that? There may be a good reason to eschew prevailing Mac UI conventions and to put the tab close button on the right, but this isn't one.
- chrisbroadfoot 16y ago
  I do this often, to clear stale tabs. I'll start from the left (or where I know stale tabs start from) and repeatedly click.
  - cobralibre 16y ago
    I close tabs after reading them.
modeless 16y ago
The four other major browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera) have had years to copy this very useful behavior, and I can't understand why none of them have.
- snprbob86 16y ago
  When I used to work at Microsoft, I explicitly requested this behavior on the internal IE8 forums (in beta at the time). I took several tries to explain why this was important and at the end I got a very typical "Thanks for the feedback" and then the thread went cold. I don't think that PM ever understood what I was talking about, but several other commenters did.
- ootachi 16y ago
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086
ilamparithi 16y ago
Other interesting features that amazed me are, i) 'Close tabs to the right' option in right click menu. ii) New tab open behaviour. (New tab goes next to the current tab and not to the end. Extremely useful when you have lots of tabs opened.)
- Prolorn 16y ago
  Woah, I just noticed that when the mouse hovers over "Close tabs to the right" or "Close other tabs", the tabs that will close start to flash. (Chrome 9.0.597.67 beta, Windows) When did that happen?
  - ilamparithi 16y ago
    Wow. I just noticed the flash. They've put so much thought in to this.
itsnotvalid 16y ago
I've never noticed that in safari, since when it stacks my tabs when there is too much, I have to use shortcuts anyway. I guess what chrome need to fix is the side of the button locating at (right vs left) if Apple did mention that in their "Guidelines".
JonnieCache 16y ago
Here is a library for putting chrome tabs into your osx apps: https://github.com/rsms/chromium-tabs https://github.com/rsms/chromium-tabs Its basically the cocoa implementation of chrome's tabs ripped out and put into its own objective c lib. used by kod and other things mentioned in here. It includes all the seamless dragging and dropping of tabs between windows, everything the browser does.
dalore 16y ago
I close my tabs in chrome how I used to in opera, with a middle click anywhere on the tab control.

133 points by solipsist 16y ago

Fantastic tear down on one of my favorite things about Chrome. I love that I can middle-click tabs away rapidly and they stay the same size.

jessriedel 16y ago

> In placing the close button on the right, Google have assumed that in the majority of cases, users are going to be wanting to close the most recently opened tabs first (likely to be the ones to the far right of the tab group) and have accordingly placed the close button on the right. Really? Doesn't it make more sense that Chrome is primarily a Windows/Linux program where the close-window buttons are at the top-right, and Safari is primarily Mac where the buttons are at the top-left.

danteembermage 16y ago
Is Arabic language Chrome more likely to be installed on a Mac? That would support your theory.
- soamv 16y ago
  A quick google image search for Arabic versions of windows shows that they have the close button on the left and the window title on the right. So it is possible that chrome is simply mimicking windows behaviour.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Why? My theory is just that browsers are developed primarily for English, and that both Safari and Chrome put the close-tab buttons on the same side as the close-windows buttons for their respective primary operating system. Chrome in Arabic was developed as an afterthought, and it was just easier to flip the whole UI around.
eklitzke 16y ago
While this seems plausible to me -- I'm on Linux, and other tabbed apps like gnome-terminal place the close-window button on the right -- I think that Chrome's behavior makes the most sense anyway. When you close a tab, tabs shift towards the left. Meaning that the left-most tab in your browser is always the oldest tab, and generally speaking tabs on the left are older than tabs on the right (precluding the possibility that you manually rearranged the tabs). So since tabs on the left tend to be the oldest, they're also the least likely to be closed soon, and tabs on the right tend to be younger, so they're more likely to be closed soon. Hence the close-on-the-right behavior.
- alanfalcon 16y ago
  Except that by default, Chrome opens new browser tabs adjacent to the tab you're reading. When I command-click a link in an older session of HN, the new tabs don't show up on the far right (unless all the tabs to the right of the HN tab were opened from this window in this way). I would actually prefer all tabs open on the far right because I tend to use tabs in a very random access way and Chrome forces me to think more.
axod 16y ago
I'd assume they measured it with real user usage. You're much more likely to close recently opened tabs though.
rudd 16y ago
Why would they save work on the in-tab UI and make the close-tab X button on the right? The window control buttons are on the left like any other Mac app, and the same goes for the closing X button on the Developer Tools frame. Both of those are on the right in Windows. As you saw with the Arabic screenshot, they've already done the work to allow the closing X buttons to be on the left; if they wanted the Mac tab closing buttons to be on the left, they'd be on the left. It's not just a holdout from Windows.

simonw 16y ago

Chrome's tab behaviour is superb. I also /love/ the Shift-Apple-T shortcut, which re-opens the last tab you closed with its Back button history intact. I use that several times a day.

shadowpwner 16y ago
Firefox also has this, and I presume Safari does too (I don't use it, so excuse inaccuracies).
- spicyj 16y ago
  Safari does; the shortcut is Cmd-Z, because you're "undoing" the closing of the tab.
  - chaz 16y ago
    But it doesn't resurrect the whole tab's history like Chrome does. Safari simply opens a new tab with the last-viewed site in the killed tab.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
statictype 16y ago
Also, you can middle-click on the back/forward buttons to open the previous/next page from the history in a new tab. Another really nice touch.
- JonnieCache 16y ago
  the other browsers have this, but its only in chrome that the new tab retains the entire history stack of the original tab. so you hold cmd and press the back button, then in the new tab you can continue pressing back multiple times! only chrome does this, firefox fails. only problem is, i have to cmd+click, i cant middle click the back button. edit: you can also cmd+long click on the back button and get the same behaviour from the menu. why cant everything be this comprehensively functional?

51Cards 16y ago

I personally don't like either. First thing I do in Firefox is set it so I have one close X at the far right end of the bar. I realize this does require it to be fairly visible which tab is current but I still like that this button is always where I want it to be. My mouse always heads to the same location to close any tab, I can close multiples by clicking multiple times in the same place, and I don't waste space on every tab with X buttons when I could be seeing more of the tab title. Just my personal preference but feels far more efficient to me.

wahnfrieden 16y ago
More efficient than Cmd-w (or Ctrl-w)?
- 51Cards 16y ago
  No, not more efficient than Ctrl-W for closing, I use that frequently. However when discussing UI design and wasted space, putting an X on every tab is much less efficient than just one at the end.
StuffMaster 16y ago
Close button on the right is one of the many reasons I use Seamonkey.

toolate 16y ago

While the tab behaviour is good, the close buttons are hopelessly small. They are a tiny 12px by 12px on Windows. Compare this to the close window buttons, which are 64px by 24px. Compounding the error is the poor choice of middle-click as the alternative close mechanism. Many older mouses and most laptops don't have middle click. When browsing on my laptop I can't use the touchscreen to close a tab, as the hit area is much to small to accurately hit. Likewise, using the trackpad to land the pointer on the button is something I find difficult to do reliably. I don't understand why the hit area can't be increased. There is little penalty for incorrectly closing a tab, as Chrome has a handy "Recently closed tabs" menu. Edit: A search turned up the newer "Chrome Toolbox" plugin, which brings the missing double-click-to-close behaviour to Chrome tabs.

oakenshield 16y ago
I disagree about middle-click being a "poor" method. Middle-clicking is essential to mouse-based browsing these days, both for opening links in a new tab and for closing tabs. With middle-click, the whole issue of close button placement becomes moot. Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-clicking. I also haven't come across a mouse in quite some time that does not have a middle-click (I use a including an 8 year old microsoft mouse).
- brownleej 16y ago
  Do most laptops come with middle click buttons? I can't remember ever seeing one that does, and I've used plenty of non-Apple laptops.
  - Prolorn 16y ago
    My own anecdotal observations suggest most laptops don't have a dedicated middle-click button, though most do emulate a middle click when the right and left buttons are simultaneously pressed.
- underwater 16y ago

treblig 16y ago

Thank God the red close button is gone.

leppie 16y ago

A bit off topic, but why can't tabbed browsers detect accidental (double) middle clicks when closing a tab?

statictype 16y ago
Well, it goes both ways. Often, I have a whole lot of tabs open that I want to get rid off so I just rapidly middle-click on the left-most one and keep doing it until they're all gone. Of course, you can always right-click and say 'Close all tabs to the right' but I usually forget about that option at the time when I'm doing it.
- leppie 16y ago
  The annoyance lies in the pain to recover a lost tab.
  - pkamb 16y ago
    Chrome has a couple good options, fyi: Right-Click tab strip. or Ctrl-Shift-T or List of closed tab at the bottom of the new-tab page.

ronnier 16y ago

I use vimium. I press "t" to open a new tab. When done, I press "d" to close a tab. https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...

jazzychad 16y ago

Dupe of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988411 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988411 with lots of discussion

solipsist 16y ago
My bad. I tried looking ahead of time to see if this had been posted before on HN and didn't find anything. I think it's because of the post's title, which differed from the article's. I was also under the impression that HN didn't allow repeat submissions, but I guess that feature expires after a certain amount of time. Does anyone know a close to fool-proof way for searching to see if an article has already been posted before?
- jazzychad 16y ago
  No problem. I guess "dupe" was a bit harsh. I just remember seeing this on here before and that there were a lot of comments which others might enjoy seeing. You're right, the post permalink has been changed. HN allows repeat submissions after some amount of time, though. I use searchyc.com to search for previous submissions, but it's not completely fool-proof.
  - solipsist 16y ago
    Great, thanks for the link. This seems to be a better alternative to a Google search on HN.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  You might have tried something like http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=theinvisibl.com/2009/12/08/chrometabs http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=theinvisibl.co... But I don't think that works here either. It looks like they changed the page name from "http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lo... as that is the name cached by Google. Perhaps some clever cloaking for SEO purposes ...? Ordinarily a Google search for "link:http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lo... site:ycombinator.com" would do it I think.

pak 16y ago

Two other Mac projects that bring the excellent Google Chrome tab UI into other contexts: TotalFinder, a Finder mod that adds tabs to Finder windows (http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/ http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/), and Kod--still in beta--which will be a text editor somewhere in the ballpark of the mythical TextMate 2 (http://kodapp.com http://kodapp.com).

nowarninglabel 16y ago

Ctrl + W or Ctrl + F4 I'm making it a pledge to teach one non-technical friend a month to use these keyboard shortcuts.

X-Istence 16y ago

Along with being Fireballed today, it seems wherever that site is hosted on is currently not returning DNS records for the domain. Shame, as I have yet to see the content and would like to.

cobralibre 16y ago

This close tab behavior would indeed be fantastic if the most important tab behavior use case was "user should be able to close multiple tabs in rapid succession using the mouse." But really, how often would a typical user need to do that? There may be a good reason to eschew prevailing Mac UI conventions and to put the tab close button on the right, but this isn't one.

chrisbroadfoot 16y ago
I do this often, to clear stale tabs. I'll start from the left (or where I know stale tabs start from) and repeatedly click.
- cobralibre 16y ago
  I close tabs after reading them.

modeless 16y ago

The four other major browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera) have had years to copy this very useful behavior, and I can't understand why none of them have.

snprbob86 16y ago
When I used to work at Microsoft, I explicitly requested this behavior on the internal IE8 forums (in beta at the time). I took several tries to explain why this was important and at the end I got a very typical "Thanks for the feedback" and then the thread went cold. I don't think that PM ever understood what I was talking about, but several other commenters did.
ootachi 16y ago
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465086

ilamparithi 16y ago

Other interesting features that amazed me are, i) 'Close tabs to the right' option in right click menu. ii) New tab open behaviour. (New tab goes next to the current tab and not to the end. Extremely useful when you have lots of tabs opened.)

Prolorn 16y ago
Woah, I just noticed that when the mouse hovers over "Close tabs to the right" or "Close other tabs", the tabs that will close start to flash. (Chrome 9.0.597.67 beta, Windows) When did that happen?
- ilamparithi 16y ago
  Wow. I just noticed the flash. They've put so much thought in to this.

itsnotvalid 16y ago

I've never noticed that in safari, since when it stacks my tabs when there is too much, I have to use shortcuts anyway. I guess what chrome need to fix is the side of the button locating at (right vs left) if Apple did mention that in their "Guidelines".

JonnieCache 16y ago

Here is a library for putting chrome tabs into your osx apps: https://github.com/rsms/chromium-tabs https://github.com/rsms/chromium-tabs Its basically the cocoa implementation of chrome's tabs ripped out and put into its own objective c lib. used by kod and other things mentioned in here. It includes all the seamless dragging and dropping of tabs between windows, everything the browser does.

dalore 16y ago

I close my tabs in chrome how I used to in opera, with a middle click anywhere on the tab control.