3 ms·
Tabs were a mistake. They were a hack to work around window managers that lacked enough features and now we have a "window manager" inside of a window manager.
by kevincox 6y ago
Tabs were a mistake. They were a hack to work around window managers that lacked enough features and now we have a "window manager" inside of a window manager. Probably most apps have their own tab interface which works differently from every other app. We should rethink the design, improve the window managers, then remove tabs.
I don't think it will ever happen, but it would be nice.
- renewiltord 6y agoThere was a Compiz extension that permitted window tabbing like this. I did not enjoy its use. I attempted to use it to create "environments". It was less effective than using workspaces because workspaces allowed full windowing.
- kevincox 6y agoKWin does (did?) this as well. I think the biggest problem is that if you open a new "window" it doesn't know that you want it to show as a new tab on the same window. I think that this is largely because X doesn't actually know which window opened the new window. I used the KWin tabs a fair amount, but they didn't fill the same use case as browser tabs. It would be interesting to see this implemented, of course you would also need to seriously patch the browser.
- renewiltord 6y agoIt might have been KWin and I misremembered.