3 ms·

My conjecture is hierarchy. I remember that when I was young, most applications didn't have tabs; instead they just spawn new windows. Then, people wanted tabs

My conjecture is hierarchy. I remember that when I was young, most applications didn't have tabs; instead they just spawn new windows. Then, people wanted tabs, so programmers made tabs. From some point of view, a bar of tabs is just a less capable version of the taskbar/dock, and it even takes an extra row of screen estate. But what it provides, is a nice hierarchy: This is the window of MS Word, where I have 3 documents opened. This is the window of my Browser, where I have 5 websites opened. Now that they have tabs, people demand more flexibility of their tabs, and that's why we have all the docking/splitting features within the applications. They are simply the extension of tabs. Technically, a window manager can do all that, including the hierarchy. I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. I think Microsoft did something like that with tabs, but I don't know how popular it was/is. Nevertheless, it now requires the user to design their own hierarchy and grouping of windows, which is a lot mental energy into a task that is unimportant for most people. It's not as simple as having tabs that huddle inside applications by themselves. I'd imagine that a WM with such capability must be designed with a innovative and well-thought-out UX.

mananaysiempre 5y ago
> Technically, a window manager can do all that, including the hierarchy. I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. I think Microsoft did something like that with tabs, but I don't know how popular it was/is. Haiku definitely does this (and apparently even the original BeOS did), although for all that the window headers even look like tabs I never stumbled upon it until I saw it mentioned in the manual[1]. I also don’t think it does anything special when the windows in such a group spawn new ones, which would probably be half the joy in such a tiling-like interface (probably because its WM doesn’t really have a notion of a window spawning another one, so if the same application has two of its windows in different such groups and then creates a third one, the WM can’t really tell where the third one should go). Crackpot idea: go all the way to tree-style tabs[2] and move history into the window manager, too. With enough (probably too much) imagination you could even see how Miller columns[3] would emerge. [1] https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-tile https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-ti... [2] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns
isr 5y ago
> I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. Fluxbox (fork from blackbox, a sibling/cousin to openbox) did this over 20 years ago ...
lostmsu 5y ago
> I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs There's one on Windows, that has the tabs feature: https://losttech.software/stack.html https://losttech.software/stack.html Disclaimer: I made it.

mananaysiempre 5y ago

> Technically, a window manager can do all that, including the hierarchy. I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. I think Microsoft did something like that with tabs, but I don't know how popular it was/is. Haiku definitely does this (and apparently even the original BeOS did), although for all that the window headers even look like tabs I never stumbled upon it until I saw it mentioned in the manual[1]. I also don’t think it does anything special when the windows in such a group spawn new ones, which would probably be half the joy in such a tiling-like interface (probably because its WM doesn’t really have a notion of a window spawning another one, so if the same application has two of its windows in different such groups and then creates a third one, the WM can’t really tell where the third one should go). Crackpot idea: go all the way to tree-style tabs[2] and move history into the window manager, too. With enough (probably too much) imagination you could even see how Miller columns[3] would emerge. [1] https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-tile https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-ti... [2] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns

isr 5y ago

> I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs or sub-windows. Fluxbox (fork from blackbox, a sibling/cousin to openbox) did this over 20 years ago ...

lostmsu 5y ago

> I could envision a WM that allows you to group windows together into tabs There's one on Windows, that has the tabs feature: https://losttech.software/stack.html https://losttech.software/stack.html Disclaimer: I made it.