4 ms·
An advantage of the tab bar on top is that it's always visible. I can glance quickly and find if that tab I'm looking for is to the left or to the right and use
by WhyNotHugo 4y ago
An advantage of the tab bar on top is that it's always visible. I can glance quickly and find if that tab I'm looking for is to the left or to the right and use ctrl+tab or ctrl+shift+tab. Or maybe there's just a few tabs, so I can jump around with alt+1, alt+2, etc.
Having a menu that needs to be deployed makes the whole process slower -> I first have to open the menu, _and then_ I can start deciding which way I want to switch.
It doesn't seem like a big deal, but when you use the browser for hours a day it is, because there's this additional cognitive cycle of having to request information to be displayed first -- rather than have it always present.
Finally, the tabs on the bar on the top have virtually infinite surface and are super easy to click. You see, a 100x100px button has a defined surface where you have to point and click. The smaller the surface, the harder it is to click. But a button at the border of the screen has one dimension infinite: I don't have to aim accurately on the Y axis, I can move my mouse beyond the top of the screen and will still hit the tab.
- stemlord 4y agoI like always visible top tabs but personally ctrl+tab has always been bs. Hitting it 10 times then ctrl+shift+tab once more because I miscalculated has never been faster than using the mouse
- frosted-flakes 4y agoEnable the Most Recently Used ordering. That way you won't have to press Ctrl+Tab more than once or twice, because most of the time you don't need to tabs at the back of the stack. Imagine if the Alt+Tab switcher worked like most browsers—it would be pretty useless. This is not an option in Chrome, for some unexplicable reason (Chrome has marked it as wontfix)., and it's the main reason I use Firefox. It's possible to hack around it with extensions and opening the Chrome extensions settings XML file and manually setting the Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab shortcuts, but it's fragile and annoying to set up, and has some odd behaviours in certain circumstances.
- ivarru 4y agoIt's a bit weird at first, but think the Chrome extension "Most Recent Used Tab Stack" works ok. It keeps the tabs sorted by moving the current tab to the left. That being said, I also prefer Firefox -- mainly because of its container extensions.
- stevage 4y agoI have always hated the orders you describe. Means you need to mentally keep track of how long since you used each tab, and there is no deterministic way of getting to a specific tab other than slowly tabbing until you randomly arrive there.
- frosted-flakes 4y agoDo you feel the same way about Alt+Tab window switching? There is a deterministic way: look at the pop-up that shows the thumbnail in the most-recently used (MRU) order. Just like Alt+Tab. If you're tabbing through more than five tabs, it's probably faster to click, whichever method is used. But at least MRU ordering lets you easily switch between any two or three tabs. That is impossible with visual ordering.
- stevage 4y ago> Do you feel the same way about Alt+Tab window switching? It's a good question. It seems to work better for window switching because I'm switching more frequently and in a more predictable pattern. It's usually between 2 windows (code window and browser window) or occasionally 3 (code, browser, documentation/reference material). Whereas it's rare to be switching in a consistent pattern between any 2 code windows. If a situation like that does emerge, I rearrange them so the two I need are side by side.
- mijamo 4y agoI think people usually have wayyyy more tabs opened than programs. I might have 5-6 programs so alt tab doesn't take long to circle through. I might have 20 tabs that I'm currently using, and it is not unusual to go above that (and I know many people having 50 or more). In that case it is very slow to go through them.
- wwarek 4y agoSwitching from Chrome the most annoying thing in FF was lack of tab switching with Ctrl+<number>. Fortunately there are extensions providing that. Works great for 5-6 tabs, especially when it gets into muscle memory (not sure if that's correct term in this case but what I mean is that brain "knows" that ctrl+1 will be X and Ctrl+3 will be Y and can switch between tabs without thinking of their actual numbers)
- kkfx 4y agoPersonally I've used TabCenter Redux and now Tab Center Reborn, tabs on side allow to see titles no matter how many tabs we have open, easy scrolling and grouping while not waste vertical screen space, witch is rare on modern 19:9+ screens (while we do not need much space on sides, since most screens are big enough)...