4 ms·

Since we are talking about window switching, a little rant: there are two common orders for switching windows/tabs: most recently used, and sequential. Some us

Since we are talking about window switching, a little rant: there are two common orders for switching windows/tabs: most recently used, and sequential. Some use the first one (e.g. Windows), some use the other (e.g. most browsers). They both have their merits, so people prefer one or the other. Yet, almost no software provide a toggle to customize this (Firefox does, but it has an even weirder quirk). I understand modern software can't have billions of settings for every single thing for (good) practical reasons, but deep in my heart, I'm still annoyed by the fact "we have all the technology, yet we still have to compromise to this".

dustincoates 2y ago
Oddly enough, I much prefer recently used when switching windows and sequential when switching tabs. I'll note as well that Vivaldi offers the option to switch the behavior.
- somat 2y ago
  It is probably what was learned where, muscle memory can be a strange thing at times. I, for instance, enjoy the vi editor, to the point that I have a hard time using emacs, however, I need the emacsish keybindings in my shell and don't like the vi keys there.
- saghm 2y ago
  > Oddly enough, I much prefer recently used when switching windows and sequential when switching tabs. Same! The key difference IMO is that with tabs, I can actively see all of them even before I hit the shortcut; being able to see the "distance" between my current tab and the "destination" makes me find linearly searching easier. With windows, I tend to almost always have things maximized on the monitor they're on, and when I have two monitors, I tend to split things by only having a single window on one monitor (keeping the rest all together). While there's generally a visual reference for swapping windows once you've hit the shortcut (but haven't released it yet), not having the context before I start taking action makes me less likely to know the exact order of my windows, so there's not really any order that would be helpful based on that. The only reason that recency order is somewhat useful for me is to be able to quickly swap back and forth between two apps (especially when I have a single monitor), and that's just not really how I use tabs.
eviks 2y ago
Vivaldi has the keybinds for both options of tab cycling, and on Windows you could also have both via a script/app, so no need to compromise in these basic (and unfortunately most often there aren't really good reasons for having such a poor customization for most apps, just bad design without much care for UI)
silon42 2y ago
> Yet, almost no software provide a toggle to customize this (Firefox does, but it has an even weirder quirk). What is the quirk? I enable the "recently used order" immediately when installing Firefox.
- thrdbndndn 2y ago
  It automatically enables the preview feature, which I absolutely don't want (less about the preview itself, more about the fact when the preview is enabled, the tabs won't actually switch (so you can see the content in tab) until you release the hotkeys. There used to be two separate switches (as it should be), but one core developer (Dão Gottwald) arbitrarily decided to merge the two together, despite multiple oppositions in the thread [1], because he thought "[w]ithout previews, switching in recently used order between more than two tabs would be unusable". I'm still salty about this after all the years, not because how the feature I liked was gone, but it's the first first-hand experience I had that shows how the direction of OSS projects can be dictated by a single person and you can do nothing about it. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335108 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335108
  - silon42 2y ago
    Well, the final switch can't really happen until you release "Ctrl", otherwise the feature would be broken... and it has to be indicated somehow that the switching mode is active... But would still like to switch between 20 or more or more most recent tabs, not just 7.

dustincoates 2y ago

Oddly enough, I much prefer recently used when switching windows and sequential when switching tabs. I'll note as well that Vivaldi offers the option to switch the behavior.

somat 2y ago
It is probably what was learned where, muscle memory can be a strange thing at times. I, for instance, enjoy the vi editor, to the point that I have a hard time using emacs, however, I need the emacsish keybindings in my shell and don't like the vi keys there.
saghm 2y ago
> Oddly enough, I much prefer recently used when switching windows and sequential when switching tabs. Same! The key difference IMO is that with tabs, I can actively see all of them even before I hit the shortcut; being able to see the "distance" between my current tab and the "destination" makes me find linearly searching easier. With windows, I tend to almost always have things maximized on the monitor they're on, and when I have two monitors, I tend to split things by only having a single window on one monitor (keeping the rest all together). While there's generally a visual reference for swapping windows once you've hit the shortcut (but haven't released it yet), not having the context before I start taking action makes me less likely to know the exact order of my windows, so there's not really any order that would be helpful based on that. The only reason that recency order is somewhat useful for me is to be able to quickly swap back and forth between two apps (especially when I have a single monitor), and that's just not really how I use tabs.

eviks 2y ago

Vivaldi has the keybinds for both options of tab cycling, and on Windows you could also have both via a script/app, so no need to compromise in these basic (and unfortunately most often there aren't really good reasons for having such a poor customization for most apps, just bad design without much care for UI)

silon42 2y ago

> Yet, almost no software provide a toggle to customize this (Firefox does, but it has an even weirder quirk). What is the quirk? I enable the "recently used order" immediately when installing Firefox.

thrdbndndn 2y ago
It automatically enables the preview feature, which I absolutely don't want (less about the preview itself, more about the fact when the preview is enabled, the tabs won't actually switch (so you can see the content in tab) until you release the hotkeys. There used to be two separate switches (as it should be), but one core developer (Dão Gottwald) arbitrarily decided to merge the two together, despite multiple oppositions in the thread [1], because he thought "[w]ithout previews, switching in recently used order between more than two tabs would be unusable". I'm still salty about this after all the years, not because how the feature I liked was gone, but it's the first first-hand experience I had that shows how the direction of OSS projects can be dictated by a single person and you can do nothing about it. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335108 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1335108
- silon42 2y ago
  Well, the final switch can't really happen until you release "Ctrl", otherwise the feature would be broken... and it has to be indicated somehow that the switching mode is active... But would still like to switch between 20 or more or more most recent tabs, not just 7.