7 ms·

A piece with a lot of screenshots about the close tab behaviour in Google Chrome

283 points by callahad 17y ago

nkohari 17y ago
Great user experiences are meant to fade into the background. This is a great example of something that they clearly put a lot of thought into, specifically so you wouldn't notice it. Chrome has a masterful UX, and I'm curious to see if it continues to remain that way as the app ages.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
WesleyJohnson 17y 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. Why? Because not only does this give the user the ability to close a number of tabs in one go without moving the mouse pointer (which Safari does not), it also means that the app does not need to exhibit the ever-so-slightly less normal behaviour of the ‘delayed resizing’ in the most-common case. I would also wager that while Chrome is available on other operating systems, it's probably catering to Windows users by keeping the close buttons (be it a Window or Tab) on the right where most user expect them to be. Similarly, Safari, more at home on OSX than any other OS, would cater to those users by keeping it on the left. As for the slick behavior Chrome emits when working with Tabs, I'll admit I never noticed it. But maybe that just proves the author's point, "It just works!"
- randallsquared 17y ago
  The Arabic localization suggests that Mac vs Windows UI habits were not the main driver.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Unless the Arabic localization is just a straight-up vertical (or horizontal?) mirror of the layout and layout-handling code.
antidaily 17y ago
My only gripe: I wish the tabs weren't on top. Though, I'm sure I'd get used to it.
- scott_s 17y ago
  I like it, because it uses less space. Firefox (and others) have redundancy in that the top part of the window has the same text as the tab.
  - boucher 17y ago
    It's not redundancy, it's a title. No tab that I have open has room for it's title in Chrome, and almost no tab ever will. If you believe seeing page titles is important, than you have to agree that the Firefox/Safari/etc. approach is superior in that particular regard. But I, like most people I suspect, don't really care about page titles.
    - scott_s 17y ago
      It's a title and redundant; some of my tabs do have enough room, and for those that don't, I only really need to see the first word or two.
- dannyr 17y ago
  I like that the tabs are on top. If the tabs are at the bottom and your Chrome window is not maximized, the tabs may not be visible. You have to drag Chrome up in the screen to make the tabs appear.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Doesn't optimizing for closing multiple tabs without moving the mouse increase the chances of closing two tabs when you only intend to close one?
- InclinedPlane 17y ago
  Oh noes, accidentally closing a tab! As it turns out, on Chrome simply pressing ctrl+shift+t reopens the most recently closed tab, pressing it again reopens the one closed before that, etc.
  - staunch 17y ago
    Same thing in Firefox, but very few people seem to know this.
    - cpuddle 17y ago
      Alt+Backspace in Opera or Ctrl+Z.
  - weaksauce 17y ago
    There is also an afordance for this in the history area: "Recently Closed"
  - glhaynes 17y ago
    A nice feature and a partial mitigator, but just because a destructive action is undoable, it doesn't mean there doesn't need to be any concern over the action being accidentally triggered. Both because accidental actions are annoying and because many users won't know how to undo it.
    - glhaynes 17y ago
      (Not that this might not be outweighed by other considerations such as the ability to close multiple tabs quickly, of course.)
    - InclinedPlane 17y ago
dowskitest 17y ago
To my eye the tabs in Chrome make more sense visually too. The tabs appear connected to the document being viewed and not to the address bar like they do in Safari.
- natrius 17y ago
  Apple tried to fix that by placing the tabs on top of the address bar like Chrome does. People complained. It looked a little funny. http://www.macworld.com/article/139026/2009/02/safari4tabs.html http://www.macworld.com/article/139026/2009/02/safari4tabs.h...
  - tvon 17y ago
    I kind of liked the Apple take on it, but I think Chrome out did them by making the tab only take up most of the vertical titlebar space. If Apple did that, I think it would have worked out better.
  - pkulak 17y ago
    I really liked those Safari tabs. I guess I was in the minority though. It prepared me very nicely for Chrome tabs, though.
    - carbon8 17y ago
      The top tabs do indeed make a lot more sense in a number of key aspects. But it's important to remember that the entire concept of tabs in OS X windows has long been criticized by a contingent of hardcore apple fans who argue it breaks from the one-document-per-window model. And they have a point, and it is part of why tabs in OS X are hard in general. Plus, in the safari beta they were pretty ugly and visually messy.
      - joe_the_user 17y ago
        Fascinating how history can limit a UI designers choices...
Nogwater 17y ago
Does anyone know of a Firefox add-on to emulate the Chrome behavior of not resizing tabs as you close them until you mouse away?
chime 17y ago
It's good to hear how much thought and effort they put into the UI. Nevertheless, I have my own list of gripes with Chrome tabs and windowing. 1) Closing the last tab closes the browser: Yes, I get that it's a fast browser and restarting a new instance is quick but when I close all the tabs, I am not ready to stop browsing. I am only trying to close the current tabs so I can go to some other site. Let me choose if I want the last close-tab to shutdown Chrome also or not. 2) No warning before 'close all': Seriously. Every browser has this. If I have a bunch of tabs open and by mistake I click the close button in Chrome, it just immediately shuts down. Let me choose if I want this to happen or not. 3) Top-left 'system menu': Every Windows application lets you left-click on the top-left corner of the window to get the system menu, while double-clicking the same top-left corner closes the window. Except in Chrome. Right-clicking the title bar does work but it's not the same. 4) Tiny '+' button for new tab: Sure I can use keyboard shortcuts but it's not always easy on a tablet. There's enough space in the tab-bar. Make the '+' a little wider. Also, use the top infinite space above the '+' icon. 5) Can't put the tabs on the bottom: That would be a nice option to have, though I'm ok with the tabs being on the top. 6) No simple way to open bookmarks in new tabs automatically. 7) No way to set if newly opened tabs (via a-href target=_blank or right-click 'open in new tab') should go to background or get into foreground. 8) Permanently pin a tab: I'd love to always have Hacker News, reddit, gmail, and my todo list pinned. If I restart Chrome, the pinned tabs go away. It's not the same as putting all of them in the startup list. This being said, I recently switched to Chrome on all 3 of my regular PCs/laptops after 6 years of Firefox/Firebird/Mozilla. Chrome is super fast, finally has some ad-blocking, syncs my bookmarks (though that's not perfect), and is standards-compliant.
- mjr578 17y ago
  This addresses your 8th point: http://lifehacker.com/5422014/make-google-chrome-open-with-permanently-pinned-tabs http://lifehacker.com/5422014/make-google-chrome-open-with-p... I use it for 3 different pinned tabs at startup and it works great. It would be nice to have it configurable from the options menu, but I will take what I can get.
- bmalicoat 17y ago
  #6 is the main reason I haven't switched to Chrome. I have a set of bookmarks I like to read daily and a set I read weekly. In Safari cmd-click opens them all, I haven't yet figured out how to do it in Chrome.
pushingbits 17y ago
One thing that annoys me about Chrome is that on closing a tab with Ctrl + W, it will always open the tab that's on the right of the closed tab. In Opera you have the option to activate the last active tab on closing. That way, you can just click on all the tabs you want closed (no need to hit the tiny close tab button), and then press Ctrl + W until they're all gone. Or you can open a bunch of google search results in background tabs, read through them and easily remove them afterwards.
- DougBTX 17y ago
  You can just click on all the tabs you want closed Another way to do this is to middle click on the tabs you want to close.
thorax 17y ago
I'm really done with tabs only at the top. I use the Tree-style Tabs extension for Firefox and can't imagine going back. You will notice an increase in browsing/research productivity because you don't spend so much time managing tabs that have gotten too small/short to tell what they actually are. You'll find you can work handily with dozens of tabs open if you have them in a readable list on the left. Before I used tree-style tabs, I usually maxed out at, like, 10 tabs open. And then I was somewhat sad and started my "tab GC" to close the least needed ones. Right now, I have 40+ tabs open in Firefox 3.5 and it feels just as breezy as it does with ten. More so, actually, because I have all my varied research in different trees that I can collapse/hide if needed. Give me Chrome with the tabs on the side, preferably in a tree hierarchy, and you've won. Edit: Link, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890
- ronnier 17y ago
  Thanks for that. I'll have to adjust to it, but I can tell right away that this extension improves the browsing experience by giving some type of order to tabs and child tabs.
- jimmyjim 17y ago
  Come to think of it, it's possible to have tree-style tabs in a horizontal top bar. I hope someone more clever than me implements this idea sometime.
  - thristian 17y ago
    The Tree-Style Tabs extension lets you put the tab bar on any of the four sides of the window, although you don't get the fancy collapse/expand features at the top or bottom.
- blahedo 17y ago
  As a long-time OmniWeb user, I've become quite attached to thumbnailed tabs in a drawer on the side of the window. There's a Firefox extension called TabSidebar that approximates this, but it's an inferior implementation. Tabs at the top of the window are almost completely useless, though---far too little visual information to associate the tab widget with the page it controls.
modeless 17y ago
Both Safari and Firefox have by now had a chance to copy this behavior, but neither have, even though both have added other features to their tab bars.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
pkulak 17y ago
Also, when you open a new tab in Chrome, it opens to the right of the current tab, not at the end of the line. Very nice when you use it.
- freetard 17y ago
  Firefox 3.6 does this too, I like it.
- elblanco 17y ago
  That "tree" ordering is subtle, but when you realize what it's doing, it's genius.
dryicerx 17y ago
In the mean time... Ctrl-w
- aw3c2 17y ago
  And middleclick. Tabs do not show the close buttons for me in Opera, it wastes too much of precious space.
  - cake 17y ago
    Nice trick, I never use the close button but never had the idea to remove it to gain space.
whatajoke 17y ago
So they do what opera has been doing for ages. Got it.
- tghw 17y ago
  See, it's the smugness people don't like. Seriously though, I just fired up Opera (v. 9.63 - I never use Opera) and it does not have this behavior. Tabs resize as son as they are closed, from the left, middle, and right. So in addition to being smug, you're also wrong. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I upgraded to Opera 10.10 and tried again. Still the tabs resize as soon as one is closed. Maybe you're thinking of something else?
  - indigoviolet 17y ago
    It depends on the skin you're using for Opera, and whether you allow wrapping in the tab bar or not.
    - tghw 17y ago
      So, you're saying that by extending Opera in some way you can get it to do this? Because it definitely doesn't do that by default. I don't think my Opera install could get any defaultier, and I'm not seeing it.
      - indigoviolet 17y ago
        Yeah. Not by extending it, but by changing some of the already available settings.
jonah 17y ago
"Here’s Google Chrome in Arabic..." WOW!
- mahmud 17y ago
  Why wow?
  - bdr 17y ago
    Because it does the right thing.
    - seldo 17y ago
      Ditto. Bidi in application UI is so rare as to be nonexistent.
    - archon810 17y ago
      Pun intended.
      - est 17y ago
        As a non-native speaker I only find the pun when someone says it's pun. Thank you!
tomerico 17y ago
There is a hidden feature on many tabs - They close with mouse middle click! This is extremely important on tabs, because they always seems to have the smallest x button possible. I've tested it to work on Firefox, chrome, IE, Visual studio and other applications.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- cakesy 17y ago
  I don't like how chrome of firefox does tab closing. When I close a tab, it can take a few seconds, and it feels like I missed the tiny button, so I click it again. Of course, this happens just as the tab is closed, and I end up closing the next one as well. Very thankful for history of clsoed tabs.
- bd 17y ago
  Not really hidden, it's very common (and extremely useful - Fitts's law FTW) user interface convention. I already became conditioned - I keep middle-clicking to close tabs automatically in every application, feeling something is broken when it doesn't work. Though Mac people don't usually have more than 1 button, so I kind of understand obsession about workarounds :).
- russss 17y ago
  This doesn't work with Safari, however.
randallsquared 17y ago
I can live with the close button being on the right, but I strongly prefer the way Safari does it. I accidentally close more than one tab fairly frequently, and while I know and love the "History -> Recently Closed Tabs" workaround in Firefox, it is a workaround for the bad UI of having a close button I don't want to press pop up right under the close button I'm clicking on. I'm not the most dexterous person (to put it mildly), and further punishing my klutziness by requiring precision work with the mouse is not my idea of a good UI.
- chronomex 17y ago
  Control-Shift-T will reopen the most recently closed tab in Firefox (the equivalent command in Opera is Control-Z).
  - heyitsnick 17y ago
    And Chrome too.
- vitobcn 17y ago
  Both Firefox and Chrome let you right click on any tab after closing another one and reverse that action ( FF: "Undo close tab", Chrome: "Reopen closed tab").
- dejan 17y ago
  I agree, happens to me all the time. The problem is that destroying a tab doesn't happen instantly, and you click again and again. Since the click is buffered, it will apply the action after the tab is closed. Safari feels much more thought out I have to say, but the feature/bug mentioned here seems just a result of full space tabs while in FFox/Chrome they are acting as fixed width. Rule of UI: count on and compensate for human errors and behaviour. Safari wins there for me (UI wise).
jrockway 17y ago
I like conkeror's interface better. I never even think about "tabs"; I just create a new buffer when I want one. I couldn't tell you how many I have open right now, but I could instantly switch to any "tab" I think might be open. Very convenient. (The mouse is also not used.)
Raphael 17y ago
Eureka! I knew there was something funny going on with the tabs. It's been disheartening seeing them sliding around on their own. I thought I was losing my mind.
latortuga 17y ago
I've always thought this feature was particularly well thought out in chrome. Another thing I've noticed is that, when closing tabs via middle click, the wait for auto-resize doesn't happen until mouse out - in fact I barely even use the close buttons anymore because of this.
- tel 17y ago
  This is the kind of minute feature that completely converts someone when they catch it.
  - dbz 17y ago
    I've been using chrome since it came out, and I noticed the tab features (the close tab button on the right was not apparent as a feature because I am used to it being there) right away because they made a HUGE different. Chrome is amazing.
cmelbye 17y ago
I've always loved this feature in Chrome. I mainly use Chrome on my netbook, and this really helps because moving the mouse a lot when I'm trying to close a lot of tabs is hard with the tiny trackpad on my Eee PC. Thanks, Chrome!
czstrong 17y ago
This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's take on UI. "A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would." Never once while manipulating tabs in Chrome have I done something and then asked, "Now why did that happen?" The tabs do what I expect them to do so I don't have to think about them. As a side note, I also find the "duplicate" feature in the right-click menu useful, something at least Safari lacks.
- s3graham 17y ago
  > Never once while manipulating tabs in Chrome have I done something and then asked, "Now why did that happen?" Agreed, except for Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab.
mynameishere 17y ago
The old firefox had a single X that worked on the current tab. It was superior in every way. Took up less space, prevented accidental closes, easily allowed rapid closing. They got rid of it, and I never could figure out why.
- samdk 17y ago
  You can still make it work that way if you want. The about:config option is browser.tabs.closeButtons, and the value you want for a single close button for all tabs is '3'.
- ekiru 17y ago
  That option may be superior in every way, as you say. Well, unless you want to close a tab other than the current one. Since that is something I sometimes want to do, I don't like it.
akamaka 17y ago
It's really nice to see a blog post with a simple, clear headline. Some other bloggers would have chosen something like: "10 things I hate about tabs", or "Why I'm quitting Chrome", or "The death of browser usability" Kudos to the author for having the seemingly rare gift if common sense.
AndrewWarner 17y ago
At this rate, Google will eventually surpass Apple in design.
chrischen 17y ago
It could also be seen as a benefit. It prevents accidental double closings. However that could be solved with an "unclose last tab" feature. Firefox has that, but safari doesn't. It has an unclose last window though, but it doesn't work with tabs.
- avinashv 17y ago
  Chrome has the feature too. More importantly, Firefox and Chrome preserve browsing history. That, along with good keyword searching, is why I never switched to Safari and waited until Chrome's Mac Beta.
  - trezor 17y ago
    Chrome has that feature, but unlike in Firefox you lose your history for that tab, so no way to go back. You get the page you were on and that is it.
    - avinashv 17y ago
      Nope: when I Ctrl+Shift+T I get the tab back with history on the Chrome Mac Beta.
gojomo 17y ago
I prefer the option provided by the Firefox 'Tab Mix Plus' extension: a single close button on the far right of the tab bar. Never moves no matter what you do, frees up space for more text on every tab.
vorador 17y ago
What is the joke with Gruber ? I don't understand it.
- timdorr 17y ago
  http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/08/chrome-for-mac http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/08/chrome-for-mac and http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/10/safwat-chrome-tabs http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/10/safwat-chrome-ta...
  - vorador 17y ago
    Thank you.
- armandososa 17y ago
  I really, really hate people who are so anal about mac UI guidelines. Get over it people. Mac users like this make me hate apple platform for many years. I use a Mac now, but I'm not a Mac
  - ugh 17y ago
    Anal? It's the damn close button! I'm all for bending and breaking UI guidelines if it's useful - but not when it comes to something as fundamental as a close button.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    It's a big part of why Mac applications are so consistent compared to Windows and Linux, which is a big part of what makes Macs more usable than those other platforms. So those users might, indirectly, be part of the reason you are using a Mac now.
shrikant 17y ago
More Chrome-fu (Windows): Shift+Esc brings up the Chrome Task Manager which shows memory usage of the browser, tabs and extensions. (In line with Ctrl+Shift+Esc for the Windows Task Manager) This window also has a "Stats for Nerds" link, which opens up an about:memory tab. Nice.
dkarl 17y ago
What a wonderful way to start my day, with a reminder that: 1. There are no boring apps if you have some creativity. 2. You don't have to achieve feature parity before you start improving on the competition. 3. You can do anything you want, even redesign a well-established UI idiom, as long as your users find it intuitive!
trezor 17y ago
So basically Chrome's tabs works like they have done forever in Firefox and Opera. yawn
- eru 17y ago
  In my Opera 10.10 tabs get resized immediately after closing.
pvandehaar 17y ago
In the spirit of the Windows 7 Taskbar (or OSX dock), what about merging main-bookmarks and tabs? I for one would use it.
nfriedly 17y ago
The linked article appears to be offline for me, so here are a couple of alternative links: Coral cache: http://www.theinvisibl.com.nyud.net/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com.nyud.net/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-... Google cache: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Oc9JEdMaZuoJ: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-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Oc9JEdMaZuoJ:www.theinvi...

283 points by callahad 17y ago

Great user experiences are meant to fade into the background. This is a great example of something that they clearly put a lot of thought into, specifically so you wouldn't notice it. Chrome has a masterful UX, and I'm curious to see if it continues to remain that way as the app ages.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

WesleyJohnson 17y 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. Why? Because not only does this give the user the ability to close a number of tabs in one go without moving the mouse pointer (which Safari does not), it also means that the app does not need to exhibit the ever-so-slightly less normal behaviour of the ‘delayed resizing’ in the most-common case. I would also wager that while Chrome is available on other operating systems, it's probably catering to Windows users by keeping the close buttons (be it a Window or Tab) on the right where most user expect them to be. Similarly, Safari, more at home on OSX than any other OS, would cater to those users by keeping it on the left. As for the slick behavior Chrome emits when working with Tabs, I'll admit I never noticed it. But maybe that just proves the author's point, "It just works!"

randallsquared 17y ago
The Arabic localization suggests that Mac vs Windows UI habits were not the main driver.
- pyre 17y ago
  Unless the Arabic localization is just a straight-up vertical (or horizontal?) mirror of the layout and layout-handling code.

antidaily 17y ago

My only gripe: I wish the tabs weren't on top. Though, I'm sure I'd get used to it.

scott_s 17y ago
I like it, because it uses less space. Firefox (and others) have redundancy in that the top part of the window has the same text as the tab.
- boucher 17y ago
  It's not redundancy, it's a title. No tab that I have open has room for it's title in Chrome, and almost no tab ever will. If you believe seeing page titles is important, than you have to agree that the Firefox/Safari/etc. approach is superior in that particular regard. But I, like most people I suspect, don't really care about page titles.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    It's a title and redundant; some of my tabs do have enough room, and for those that don't, I only really need to see the first word or two.
dannyr 17y ago
I like that the tabs are on top. If the tabs are at the bottom and your Chrome window is not maximized, the tabs may not be visible. You have to drag Chrome up in the screen to make the tabs appear.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago

Doesn't optimizing for closing multiple tabs without moving the mouse increase the chances of closing two tabs when you only intend to close one?

InclinedPlane 17y ago
Oh noes, accidentally closing a tab! As it turns out, on Chrome simply pressing ctrl+shift+t reopens the most recently closed tab, pressing it again reopens the one closed before that, etc.
- staunch 17y ago
  Same thing in Firefox, but very few people seem to know this.
  - cpuddle 17y ago
    Alt+Backspace in Opera or Ctrl+Z.
- weaksauce 17y ago
  There is also an afordance for this in the history area: "Recently Closed"
- glhaynes 17y ago
  A nice feature and a partial mitigator, but just because a destructive action is undoable, it doesn't mean there doesn't need to be any concern over the action being accidentally triggered. Both because accidental actions are annoying and because many users won't know how to undo it.
  - glhaynes 17y ago
    (Not that this might not be outweighed by other considerations such as the ability to close multiple tabs quickly, of course.)
  - InclinedPlane 17y ago

dowskitest 17y ago

To my eye the tabs in Chrome make more sense visually too. The tabs appear connected to the document being viewed and not to the address bar like they do in Safari.

natrius 17y ago
Apple tried to fix that by placing the tabs on top of the address bar like Chrome does. People complained. It looked a little funny. http://www.macworld.com/article/139026/2009/02/safari4tabs.html http://www.macworld.com/article/139026/2009/02/safari4tabs.h...
- tvon 17y ago
  I kind of liked the Apple take on it, but I think Chrome out did them by making the tab only take up most of the vertical titlebar space. If Apple did that, I think it would have worked out better.
- pkulak 17y ago
  I really liked those Safari tabs. I guess I was in the minority though. It prepared me very nicely for Chrome tabs, though.
  - carbon8 17y ago
    The top tabs do indeed make a lot more sense in a number of key aspects. But it's important to remember that the entire concept of tabs in OS X windows has long been criticized by a contingent of hardcore apple fans who argue it breaks from the one-document-per-window model. And they have a point, and it is part of why tabs in OS X are hard in general. Plus, in the safari beta they were pretty ugly and visually messy.
    - joe_the_user 17y ago
      Fascinating how history can limit a UI designers choices...

Nogwater 17y ago

Does anyone know of a Firefox add-on to emulate the Chrome behavior of not resizing tabs as you close them until you mouse away?

chime 17y ago

It's good to hear how much thought and effort they put into the UI. Nevertheless, I have my own list of gripes with Chrome tabs and windowing. 1) Closing the last tab closes the browser: Yes, I get that it's a fast browser and restarting a new instance is quick but when I close all the tabs, I am not ready to stop browsing. I am only trying to close the current tabs so I can go to some other site. Let me choose if I want the last close-tab to shutdown Chrome also or not. 2) No warning before 'close all': Seriously. Every browser has this. If I have a bunch of tabs open and by mistake I click the close button in Chrome, it just immediately shuts down. Let me choose if I want this to happen or not. 3) Top-left 'system menu': Every Windows application lets you left-click on the top-left corner of the window to get the system menu, while double-clicking the same top-left corner closes the window. Except in Chrome. Right-clicking the title bar does work but it's not the same. 4) Tiny '+' button for new tab: Sure I can use keyboard shortcuts but it's not always easy on a tablet. There's enough space in the tab-bar. Make the '+' a little wider. Also, use the top infinite space above the '+' icon. 5) Can't put the tabs on the bottom: That would be a nice option to have, though I'm ok with the tabs being on the top. 6) No simple way to open bookmarks in new tabs automatically. 7) No way to set if newly opened tabs (via a-href target=_blank or right-click 'open in new tab') should go to background or get into foreground. 8) Permanently pin a tab: I'd love to always have Hacker News, reddit, gmail, and my todo list pinned. If I restart Chrome, the pinned tabs go away. It's not the same as putting all of them in the startup list. This being said, I recently switched to Chrome on all 3 of my regular PCs/laptops after 6 years of Firefox/Firebird/Mozilla. Chrome is super fast, finally has some ad-blocking, syncs my bookmarks (though that's not perfect), and is standards-compliant.

mjr578 17y ago
This addresses your 8th point: http://lifehacker.com/5422014/make-google-chrome-open-with-permanently-pinned-tabs http://lifehacker.com/5422014/make-google-chrome-open-with-p... I use it for 3 different pinned tabs at startup and it works great. It would be nice to have it configurable from the options menu, but I will take what I can get.
bmalicoat 17y ago
#6 is the main reason I haven't switched to Chrome. I have a set of bookmarks I like to read daily and a set I read weekly. In Safari cmd-click opens them all, I haven't yet figured out how to do it in Chrome.

pushingbits 17y ago

One thing that annoys me about Chrome is that on closing a tab with Ctrl + W, it will always open the tab that's on the right of the closed tab. In Opera you have the option to activate the last active tab on closing. That way, you can just click on all the tabs you want closed (no need to hit the tiny close tab button), and then press Ctrl + W until they're all gone. Or you can open a bunch of google search results in background tabs, read through them and easily remove them afterwards.

DougBTX 17y ago
You can just click on all the tabs you want closed Another way to do this is to middle click on the tabs you want to close.

thorax 17y ago

I'm really done with tabs only at the top. I use the Tree-style Tabs extension for Firefox and can't imagine going back. You will notice an increase in browsing/research productivity because you don't spend so much time managing tabs that have gotten too small/short to tell what they actually are. You'll find you can work handily with dozens of tabs open if you have them in a readable list on the left. Before I used tree-style tabs, I usually maxed out at, like, 10 tabs open. And then I was somewhat sad and started my "tab GC" to close the least needed ones. Right now, I have 40+ tabs open in Firefox 3.5 and it feels just as breezy as it does with ten. More so, actually, because I have all my varied research in different trees that I can collapse/hide if needed. Give me Chrome with the tabs on the side, preferably in a tree hierarchy, and you've won. Edit: Link, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890

ronnier 17y ago
Thanks for that. I'll have to adjust to it, but I can tell right away that this extension improves the browsing experience by giving some type of order to tabs and child tabs.
jimmyjim 17y ago
Come to think of it, it's possible to have tree-style tabs in a horizontal top bar. I hope someone more clever than me implements this idea sometime.
- thristian 17y ago
  The Tree-Style Tabs extension lets you put the tab bar on any of the four sides of the window, although you don't get the fancy collapse/expand features at the top or bottom.
blahedo 17y ago
As a long-time OmniWeb user, I've become quite attached to thumbnailed tabs in a drawer on the side of the window. There's a Firefox extension called TabSidebar that approximates this, but it's an inferior implementation. Tabs at the top of the window are almost completely useless, though---far too little visual information to associate the tab widget with the page it controls.

modeless 17y ago

Both Safari and Firefox have by now had a chance to copy this behavior, but neither have, even though both have added other features to their tab bars.

deleted 17y ago
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pkulak 17y ago

Also, when you open a new tab in Chrome, it opens to the right of the current tab, not at the end of the line. Very nice when you use it.

freetard 17y ago
Firefox 3.6 does this too, I like it.
elblanco 17y ago
That "tree" ordering is subtle, but when you realize what it's doing, it's genius.

dryicerx 17y ago

In the mean time... Ctrl-w

aw3c2 17y ago
And middleclick. Tabs do not show the close buttons for me in Opera, it wastes too much of precious space.
- cake 17y ago
  Nice trick, I never use the close button but never had the idea to remove it to gain space.

whatajoke 17y ago

So they do what opera has been doing for ages. Got it.

tghw 17y ago
See, it's the smugness people don't like. Seriously though, I just fired up Opera (v. 9.63 - I never use Opera) and it does not have this behavior. Tabs resize as son as they are closed, from the left, middle, and right. So in addition to being smug, you're also wrong. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I upgraded to Opera 10.10 and tried again. Still the tabs resize as soon as one is closed. Maybe you're thinking of something else?
- indigoviolet 17y ago
  It depends on the skin you're using for Opera, and whether you allow wrapping in the tab bar or not.
  - tghw 17y ago
    So, you're saying that by extending Opera in some way you can get it to do this? Because it definitely doesn't do that by default. I don't think my Opera install could get any defaultier, and I'm not seeing it.
    - indigoviolet 17y ago
      Yeah. Not by extending it, but by changing some of the already available settings.

jonah 17y ago

"Here’s Google Chrome in Arabic..." WOW!

mahmud 17y ago
Why wow?
- bdr 17y ago
  Because it does the right thing.
  - seldo 17y ago
    Ditto. Bidi in application UI is so rare as to be nonexistent.
  - archon810 17y ago
    Pun intended.
    - est 17y ago
      As a non-native speaker I only find the pun when someone says it's pun. Thank you!

tomerico 17y ago

There is a hidden feature on many tabs - They close with mouse middle click! This is extremely important on tabs, because they always seems to have the smallest x button possible. I've tested it to work on Firefox, chrome, IE, Visual studio and other applications.

deleted 17y ago
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cakesy 17y ago
I don't like how chrome of firefox does tab closing. When I close a tab, it can take a few seconds, and it feels like I missed the tiny button, so I click it again. Of course, this happens just as the tab is closed, and I end up closing the next one as well. Very thankful for history of clsoed tabs.
bd 17y ago
Not really hidden, it's very common (and extremely useful - Fitts's law FTW) user interface convention. I already became conditioned - I keep middle-clicking to close tabs automatically in every application, feeling something is broken when it doesn't work. Though Mac people don't usually have more than 1 button, so I kind of understand obsession about workarounds :).
russss 17y ago
This doesn't work with Safari, however.

randallsquared 17y ago

I can live with the close button being on the right, but I strongly prefer the way Safari does it. I accidentally close more than one tab fairly frequently, and while I know and love the "History -> Recently Closed Tabs" workaround in Firefox, it is a workaround for the bad UI of having a close button I don't want to press pop up right under the close button I'm clicking on. I'm not the most dexterous person (to put it mildly), and further punishing my klutziness by requiring precision work with the mouse is not my idea of a good UI.

chronomex 17y ago
Control-Shift-T will reopen the most recently closed tab in Firefox (the equivalent command in Opera is Control-Z).
- heyitsnick 17y ago
  And Chrome too.
vitobcn 17y ago
Both Firefox and Chrome let you right click on any tab after closing another one and reverse that action ( FF: "Undo close tab", Chrome: "Reopen closed tab").
dejan 17y ago
I agree, happens to me all the time. The problem is that destroying a tab doesn't happen instantly, and you click again and again. Since the click is buffered, it will apply the action after the tab is closed. Safari feels much more thought out I have to say, but the feature/bug mentioned here seems just a result of full space tabs while in FFox/Chrome they are acting as fixed width. Rule of UI: count on and compensate for human errors and behaviour. Safari wins there for me (UI wise).

jrockway 17y ago

I like conkeror's interface better. I never even think about "tabs"; I just create a new buffer when I want one. I couldn't tell you how many I have open right now, but I could instantly switch to any "tab" I think might be open. Very convenient. (The mouse is also not used.)

Raphael 17y ago

Eureka! I knew there was something funny going on with the tabs. It's been disheartening seeing them sliding around on their own. I thought I was losing my mind.

latortuga 17y ago

I've always thought this feature was particularly well thought out in chrome. Another thing I've noticed is that, when closing tabs via middle click, the wait for auto-resize doesn't happen until mouse out - in fact I barely even use the close buttons anymore because of this.

tel 17y ago
This is the kind of minute feature that completely converts someone when they catch it.
- dbz 17y ago
  I've been using chrome since it came out, and I noticed the tab features (the close tab button on the right was not apparent as a feature because I am used to it being there) right away because they made a HUGE different. Chrome is amazing.

cmelbye 17y ago

I've always loved this feature in Chrome. I mainly use Chrome on my netbook, and this really helps because moving the mouse a lot when I'm trying to close a lot of tabs is hard with the tiny trackpad on my Eee PC. Thanks, Chrome!

czstrong 17y ago

This reminds me of Joel Spolsky's take on UI. "A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would." Never once while manipulating tabs in Chrome have I done something and then asked, "Now why did that happen?" The tabs do what I expect them to do so I don't have to think about them. As a side note, I also find the "duplicate" feature in the right-click menu useful, something at least Safari lacks.

s3graham 17y ago
> Never once while manipulating tabs in Chrome have I done something and then asked, "Now why did that happen?" Agreed, except for Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab.

mynameishere 17y ago

The old firefox had a single X that worked on the current tab. It was superior in every way. Took up less space, prevented accidental closes, easily allowed rapid closing. They got rid of it, and I never could figure out why.

samdk 17y ago
You can still make it work that way if you want. The about:config option is browser.tabs.closeButtons, and the value you want for a single close button for all tabs is '3'.
ekiru 17y ago
That option may be superior in every way, as you say. Well, unless you want to close a tab other than the current one. Since that is something I sometimes want to do, I don't like it.

akamaka 17y ago

It's really nice to see a blog post with a simple, clear headline. Some other bloggers would have chosen something like: "10 things I hate about tabs", or "Why I'm quitting Chrome", or "The death of browser usability" Kudos to the author for having the seemingly rare gift if common sense.

AndrewWarner 17y ago

At this rate, Google will eventually surpass Apple in design.

chrischen 17y ago

It could also be seen as a benefit. It prevents accidental double closings. However that could be solved with an "unclose last tab" feature. Firefox has that, but safari doesn't. It has an unclose last window though, but it doesn't work with tabs.

avinashv 17y ago
Chrome has the feature too. More importantly, Firefox and Chrome preserve browsing history. That, along with good keyword searching, is why I never switched to Safari and waited until Chrome's Mac Beta.
- trezor 17y ago
  Chrome has that feature, but unlike in Firefox you lose your history for that tab, so no way to go back. You get the page you were on and that is it.
  - avinashv 17y ago
    Nope: when I Ctrl+Shift+T I get the tab back with history on the Chrome Mac Beta.

gojomo 17y ago

I prefer the option provided by the Firefox 'Tab Mix Plus' extension: a single close button on the far right of the tab bar. Never moves no matter what you do, frees up space for more text on every tab.

vorador 17y ago

What is the joke with Gruber ? I don't understand it.

timdorr 17y ago
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/08/chrome-for-mac http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/08/chrome-for-mac and http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/10/safwat-chrome-tabs http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/12/10/safwat-chrome-ta...
- vorador 17y ago
  Thank you.
armandososa 17y ago
I really, really hate people who are so anal about mac UI guidelines. Get over it people. Mac users like this make me hate apple platform for many years. I use a Mac now, but I'm not a Mac
- ugh 17y ago
  Anal? It's the damn close button! I'm all for bending and breaking UI guidelines if it's useful - but not when it comes to something as fundamental as a close button.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  It's a big part of why Mac applications are so consistent compared to Windows and Linux, which is a big part of what makes Macs more usable than those other platforms. So those users might, indirectly, be part of the reason you are using a Mac now.

shrikant 17y ago

More Chrome-fu (Windows): Shift+Esc brings up the Chrome Task Manager which shows memory usage of the browser, tabs and extensions. (In line with Ctrl+Shift+Esc for the Windows Task Manager) This window also has a "Stats for Nerds" link, which opens up an about:memory tab. Nice.

dkarl 17y ago

What a wonderful way to start my day, with a reminder that: 1. There are no boring apps if you have some creativity. 2. You don't have to achieve feature parity before you start improving on the competition. 3. You can do anything you want, even redesign a well-established UI idiom, as long as your users find it intuitive!

trezor 17y ago

So basically Chrome's tabs works like they have done forever in Firefox and Opera. yawn

eru 17y ago
In my Opera 10.10 tabs get resized immediately after closing.

pvandehaar 17y ago

In the spirit of the Windows 7 Taskbar (or OSX dock), what about merging main-bookmarks and tabs? I for one would use it.

nfriedly 17y ago

The linked article appears to be offline for me, so here are a couple of alternative links: Coral cache: http://www.theinvisibl.com.nyud.net/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-with-a-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/ http://www.theinvisibl.com.nyud.net/news/2009/12/08/a-piece-... Google cache: http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Oc9JEdMaZuoJ: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-lot-of-screenshots-about-the-close-tab-behaviour-in-google-chrome/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Oc9JEdMaZuoJ:www.theinvi...