On the topic of tabs… I think the point is to only have one window of the tabbed app open. Then you aren’t looking for gmail, you’re looking for the browser (much easier to find).
A compromise would be to have things you keep open (such as web-based email or rss clients) in separate windows and everything else in ONE tabbed window. Best of both worlds?
Jeff, I get the feeling you’d be organizationally challenged whatever tool/solution you happened to be using. Some people are like that…
I’ve got a bit of a problem with this - I don’t see why you need more than one browser/text editor/whatever window, if you have tabs? Surely if you had one browser window with some tabs open, you could just alt-tab to your browser and check the tabs?
The reason that this problem exists, is because you’re not managing your windows/tabs effectively. This is not a problem that can be solved by any UI or tool, it can only be solved by mending your ways…
“Otherwise you’d be hard-coding this Expose / Switcher behavior in for specific apps.”
Well, IE7 has this feature built-in, and Firefox can be expanded with it via Addons.
More than that, to check your Google (or other e-)mail there are desktop apps for this task, and Firefox addons that can show the inbox status on the status bar of your browser.
Of course, this is a data mining problem, and I assume your example of checking your mail was just an example. But still, I believe this is just a problem related to disorganization.
Stay consistent and organized in how you do things (always open your e-mail -tab in a browser on the same screen etc) and life will smile on you a little more every day.
I’m going to agree with the “Just don’t open more than one browser window” camp. Isn’t that kind of the whole point of tabs? The only time I use more than one window is to separate a reading list from work related resources, so i can skim through closing tabs quicker, or if my Wife’s machine is broken and we are sharing a desktop.
Jeff -
I have a gmail account as well - assuming that you also use Outlook - why not setup outlook to check your gmail account as another pop account.
I would also recommend using the IE7 Expose like feature - alt-tab to the correct browser and CTRL + Q and you should be able to see your gmail if you prefer opening it in a web browser instead of outlook.
Cheers
Separate windows (thus taskbar items) or Tabs? Why not both?
Why not let the user cluster windows/apps into either tab groups or into single windows with tabs?
It would require the windowing and organization aspect of apps to be moved into a basic OS feature, and the ability to over-customize would be a rather strong productivity loss for some, but sounds like the right way to go.
Letting the applications manage their own windows and decoration seems to have led to inconsistent and jarring user interfaces (particularly in the audio player space). I’d rather have more consistency thru the base OS windowing system (and, of course, central and consistent CONTROL at the same time).
You should just use tabs the sane way, keep stuff you’re researching that’s actually related in one tabbed window, but do other stuff elsewhere. you can’t go round blaming tabbed interfaces for your own incompetence keeping your tabs organised… 
P.S. i obviously have the same problem
So the sequence is
Win 3.1
The tasks you are running are windows switch with Alt-Tab or find the window
Problem : Alt-Tab is uninformative and it’s hard to move the windows to find the one I want
Windows 95 The tasks you are running are Windows and on the taskbar switch with Alt-Tab or by selecting the program on the taskbar
Problem : Alt-Tab is still uninformative and the taskbar is cluttered and so the window names are hidden
Windows XP The tasks you are running are Windows and grouped on the taskbar switch with alt-tab or by selecting the group and then the window on the taskbar
Problem : Alt-Tab is still no better and the most of my taskbar consists of groups so I cannot see any window names
One Solution get the apps to have their own taskbars (tabs) rather than separate windows
Windows Vista The tasks you are running are Windows and grouped on the taskbar switch with alt-tab or by selecting the group and then the window on the taskbar
Problem : Alt-Tab is now much better but now the apps have their own tabbars you can’t see them in the preview
It seems that the problem is task switching is broken and always has been so ad-hoc partial solutions were put in place that break the solution when it finally arrives … Sounds familiar
From my experience I use tabs in browsers so that I don’t have multiple browser windows all different sizes scattered all over the screen … tabs are tidier
Well, I use 2 monitors on my workstation and I’ve came to realize that having one browser instance for each monitor is the best solution for me (Like Jeff’s). I group similar tabs in the same browser instance and can do some comparisons quickly. As for getting lost… I’ve gotten used to my setup and I’m very picky about where I put my windows and tabs. This allows me to quickly know that on the left monitor is my “researching” browser with Tabs open to all the open source websites, search results, and so on. I usually keep one instance of FireFox open also for comparison when building a web application. Gotta be compatible, right?
As far as the aggrivation, I can see where it comes from, but if you’re as organized as you lead on to be, you shouldn’t have any problem finding the window you want. You know that you have one window for communication, therefore, wouldn’t GMail be in that browser window? And you know that in your communication browser you keep hotmail, twitter, ect. This makes it even easier, you could scan the taskbar for one of the “common communication” sites and when you see it, you know that that’s the browser instance with the tab for your GMail. This method has worked for me since I made the jump into Tabbed browsing. Great post, Jeff. Keep ‘em comin’!
whatever happened to Cyrus?
I think initial reports indicated that The Warriors had shot Cyrus. But that was later found to be incorrect and one of The Rogues was identified as the shooter. In fact, it was The Rogues that spread the false accusation from the beginning.
I’ve never had a problem finding just exactly where i have put my gmail tabs before, and i usually run 2-3 Firefox instances at once. I usually put gmail as the first or second tab, and then i just remember which window i had open, if you’re not using the group-task feature, you can usually remember which window had the gmail page up for you. While i dont use multiple monitors, I do use multiple desktops. It is for me a lot better than a multiple monitor setup, especially because I’m poor, and I dont have a lot of deskspace. Expose and all the other utilities i’ve seen for window management aren’t really effective if you ask me, if anything its for the rediculously small nature of the thumbnails. If you work with half the programs open that i do, when you tile all your windows on your screens to tell what you’re doing, you’ll be looking at 250x250 pixel representations of the windows.
Honestly i’ve always hated expose and all of its clones, such as your registry hack, and the strangely done version in beryl. Though iirc beryl is the only one that will zoom in on the window when you move over it. At any rate, i find it very hard to effectively use. Since if i have my taskbar, and my virtual desktops set the way i want them, everything is organized quite well.
I’ve enjoyed the small touches of the Firebox sibling SeaMonkey. They have a nice feature where if you hover over a tab heading you get a mini-preview image of what the tab looks like. Great for knowing what is there, but also for checking on a slow loading website.
First of all, let me say that I really love the tabbed interface. However, what I find frustrating is that so far I have run across 3 separate tabbing paradigms that require me to change how my mind thinks of them.
Early Firefox/VS 2003 model.
The X is to the right of all tabs and static. To close a tab, click the X.
New tabs appear to the right of all previously opened tabs.
I can see how this annoyed people that wanted to close a tab in the middle: click the tab to activate, then move the mouse all the way to the right to close.
Firefox 2.x/IE7(?)
The X is on the tab itself. Click to activate the tab itself, and the X is right there.
New tabs open to the right of existing tabs.
I found that having the X on the tab itself difficult to get used to, because the tabs resize, and when I found myself wanting to close tabs quickly, I found myself searching for the X, because the tabs resize as more or less of them appear.
The Visual Studio/SQL Server 2005 model.
Single X to the right of the tabs.
New tabs appear to the LEFT of existing tabs, and push all existing tabs to the right. For some reason, I found this behavior very very confusing.
Any others???
So in 4 pieces of software that I use on a regular basis (sometimes all in the same day!), I have to force myself to remember what kind of tabs I’m working with.
What are your experiences with this? Which tabbing model do you prefer?
My biggest complaint to firefox’s tab handling is that if you have 2 windows, you cannot drag a tab from one window to another one : it behaves like if it was a completely different browser.
Opera does this the right way though.
Enso (http://www.humanized.com/) is an application launcher. One if it’s features is a task switcher, so you can use its CLI to “go Word” etc. A nice extension of this is that it understands Firefox tabs, so you can type “go Gmail” and you would find it instantly.
One important thing is: either use tabs or windows on Firefox. It’s useless and inscrutable to me why one would mix them together. So I have only one Firefox window will some tabs in it, where I need to hunt for a certain open page. And one should use an add-in like “Firefox Showcase” to see all opened tabs at a glance, so switching to the correct tab is done in a sec.
I also hate tabs in the web browser (which is why I turn them off immediately). On the other hand, I like the tabbed MDI interface in Visual Studio (and SQL Management Studio) because, there, I’m thinking about a collection of things that belong to a common project.
@Jeff “Cliff’s Notes” Atwood:
I don’t think this is a scalability problem with tabs so much as it’s a scalability problem with you.
I think you’re simply opening far too many Windows. If you have so many that (a) you’re not totally sure if you have GMail open and (b) it takes a significant investment of time to find out if you do, I think the bottleneck is your forgetful, squishy human brain.
One app that really helps me manage the complexity is TaskSwitchXP. It allows one to right click on the minimize button to send any window to the tray. Great for windows that basically act as background services (such as PuTTY for SSH) or when you’re trying to hide something (such as porn). Doing this has become second nature to me, and it’s always a bit jarring to use computers without TaskSwitchXP installed.
On another note, I think the argument for tabs (and the associated ctrl+tab shortcut) is essentially the same as the argument for search trees. You don’t want to search linearly through 20 windows when you can pick “Internet” or “Visual Studio” out of a small number of top-level choices. Also note that because I have so many code files in my project, I can never remember which Visual Studio tabs I have open.