On 7/11/07, Nick Treleaven nick.treleaven@btinternet.com wrote:
On 07/10/2007 07:10:10 AM, John Gabriele wrote:
When I've got a bunch of files open, with the tabs visible, and they take up more than the window width, the little left/right triangle buttons show up. They currently are supposed to allow me to switch from one tab to the next in the given direction of the button.
A problem I'm noticing is 3-fold:
- The user usually doesn't need to switch from file to file this way.
If they've gone and reached for the mouse, they may as well just click on the tab itself to get the file.
- If the user is editing a file in a tab far to one side, and wants
to go to a tab that's obscured on the other side, they need to either repeatedly click that triangle button to get there, or else resort to using the Open Files tab (or else use a Ctrl-Pg{Up,Dn} key to "round the horn" to get there).
I agree. I think this should be changed in Gtk. You might be interested in these bugs:
"Arrows of tabs just like arrows of menus" http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377441
Ah, that's it. I see that it's from November of last year. Maybe they're just waiting for a patch from someone. Odd that the bug is still labeled "UNCONFIRMED".
More general but also covering notebook arrows: "GtkNotebook should use multiple rows" http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=110540
Also, since Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn nowadays let you wrap around to the tab on the other end of the row, I think it would be useful to have:
Shift-Ctrl-PgUp -- gets you all the way to the tab on the far left Shift-Ctrl-PgDn -- gets you all the way to the tab on the far right
where, if the tab on the far left was obscured, and you hit Shift-Ctrl-PgUp, it would also automatically slide the view of the row of tabs all the way to the left, so you could see the tab you just switched to.
Hmm, maybe. Ideally Gtk+ should be changed IMO,
Yes.
but perhaps those shortcuts could be useful in the meantime. (I assume you mean visible tabs rather than absolute first and last; as Enrico points out Alt-1, Alt-0 can do this).
No, I meant what Enrico pointed out. I think switching to the far left or right *visible* tab might give the user the impression that they went all the way to the end, even though there might be more tabs hidden past it. :)
Thanks, ---John