Comment #106 on issue 188 by dougoftheabaci: UI: tab overflow http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=188
I've been reading through many of the comments and one thing that strikes me is many of the solutions are adding features when Chrome seems to be about stripped-down speed and productivity. Also, many of the solutions have inherit issues that make them cause more problems than they solve. Horizontal rows build up and take away vertical space, which is where you can least afford to lose it on a display. You'd have to resort to scrolling eventually anyway so why bother with multiple rows? Why not simplify and add some manner of scrolling to start? Vertical bookmarks take up a lot of space and given that a significant portion of users are still using 1,024- pixels wide displays when most websites tend to be static and approximately 960 pixels wide taking away much from either side of a page could result in a horizontal scroll-bar on many sites. Also, there would be a substantial visual jarring when you went from one tab to multiple or in the reverse. Thumbnails is an interesting addition but it does not solve the root issue which is an inability to find the tab you're looking for. While thumbnails are handy if you can visually recognize a site what about when you have multiple pages open that are nearly identical or, even worse, where you've never been to the sites and have no idea what they look like? Besides, this feels more like a gimmick and less like a UX solution given the issues with it. I'm not sure why people have issues with a horizontal tab-bar that, when it reaches a certain width, scrolls in some manner. This is the standard method for every other major browser and thus what users expect anyway. It doesn't suffer from the issues any of the other proposed options have. I think a minimum width can't be avoided, if only for usability reasons. As has already been said when the tabs get too thin you can't tell which tabs have loaded, which are loading, which have crashed and so on. Also, were you to have many tabs where all the text was obscured you'd have to hover over a tiny area in order to get the tooltip to see what the tab is. This last piece alone is enough to be a black mark against not having a minimum width as any user who has issues with fine movements is going to find this exceedingly difficult. It feels as if some of the proposed solutions are ignoring serious usability issues. One of the things I like most about Chrome is that much of it is very simple and user-friendly. It feels like user actions have been thoroughly taken into account to find the best solution for the average user. -- You received this message because you are listed in the owner or CC fields of this issue, or because you starred this issue. You may adjust your issue notification preferences at: http://code.google.com/hosting/settings -- Automated mail from issue updates at http://crbug.com/ Subscription options: http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-bugs
