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>Tabbed windows can be a good thing when you are trying to manage a
>lot of conversations. I can't use ircle as my IRC client, for
>example, because I simply get lost in 12 windows, plus windows for
>pl2 and users and faces and dcc and more and more and more. I
>actaully use mirc via VNC instead because I can manage tabbed
>windows much easier.
>
>>While I totally agree that this solution has its problems, it also
>>think that one window with about 3-5 Tabs would be less space
>>expensive than 3-5 windows. And with a tabbed ui done right, i.e.
>>showing in the tabs that a new message has arived this could be
>>done to save space. But this has its limits, because it would only
>>be helpful for a finite number of tabs.
>
>The tabs would HAVE to show status of the chat so that a simple
>glance will tell you if there is something new in the non-front most
>tab. As for the interface, make it totally optional. If you move a
>window over another window in a specific way, then the windows are
>merged into a single tabbed window.
>
>My idea would be to have a tab icon on the window that you can drag
>another window onto. Or if you click the icon it simply generates a
>new tab.
>
>Tabbed view is not a perfect interface, but it is one of the things
>getting me to use Mozilla over IE.
Sorry, I just lost a text about this that I had _much_ thought put
into, so I will keep this short. Sorry about this.
The Tag line of this is the following: There are at least two usage
patterns out there for Fire: I mostly use it in the background to
chat to up to 3 sometimes 5 people, and do other things in the
foreground: Test an app, develop something and ask questions, try to
help somebody etc. For this I need/want a nice, screen real estate
saving, unobtrusive and nevertheless clear way to see if there is a
new message for me.
Then there is the possibility to use Fire exclusively. When I do this
(perhaps an important chat on irc? You seem to do something like this
very often :) I no longer need to have Fire be unotrusive or space
saving. Instead it has to be very good at handling _many_ windows at
once and keep me informed what happens.
Now there are probably other usage Patterns out there and I would
welcome you all to send them in here, so we could do some research on
how you use Fire. (Hopefully this doesn�t annoy Eric... ;).
Whatever we (mostly Eric right now.. :) do to change the UI, we need
to make it "scale" well between the different usage patterns.
This is also one of the major drawbacks that I see in a tabbed UI, as
it would be fine for some usage styles but don�t fit all. For example
for me a tabbed UI would be fine, but I seriosly believe that there
could be much better technikes (I would surely prefer my own draft of
sliding out windows ;-) but perhaps I am biased about this... ;)
To overcome this we should seriously consider different ways to get
all the great features that a tabbed UI could offer while still scale
very well and allow different usage patterns.
Just off of my head I could imagine a menu command that puts up some
sort of pallete that I could stick under my meny bar (just like a
second one) or have it at the left, right bottom of you screen. There
one could have buttons to switch to different windows and indicate
that new messages have arrived.
While I still think that this design also has its flaws, it would
still overcome some that a general tabbed UI would have. (Especially
would it make the system open for other improvements, as it won�t
change the general UI thus not complicating it unnecessarily).
Oh.. Did I mention that I would be very glad to have my slide out of
the screen feature implemented? <pretty please to Eric... ;)>
As always, please excuse my bad English and let the discussion about
different usage patterns begin. :)
cu Martin
--
dont.wanna.tell
[ot]coder - hehe
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