Jim Taylor wrote:
Philip TAYLOR wrote:
<n...@likely.com.invalid> wrote:
This has been discussed before. The current way of having the tab close
X at a fixed position on the far right of the tab bar works better for
the way many people use the browser (including me) than having it on
each tab the way Firefox does.
"For many people". Could you adduce some statistics
to support that statement ?
Philip Taylor
No, I know of no workflow or usability studies that actually provide
statistics. My statement was based on user observation and comments in
past discussions of this issue. Perhaps "For some people" would have
been a better choice of words. But it would be really interesting to
see actually statistics on what percentage of time people close a tab
that does not have the focus versus closing the currently active tab.
Probably the best solution is to give the user a choice thru a
preference (browser.tabs.closeButton) of how they want the close button
displayed, as Firefox does
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.closeButtons . Actually
SeaMonkey has that preference but I don't know if it actually supports
the other options. As I prefer the way it is (default option 3) I have
never tried any of the other to see if they are supported or not.
The mozilla KB article says that option only applies to FF, and my own
experimentation just now backs that up: changing that perf thru
'about:config' then restarting the browser has no effect, no matter what
value is set. If there are other prefs which must be set at the same
time to make it work, the KB article doesn't say anything else. And
searching for a relevant SM article comes up blank.
That one function I find so convenient is one thing I loved about
MultiZilla, when it was available for the predecessors to the current
SM. I was so happy to find SeaTab X, and now that's not supported any
more. And it's available by choice for FF, and even IE uses it by
default. Granted, you have to focus on the tab, but at least your eyes
and the cursor are at the right place on-screen to make use of it,
rather than having to look elsewhere or use a third action by
right-clicking and selecting another menu option.
I say again that SM users are being forced to use this application in a
way that is leaving them with less choice than before, instead of more.
I realise that there must be trade-offs between what to code and what
to leave off, but since this is based on FF, and FF allows this choice,
who decided that SM users would not be permitted to make the same
informed choice?
_______________________________________________
support-seamonkey mailing list
support-seamonkey@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/support-seamonkey
