A small change to the way in which new tabs are opened in Firefox is coming, in hopes of better meeting the needs and expectations of users. The change will be:
- tabs that are opened from links will open to the immediate right of the current tab
- new tabs created by the New Tab button or keyboard shortcut will open at the end of the tab strip
- if multiple tabs are opened (in the backgound) from links, they will open sequentially to the right of each other; as soon as focus changes, this sequential opening behaviour will stop, and tabs will go back to opening immediately to the right or at the end of the tab strip as per the above
The goal is to have tabs that are related – in terms of the user’s interaction – grouped together on the tab strip automatically. This supports a common case where a user is interacting with a webpage and opens one or many web pages from links; those tabs will now be adjacent to the initial tab. When the user explicitly asks for a new tab, it’s impossible to tell if it’s for a task that’s related to the current activity or for a new task; as such, we place it at the end of the tabstrip.
The change should be landing on trunk shortly, at which point we’ll have to make a decision about whether or not to take it in Firefox 3.1.
Some background, for those who are interested…
When we released Firefox 2, we changed the default behaviour of the browser so that links which would normally open a new window would, instead, open a new tab. Many proposals were presented about how to handle the opening and closing behaviour, with complex ideas around preserving the parenting relationships between tabs (so that when tab A opens tab B, closing tab B always returns to tab A no matter what’s happened in between). Many debates ensued, with hard-to-follow explanations that looked like:
A
A b
A b c
a B c
A b
a D b
We quickly realized that if these things were hard to follow when explaining them to each other, they would be impossible for a user to intuit. At that time, we chose to always follow a guideline which stated: “do not to try to be more clever than the user.” Put another way, if we can’t be confident that the heuristics governing automatic behaviour matches the user’s intent, we shouldn’t try to automate the behaviour.
This is what led to our current tab-close behaviour, which takes the user back to the opening tab if and only if they haven’t changed tabs or re-ordered tabs between opening and closing. The heuristic being used for tab opening position – in addition to achieving behavioural parity with Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera – follows the guideline as well.
This sounds like a good consistent behaviour, the grouping together should improve cognition. Further, have you ever considered other gestalt principles for this purpose, for example putting spaces between tabs to make a stronger visual group? And what is the tradeoff between ‘clearer groups’ and ‘looks messy’?
With re: to explanations like
”
A
A b
A b c
a B c
A b
a D b”
A better option might be (in order of usefulness) a storyboard, animated storyboard, animated mockup, or simple interactive mockup.
I’ve recently read a great book called Disney — the illusion of life which details the Disney technique for animation. One feature of their process was a technique of pegging the pages to the bottom of their desk, rather than the traditional technique of pegging them at the top. By doing this, they could put a piece of of paper between each finger in one hand, and ‘roll’ through the animation. Back and forward, back and forward, they quickly assessed if the 5 drawn images animated in the way they needed. This, plus other ‘quick feedback’ techniques gave Disney their early lead in animation…and highlights the value of good, fast mockup techniques for all of us.
> tabs that are opened from links will open to the
> immediate right of the current tab
At first I was like
> if multiple tabs are opened (in the backgound)
> from links, they will open sequentially to the
> right of each other
But then I was like
IMHO this behavior makes a lot more sense when the tabs are colored, as Internet Explorer 8 and some Firefox extensions do. The tabs are now essentially grouped, but the boundary between each group isn’t visually apparent.
I’ve liked this behavior since I first tried it on IE8. Hope to see some way to identify a tab group in the near future. I don’t like colored tabs but maybe a halo could do the job or something like collapsing the tabs to a tab menu where the visible tab title is the last visited tab of the group.
“When the user explicitly asks for a new tab, it’s impossible to tell if it’s for a task that’s related to the current activity or for a new task;”
A secondary keyboard modifier could be used to force new tabs just next to the current tab or at the end of the current tab group:
- “shift”+alt+enter in the locations or search bar
- “shift”+File/New tab
- “shift”+ctl+T
- “shift”+ double-click on the tab bar
Also, Tabs Open Relative is the extension to install to try this behavior: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1956
Reminds me of the way Chrome handles new tabs. When I was testing it, this behaviour annoyed me at first – but not for long! I think its a step in the right direction of solving the underlying problem of needing tab-management (ie, you shouldn’t – it should Just Work).
If there was a bug link I would vote for this
, especially for 3.1, none of the extensions do it right. (What you described is “right” to me)
Also, since adding color is probably ugly for most people, but I’m not sure if I want it, might I recommend adding metadata to “relative” tabs saying the tab id/name of their parent? It seems like that’s probably what will happen at some level anyway, but making it easily accessible to extensions should allow for lots of neat stuff.
thanks for the good news!
Sounds very good, I often have to hunt tabs that opened in background some ten tabs away. I promise to test when this feature lands on trunk, hope it will make it into Firefox 3.1.
When you say “tabs that are opened from links” do you mean left-click with target=”_blank” or middle-click, or right-click and choose “Open in New Tab”?
Presumably middle-clicking on bookmarks and other chrome elements will still open them on the far right?