Three Tab Thoughts An exploration for tab redesign.
Overview In this presentation, I will talk about three thoughts related to the tab. Hopefully these would contribute to the future version tab redesign. The three tab thoughts are,
Preview
tabDock
historyReview
#1 Preview Thought about Tab Creation.
Before creating a new tab, rethink what makes us do that.
Many links in a page
#1 Preview
Predisposition When reading a page, there are often times many links, which served as the background info in the page. Some people would like to go over all the content without being interrupted(e.g. open the links during reading in the current page and come back after reading them). Probably, they would rather choose to open the links in new tabs and read them later.
#1 Preview
Problem However, people may lose the context when reading the links after, one by one. In other words, they lose the connection with the original page, which embeds those links.
#1 Preview
Inspiration Think about the difference between “preview a file” and “open an actual file” on a mac. It is about Time and Context.
Minimal preview window
To be able to preview the links as going over the content would give people better browsing experience.
#1 Preview
Make a point To be able to preview the content of the link before opening it in a new tab allows people to get more content in context, which provides seamless browsing experience. For further consideration, the preview window could be turned into a new browser window or a new tab if it is worth further reading, which enhance the “tab quality�.
#2 tabDock Thought about Tab Organization.
#2 tabDock
Part of the reason why people have lots of tabs open in a browser is because the tabs are not clear enough to be bookmarked, and they are not convenient enough to be saved as files on desktop. So what we do is to decide later by leaving them there. To borrow one phrase from Patrick Dubroy, they are “lightweight bookmarks”.They serve as temporary working files, some of which are related, some are not, and mostly it depends on the context, e.g. people’s need.
#2 tabDock
So there should be an intuitive way to categorize these temporary files online.
#2 tabDock
Inspiration Dashboard and Dock on Mac
#2 tabDock
What if there is a tab Dock in browser
Drag tabs into different categories you defined temporarily.
Redesign Tab
Project#4 Font
Topic of Today
Source Today
#2 tabDock
Make a point The folders on the dashboard/dock contain related items that people defined by themselves. This intuitive way of categorizing lightweight bookmarks forms the workspace with organized items.
#3 historyReview Thought about Tab Navigation.
History could be better used to assist tab navigation.
#3 historyReview
Predisposition With a lot tabs open in a window or many windows, it is easy to forget the context info of one tab. People are not bothered to check history record.
What if history is visualized to provide the tab context info?
#3 historyReview
History Review
Today
Have a reflection of the tab page and its relationship with other pages would remind people where they are and how they got there.
#3 historyReview
Make a point The grouping of the tabs is based on time, not on domain names. This provides people with the context info of the tabs, so that it is easy to see where and how people got the tabs.
Thank you!