Tab layout/order

[LSLundy]

Right now when you open new tabs, you get a limited number that can display on screen at one time, the rest disappear off the edge and have to be scrolled to via little arrow buttons in the top right. It's not only time consuming to scroll back and forth to view the existing tabs, the "Back" arrows are to the left and are sometimes hit by accident taking you back to a previous screen when you meant to just scroll thru the tabs. I would like to make the following suggestion to make this more user friendly:

Instead of having the tabs disappear "off screen", can you have them wrap into a second row of tabs (and third row etc...). This way, all tabs continue to display without any scrolling. If I have multiple tabs open for worlds, maps, characters etc...this allows me to quickly select the tab I want without having to hit the little arrow buttons to find it and then arrow back to the page I was using prior to that. That's what I do now and it slows the game down considerably. Having all tabs visible in multiple rows would be excellent for pacing and would allow much more content to be open at one time!

 

[rob]

There are two potential drawbacks with this suggestion...

1. Users on smaller screens will end up with even less vertical space than they already have. Vertical space is at a premium on smaller laptops, so this is a definite concern we have.

2. When we introduce the web-based version of Realm Works, we'll be operating within a web browser. Browsers use a single strip of tabs across the top that can be scrolled. By using this same approach within the Windows product, we'll have a consistent usage model across both the application and the web.

Both of those concerns being said, if there's enough demand for this feature, we'll definitely look at adding the stacking tabs. I just figured you should be aware of the two main reasons that we opted not to stack the tabs in the first place.

 

[mirtos]

2. Rob do you mean browser tabs, or UI tabs within a window. I hope you don't mean browser tabs, which are a new window, just represented in tabs. It will mean a massive resource hog. If you mean UI tabs WITHIN an existing browser window, you could also stack tabs.

Also, I hope you might want to consider a different interface for browser, or at least not make it a reason to not do something in the standalone application. Sharing a similar interface is nice, but people don't expect browser apps to be the same as computer applications.

Finally maybe you could make it an option to determine whether or nt to wrap tab rows. Tat would handle your laptop concerns.

Btw, +1 for tab choices.

 

[Parody]

Suggestions:

Shrink the tab width proportionally instead of using scroll arrows. This is what Opera (old and new) and Chrome do.
- Maybe enforce a minimum tab width that still shows the icon and use scroll arrows after it reaches that?
- You'll want to add a tooltip that shows the entire title once tabs are cutting off characters.


Put a Switch Tabs/Windows dropdown menu in the unused Quick Access Toolbar. (I add Switch Windows there all the time in the Office w/Ribbon apps.)

 

[ShadowChemosh]

Shrink the tab width proportionally instead of using scroll arrows. This is what Opera (old and new) and Chrome do.

No please. I keep tabs open during the game session so I can switch to them quickly. To know which tab to switch to I need to read the title and its already SO small for my old eyes. No smaller. Go bigger!