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Is Tabbed Windows Going To Be The Next Big Thing?

By on December 7th, 2009     

Tabbed_Windows_KDE44-1

With the release of KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1, tabbed windows is now available through its windows manager KWin. This raises the question, is tabbed windows going to be the next big thing after tabbed browsing?

Tabs as a means of cleaning up the UI is by no means a new concept. It dates back to 1997 when NetCaptor, the first browser supporting tabed browsing was released. However, the concept really took off when Mozilla Firefox introduced it.

Here is how tabbed windows works in KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1:

  • You can tab any windows you want.
  • The windows can be from different applications.
  • The tabbing capability is supported by the windows mamnager, KWin in KDE SC. So, even applications which does not support tabs can be tabbed.

Will the concept of a tabbed windows work in a windows manager? Possibly. Here are the reasons:

  • If the windows manager takes care of the tabbed interface, the software developers don't have to develop it seperately. This will make the software development time shorter.
  • Consider the situation when you are working on a project and have a word processor, the browser and, say, an image editing software open in addition to other open windows. In such a case, it certainly would be useful if you can place those windows for a particular purpose, the project in this case, together as tabs would certainly be very useful.
  • Just a few days back, a friend of mine was complaining about an application not having tabs. If the windows mamager supports tabs, it doesn't matter if the application supports tabs or not. You can simply tab together the different windows. This is particularly important as many very useful applications does not support tabs (Open Office comes to mind).

However, one big obstacle in front of the widespread aceptance of tabbed windows is virtual desktops. Most of the Linux DEs supports virtual desktops and people usually use it to organise their open windows based of their purpose. Virtual Desktops are very unlikely to go out of favour. So, if tabbed windows is to be accepted widely, it has to exit side by side with virtual desktop. In the absence of virtual desktops (like in Windows), however, tabbed windows will certainly a killer functionality.

Can you think of any other reason, why it may or may not work? If so, do leave a comment.

Picture via Ben Kevan's Blog




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  • DW

    Fluxbox has had tabbed window management for years and its much faster than KDE. Just drag one window onto another using the middle mouse button.

    • priomsrb

      You can use the middle button to drag and make a tabbed window in kwin too.

  • Bp

    Con: All the windows share the same size.
    Compare Opera to Firefox. Opera is MDI, so different tabs can be different sizes without affecting each other. Popups, for example, are the size they specify, instead of the Firefox solution of either resizing all your tabs to the new size, or not honoring the popup’s requested size and adding large areas of whitespace to your little tool popup. Like many other things, I think Opera does it right. This feature should emulate Opera’s tabbed interface instead of Chrome’s. Maybe some combination of the two that allows the sub windows to still be different sizes while grouped.

  • cwillu

    Tabbed interfaces are a good next step for tiling window managers; actually usable for people that are effective with a mouse.

    • http://idiomdrottning.org Sandra

      Next step? It’s been available for tiling window managers since before tiling window managers where popular. For example, Ion evolved from PekWM, a tabbed, tiling window manager.

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  • Zan Usi

    It will never be killer feature for whole desktop because its usability is not general. Some windows are small, sometimes you need to have more of them visible side by side. Tabbing is perfect for document-centric applications only.

  • Michal

    This feature been there for ages in other WM’s. Nothing to be excited about.

    • Ricky

      Yes it has already been there in many WMs. However I think it is the first time that it is introduced in a more mainstream WM.

  • Vladimir

    Drag ‘n’ drop will not work, it is productivity killer…

    • Galen

      My old KDE3.5 allows drag ‘n drop on applications with tabs, you just drag the item over the tab and that tab pops up. It works in Firefox, etc.

  • helder ferreira

    I rather prefer the approach…
    Take a look at     http://www.10gui.com/, from my point of view, this should be the type of UI we should be standing for..

    • Ricky

      yes very interesting concept.

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  • crozzfire

    Tabbed Windows FTW, in the usability POV for a single Document related app. But in contrast, Take Gimp for instance, bunch of windows scattered all across. Which IMHO, is fine/good for editing images in batches. Overall, it all depends on the app…

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  • compiz fan

    compiz already does this

  • solenskiner

    if every instance of an application was a fork, with COW, this is how tabs should have been done from the beginning!

  • wootness

    This is significant because tabbed window management is reaching to a larger group of people! Just because it has already been implemented does not mean it is accessible to a large group of people.

    Personally I prefer something simple like evilwm or metacity.

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Is Tabbed Windows Going To Be The Next Big Thing? was originally published on Digitizor.com on December 7, 2009 - 12:27 am (Indian Standard Time)