[HN Gopher] WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management o...
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WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management on the desktop
Author : Emendo
Score : 30 points
Date : 2021-01-29 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| pidg wrote:
| Not free (or 'free') but there is a commercial app that does this
| very well indeed - Stardock Groupy. It was bundled in with
| something else I bought years ago and I just leave it running as
| it's quite handy.
|
| https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/
| nxc18 wrote:
| You beat me to it. They've got a bunch of cool utilities. In
| the windows 7 days I was a huge fan of logon studio.
|
| Microsoft could learn a lot from what they're doing, as for the
| most part I still prefer not using 3rd-party utilities to mess
| with things.
| pidg wrote:
| Their 'Fences' app is excellent (which was the app I bought
| the bundle for).
|
| In particular, the ability to create a view on the desktop
| onto another folder. This lets me split my desktop into
| 'local' and 'cloud' areas by having a fence containing a view
| onto a Google Drive-hosted folder.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Is it for Windows 7 only? Will it work on Windows 10?
| nxc18 wrote:
| Stardock Groupy is a commercial supported utility that does the
| same thing, IIRC released during the long period when Microsoft
| was teasing Windows 10 Sets.
|
| https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/
|
| I think Microsoft must have abandoned sets when they moved to
| Edgium; their engineers were somehow under the impression that
| Sets was 100% dependent on Edge, and I think they must have been
| planning the feature as a cudgel against other browsers. IDK, I
| wish the Windows PMs were like 40% less user hostile and didn't
| treat us like children to be manipulated.
|
| Tldr, Groupy is pretty cool and at least appears to fit in with
| the windows 10 desktop better than the open source utility, for a
| price.
| pidg wrote:
| > for a price
|
| At risk of seeming like a shill (I just like Groupy!) there
| seems to be a 50% discount code here, making it the price of a
| coffee: https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/groupy
| josephernest wrote:
| Please add a screenshot to see how it looks like.
| ajtjp wrote:
| Seconded. Marketing 101: Make it easy for the consumer to see
| why they might want to try the product.
|
| I use Stardock's Groupy, and it does this well (and is
| inexpensive). I'm not sure why I'd want to switch to this when
| I already have Groupy, although the general idea is one that I
| think should gain more traction.
| wtfrmyinitials wrote:
| The sway window manager has this feature built in and it's
| wonderful. I use it all the time.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Awesome. Microsoft themselves had planned this feature for some
| time, but abandoned it for some reason. Instead they were
| probably focusing their efforts on making it harder to prevent
| automatic updates.
| kepler471 wrote:
| Is the feature you mean called Sets?
|
| https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/introducing-sets
|
| Looks like it was removed from Windows preview due to feedback,
| they may be reworking it in the background.
| dusted wrote:
| the other half of their time was spent making sure you can't
| disable that blue full-screen "Let's finish setting up your
| device" nag.
| esalman wrote:
| My go-to file explorer power tool on Windows is Q-dir [1]. It
| supports tabbing among other useful features.
|
| [1] http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/Q-Dir
| helloworld wrote:
| In 1993, the Windows Taskbar actually began life as tabs across
| the top of the screen:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com.au/history-of-the-windows-st...
| WaldoLydecker wrote:
| Ahead of their time in breaking the desktop analogy.
| afterburner wrote:
| Seems a key change was to name the button "Start" instead of
| "System". It's a built in instruction!
| pidg wrote:
| Reminds me of the (apocryphal?) story that the 'OK' button is
| only labelled that way because in user testing people read
| the original text - 'Do It' - as 'Dolt'.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Funny. I never liked the taskbar at the bottom of the screen on
| Windows, so I always move it to the top. To this day, it still
| screws up new window alignment, twenty five-ish years later.
|
| After I moved to Linux and 16:9 monitors became mandatory I
| moved my gnome/mate taskbar to the left side, where it has
| stayed for about a decade. It is a bit clumsy in the vertical
| position, but does the job.
| ajtjp wrote:
| That isn't quite the same a what this software is or what
| Groupy does, but that is a fascinating article. I loved this
| part:
|
| ---
|
| For instance, one study subject took twenty minutes of staring
| at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text
| editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was
| unacceptable, to Oran's relief. But that relief would be short
| lived: "Our customers are morons!" exclaimed the programmer.
|
| This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to
| that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion
| engineer for Boeing.
|
| "He was literally a rocket scientist," Oran says. "And even he
| couldn't figure out Windows."
|
| ---
|
| IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more
| mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non-
| technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your
| userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for
| realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major
| improvements to that over the years.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain
| more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier
| for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of
| your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit
| for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made
| major improvements to that over the years._
|
| ... I don 't know. On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment.
| On the other hand, general computing needs of technical users
| are already becoming a niche too small for the market to
| serve. If Open Source community gets into their heads that
| they should optimize for non-technical users, I fear we'll
| have a dearth of tools...
| donatj wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned BeOS / Haiku who's windows
| titlebars Tab automatically across all programs.
|
| https://discuss.haiku-os.org/uploads/default/original/1X/abb...
| rkagerer wrote:
| Cool!
|
| If you want tabs in Windows Explorer, I've been using QTTabBar
| for years and it's pretty good.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Is this like the tabs in macOS Finder, or something better?
| Toutouxc wrote:
| It's many different apps now, even 3rd party ones, not only
| Finder.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| From playing around with it for a bit, it allows you to tab any
| application, including tabbing different applications together
| in a group. There's also something to do with workspaces that I
| haven't played with yet.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Self-ad: Stack WM (for Windows 10). Also shows tabs for windows,
| but works more like a tiling WM.
|
| https://losttech.software/stack-whatsnew-2.0.html
| moyix wrote:
| I remember enjoying this with Fluxbox back in 2003 or so :)
| mauricef wrote:
| Hah! A friend just shared this with me, I'm Maurice the original
| author, long time anonymous hn lurker. This was a labor of love,
| I still remember the sheer exhilaration when I made my first
| sale!
| [deleted]
| civilized wrote:
| Windows 95 had this, we just didn't call it tabs back then
| mkl wrote:
| VS2019 but Windows 7?
|
| A similar app is TidyTabs: https://www.nurgo-
| software.com/products/tidytabs
|
| Has anyone tried it? It's not open source, but "free for personal
| use".
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| I miss when KDE had this in the KDE4 days. The only place I know
| where you can have window tabs by default is in Haiku.
| clircle wrote:
| i3 and any similar window manager have this feature.
| adamnew123456 wrote:
| A sibling comment mentioned Sway, and I've also used this on
| both Fluxbox and i3. I would be surprised if Awesome didn't
| have it as well.
|
| The only problem is that (at least in Fluxbox's case) it
| suffers from poor discoverability, since it's a modifier to the
| window drag action that has no corresponding buttons or
| "landing zones" like what you get if you try to tear tabs out
| of a Firefox window.
| greggyb wrote:
| I've had this for years in i3 on Linux.
| WalterGR wrote:
| The README says it's been available since 2009.
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(page generated 2021-01-29 23:00 UTC)