[HN Gopher] Vertical Tabs in Visual Studio Code
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Vertical Tabs in Visual Studio Code
Author : domysee
Score : 23 points
Date : 2023-11-19 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (weberdominik.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (weberdominik.com)
| yuppie_scum wrote:
| It feels like the explorer bar kinda does this intrinsically, or
| am I missing something?
| domysee wrote:
| You can see it like that. The difference is that in the
| explorer bar you can't choose how many there are. It's just a
| list of all files. Personally I like it better if I open the
| files I currently need to work with, and they're all grouped as
| open tabs.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Also, not everything is a file. Tabs should apply to all
| edges of all windows, including top level windows, not just
| one edge of only windows with files in them. And you should
| be able to drag any window out to top level and it still has
| its tab attached, then move it around to any position along
| any edge, or hide it, and of course snap windows together
| along their tabbed edges, either tiling or overlapping.
|
| How do you control all of that? That's where the pie menus on
| the tabs come in, of course. Thanks to the tabs, you can even
| pop up pie menus on windows that are completely covered up,
| and perform commands on them even though they're not visible,
| like bringing them to the top (stroke up) or down (stroke
| down), or closing them (diagonal stroke for confirmation
| submenu, then stroke up to confirm), or whatever (paste into
| terminal emulator, evaluate code in editor, etc).
| rstat1 wrote:
| It does, but it also limits the "open editors" list to a
| smallish size that makes it annoying to use when you have a lot
| of open files, and you can't resize it either.
|
| I never knew you could drag the open editors list off to its
| own thing though.
| seritools wrote:
| workbench.editor.limit.value to change the limit, and
| workbench.editor.limit.perEditorGroup to change whether the
| limit applies to each editor group, or the total amount
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I've been implementing and using vertical tabs since around 1988,
| with I released a commercial product with tabbed windows, the
| NeWS version of UniPress Emacs, and used it to develop a
| hypermedia authoring environment for HyperTIES at the UMD Human
| Computer Interaction Lab.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy...
|
| Vertically tabbed windows combine synergistically well with pie
| menus, and are great for window management, especially when you
| have many windows.
|
| They are purposefully NOT patented, since the idea is so fucking
| obvious, but it's disappointing they took so many decades to
| catch on finally. Still there aren't any decent desktop window
| managers I know of that implement tabs the right way. (tvtwm is
| not the right way!)
|
| The later NeWS Toolkit versions from the early 1990's let you
| drag the tabs around to any side of the window you like: left,
| right, top or bottom, to any position along any edge. The user
| should be able to decide which edge and where the tabs are
| attached to for each window, it should not be hard wired like the
| tabs in VSCode and web browsers typically are. Being able to
| choose which edge the tab is on and where the tab is gives users
| better more flexible ways to organize and manipulate their
| windows.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)
|
| HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring with UniPress Emacs on NeWS,
| tabbed windows, pie menus:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU
|
| I had a video of the NeWS tabbed windows, demonstrating dragging
| the tabs to different window edges, but youtube took it down
| because it contained copyrighted music (Herbie Hancock's Rockit).
|
| Oh, here's the original video you can download from my server:
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/movies/TabWindowDemo.mov
|
| Here are some different version from 1988-1991 for different
| versions of NeWS:
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabwin.ps
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-1.ps
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tabframe-1.ps
|
| https://donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps
|
| Here's another NeWS program that uses vertical (by default, but
| any edge if you want) tabs on windows around PostScript objects
| that you can push and pop on the stack with "direct stack
| manipulation":
|
| The Shape of PSIBER Space: PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication
| Routines -- October 1989
|
| https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-shape-of-psiber-space-octo...
|
| PSIBER Space Deck Demo:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuC_DDgQmsM
| ofek wrote:
| This is a long-standing feature request that has not made any
| progress nor can I tell that there is a plan to work on this at
| all in the near future:
| https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/108264
| j1elo wrote:
| 99% of the time I'm with 2 side-by-side editor panes open, so
| horizontal estate is very precious in this case, otherwise both
| documents won't fit well.
|
| That's also why I'm thankful when people don't assume 16:9 screen
| estate and configure their max line length to huge amounts like
| 120 or more! 80, 100 max, is still today the sweet spot. But I
| digress.
|
| For an IDE I wouldn't use vertical tabs on a side. But for web
| browsing they've become second nature to me, and Tree Style Tab
| for Firefox [1] changed the way I use the browser!
|
| [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-
| ta...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| This is why you should be able to choose which side and
| position any tab is positioned along any window at any time,
| and change them at any time by dragging them to where you want.
|
| Then you can assign meanings to each side, depending on your
| workflow, for example (this should be under user control, not
| set in stone, of course):
|
| Tabs on the top for important stuff.
|
| Tabs on the bottom for administrative stuff.
|
| Tabs on left for things you haven't read yet.
|
| Tabs on right for things you've already read.
|
| Then drag the tab from the left to the right after you read
| something (like moving it from your "in box" to your "out
| box"), or pin its tab on the top or bottom of it's important
| and you want to keep it around and easy to find.
|
| And if you really want, you should be able to hide the tab to
| save space.
|
| And not only tabs for apps like browser and IDEs, but also the
| desktop window manager should support tabs on top level windows
| in a consistent manner, so you can drag tabbed windows in and
| out of other window frames, as well as arranging them in
| hierarchical outlines along the edges.
|
| All this is super obvious, and saves a lot of time and effort,
| so it bewilders me why tabs like I described and implemented in
| the 1980's aren't universally supported on all desktops and
| applications by now.
|
| It's not because they're patented. Adobe tried, and sued
| Macromedia over it, but that patent (illegitimate in my view,
| since it ignored the prior art, and was extremely obvious and
| not patentable) has long since expired.
|
| https://www.metafilter.com/2805/Adobe-sues-Macromedia-over-i...
| bicx wrote:
| I used to set max line length on my projects to 120. However, I
| now live off-grid and primarily work from my 14" MBP. At this
| level, 80-100 really is the sweet spot, particularly with side-
| by-side or just a couple levels of sidebar.
| wahidislam wrote:
| looks like arc is changing the ui space quite well
| maleldil wrote:
| Arc the browser? The idea of vertical tabs is way older.
| Firefox has had Tree Style Tabs or variants for a long time,
| for example.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| UniPress Emacs for NeWS, with tabbed windows and pie menus:
| 1988.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(interface)#/media/File:Hy.
| ..
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmU2B79EDU
| jwells89 wrote:
| I think Arc is the first browser I've seen to not offer it as
| a toggle, but instead make it the default and only option and
| to design the rest of the UI around it. Wouldn't be surprised
| if for many people Arc is the first time they've encountered
| vertical tabs as a feature.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Is Arc even known enough to have a significant influence
| today?
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