[HN Gopher] You Can Select Multiple Tabs in Safari, Chrome, Firefox
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You Can Select Multiple Tabs in Safari, Chrome, Firefox
Author : tosh
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-12-10 18:51 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daringfireball.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (daringfireball.net)
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You can also drag a tab or group of tabs out of a window to open
| a new window.
| stuartd wrote:
| "Once you have multiple tabs selected, you can drag them
| together to create a new window, or do things like close them
| all at once."
| lovelyviking wrote:
| " This trick does not work in Safari on iPadOS, because iPads are
| baby computers where you can't select more than one thing at a
| time."
| isodev wrote:
| It's funny but also not - Gruber's sarcasm is always so
| borderline toxic, literally drains the happiness out of
| whatever tech thing he is "reviewing".
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Toxic? Please stop.
| Tagbert wrote:
| and yet many people complain that he is too enthusiastic
| about Apple products and not critical enough. No matter what
| opinion he would take some people will complain about it.
| Yours just seems a little bit detached from reality.
| robertoandred wrote:
| He updated the article with an admission that he was wrong
| about that.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I wonder why it's cmd+click and not shift+click?
| _dain_ wrote:
| They both work! Ctrl-click to select individual tabs, Shift-
| click to select a range.
| glhaynes wrote:
| Shift-click is for making selections across a range whereas
| command-click is for individual item selection. Both work as
| they should.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| The real question is, Ctrl+Shift+Click work as it should when
| other items are already selected?
| filoleg wrote:
| I don't know (and I don't think so), but I can confirm that
| using ctrl/cmd+click works as expected for adding more
| individual tabs to an existing selection.
| ezfe wrote:
| Cmd+click adds individual, shift click adds a range. Both work
| in Safari
| dishsoap wrote:
| I'm surprised people are surprised by this feature, it's been
| around for ages. Other sometimes useful features are 'duplicate
| tab', 'close all other tabs', 'close tabs to right', etc.
| kazinator wrote:
| I'm not surprised. It is not readily discoverable for certain
| UX reasons that I hypothesize in this neighboring comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38594816
|
| I did not discover it for many years.
| dishsoap wrote:
| Fair, but for me I remember it being intuitive as it was the
| first thing that came to mind when wanting to combine two
| windows into one by dragging the tabs in a convenient manner,
| or to conveniently rearrange groups of tabs
| pxeger1 wrote:
| Some more tips:
|
| - middle-clicking on the refresh button duplicates the
|
| - middle-clicking on a tab closes it
|
| - middle-clicking on the empty space after all your tabs opens
| a new one
|
| Generally, try middle-clicking on things to see what happens.
| It's often useful.
| dishsoap wrote:
| Interesting, I had never tried middle clicking the refresh
| button
| MrJohz wrote:
| Ctrl-click works as well (just like ctrl-click works to
| open tabs in new windows. This is useful for laptops where
| the middle button can be harder to use/access.
|
| It also works for history items, and I think other things
| as well. Basically if it could be opened in a new tab, then
| try middle/ctrl clicking it.
| solardev wrote:
| I was impressed by ChatGPT, but this... _this_ is what power
| feels like! I can feel the productivity coursing through my
| veins. Begone, old tabs!!
| kazinator wrote:
| To nuke old tabs, you really need an extension like Sideberry
| (or others) which present the tabs in a vertical pane on the
| left. You get a compressed view of the tabs in which you can
| actually read most of the titles easily instead of just seeing
| the favicon and a few characters.
|
| Also, did you notice that Firefox (and maybe other browser)
| have a context menu item "Close Multiple Tabs"?
|
| That has a submenu where you can close all tabs to the left of
| the current tab, to the right, or both (all other tabs).
| kazinator wrote:
| It is not surprising why people do not discover this feature. I
| hereby argue that people are surprised to find this (or find out
| about this from others) because it is poorly discoverable.
|
| Firstly, tabs existed before browsers. They appear in traditional
| user interfaces like control panels, where many categories of
| settings must be multiplexed onto one window. Tabs are obviously
| based on the file cabinet with dividers that have tabs sticking
| out.
|
| In a traditional tabbed dialog, we don't think of a tab as being
| _selected_ in the sense that files in a file manager are
| selected, or objects in a vector program are selected. The tab is
| just _current_. It 's in the foreground, raised above the other
| tabs.
|
| Furthermore, there is _always_ a current tab.
|
| Furthermore, you usually cannot create new tabs in a control
| panel dialog, nor delete them. In more modern UIs, you may be
| able to rearrange the order. The manipulation is limited.
|
| Tabs are more like child windows that are multiplexed onto the
| same rectangular area. You don't think of selecting two tabs any
| more than of selecting two windows. While the browser itself has
| the UI focus, I cannot Ctrl-Click on another application window
| to select them together.
|
| And look, in fact, you don't see the selection state change in
| Firefox until you select two or more tabs!
|
| Only when you select two or more tabs do you see an additional
| visual state change indicating that a selection is in place,
| namely additional highlighting of all the selected tabs via a
| bright rectangle around each of their headings.
|
| The currently _shown_ tab is still special, independently of the
| selection.
|
| Therefore, in fact, I would say that you can _only_ select
| multiple tabs in Firefox. You cannot select a single tab. A
| selection state does not exist until you select multiple tabs.
|
| You cannot get the additional selection state rectangle to show
| around just the current tab if you Ctrl-Click on it, so it's as
| if there does not exist a single tab selection.
|
| Thus it's as if people are surprised that you can select tabs at
| all.
|
| When I discovered this, that was my thought. Oh ..., if you Ctrl-
| Click or Shift-Click, then the concept of the current tab morphs
| to a selection paradigm. Well, that's a hack!
|
| Another consideration is that browser does not have a separate
| toolbox that operates on selections of tabs. For instance,
| suppose we want to delete a tab. We can use the X or we can use a
| context menu item. That context menu item is on that tab, though.
| It's not a separate tool. You right click on the tab and see a
| Close Tab command. Now when you make a selection (two or more
| tabs), that command changes! It now says Close 2 Tabs (or however
| many). Things you can do with tabs are attached to a context menu
| which is invoked on a specific tab.
|
| In user interfaces that have tools operating on objects in a
| document/view, it's usually possible for not object at all to be
| selected. And then, if you try to use a tool like an eraser (or
| keyboard shortcut equivalent), you may be told "select one or
| more objects to delete".
|
| So for all these reasons, it's not very discoverable.
|
| I mean, you hardly see anyone surprised that, wow, you can select
| multiple objects in a vector graphics drawing program. Or
| multiple files in a file manager, multiple e-mails in an e-mail
| program, etc.
| amanzi wrote:
| This reminds me of that XKCD comic where, on any given day,
| there's always a bunch of people learning something new that
| others have known for ages.
| vinnymac wrote:
| I recommend giving tree based tabs a try if you haven't. Another
| massive workflow enhancer.
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