
Tabs come to every window in Windows 10 “Sets” - nikbackm
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/tabs-come-to-every-window-in-windows-10-sets/
======
butz
Fluxbox has those
([http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php](http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/features/tabs.php))
and Haiku too ([https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-
ti...](https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/userguide/en/gui.html#stack-tile)).

~~~
digi_owl
The tiled WMs also have this after a fashion.

Honestly i get the feel that MS i looking at how devs like to do things over
at _nix, and looks for ways to import that into Windows to attempt to entice
said devs.

After all, Windows these days can tile windows, have a build in desktop
switcher, has gained a _nix cli and related toolchain, and now will be getting
this.

------
captainmuon
Finally! Nice to see some innovation on the Windows desktop (although, as
others have noticed, MS moved only after Apple added per-app tabs first).

I like that it (seemingly) can group related documents from different
applications - like I can switch between vi and a command line in tmux with
Ctrl+a,a. Why couldn't I do the same with graphical applications?

Interestingly, the GNOME 2 human interface guidelines recommended way back
that you shouldn't use tabs in your application, because it was expected that
the window manager will "soon" get native tabs.

~~~
lostmsu
What per-app tabs are you talking about? This whole idea is actually cross-app
tabs.

~~~
captainmuon
On recent macOS, you can group multiple windows from one app together.

It's quite clever, because the convention was already to have simple toplevel
windows for each document. Apps can simply opt in and you can get tabs for
free.

------
ajosh
The other day, I was just thinking about the old Multi-Document Interface that
used to be so common in the Window 3/Windows 95 era. MDI was done well in old
versions of mIRC and very poorly by StarOffice (OpenOffice.org/Libre Office's
ancestor).

MDI has all but vanished. Now we see basically three paradigms: \- Simple,
all-in-one applications (notepad, calculator) \- Tabbed interfaces (Browsers,
sublime, atom, etc) \- Tool and document windows (GIMP's default, Pidgin)

Tabbed interfaces are clearly on the upswing so this makes sense as a
window/document management technique. Still, I wonder if there is still a
place for MDI that we are missing out on because it is out of style.

~~~
jerf
"Still, I wonder if there is still a place for MDI that we are missing out on
because it is out of style."

It would be an interesting experiment to run, because MDI died around the time
that 1024x768 was a big screen. A lot has changed since then.

Although, arguably, one can get most or all of the benefits with a multi-
workspace window manager and a workspace running a tool & document program by
itself.

~~~
ajosh
That's a fair point - there isn't really a major difference in that case.

Thinking back, I remember using the MDI mIRC and having an active channel in
its own window. The rest of the channels and lists were inside the mIRC
application. I then had my chat up with whatever document I was working on.

The thing from that kind of setup that is hard to come to today is a simple
way to designate some windows a less important than others. The important ones
get into the task manager/dock. The unimportant ones are grouped with other
similar windows.

I can't think of a major desktop that I've used that lets you do that. It
seems to be all or nothing. I've seen docky and some KDE plasmoids get kind of
close.

~~~
WorldMaker
I think that speaks to the big reason I think MDI fell by the wayside: the OS
took on a more active role in window management. MDI makes sense in Windows
3.1 when your application can easily provide the exact same management tools
as Windows itself: the classic Tile/Cascade menu items and not really all that
much more. The steady progression in the power of the taskbar starting in
Windows 95 I think corresponds somewhat directly in the drop off of MDI
applications, as it started to get harder and harder to mimic the taskbar in
your own application and Windows at least never offered much of an out-of-the-
box application framework for that. Part of that was philosophical; Microsoft
didn't provide a strong MDI framework because they didn't see a need (and
probably felt MDI was too confusing users). (Mac OS did provide more options
over the years and there are still MDI-ish applications there, so it is
interesting to compare the philosophical divergences over the years.)

"Sets" are interesting here because it is a return, the long way around to MDI
in a way, but with years of learning/experience of task management from modern
taskbars, IE/Edge tabs, and other thoughts on task switching. I like the idea
that in Microsoft's opinions Sets are more useful as diverse collections of
heterogeneous applications (a Word document and its OneNote notebook and its
Edge browser research tabs together in one window) rather than the classic MDI
homogeneous approach. I think that may be the welcome modern twist the MDI
concept was missing originally.

------
aavaas
I think this is a very interesting move from Microsoft. Although it is a good
multitasking innovation, I cannot help but notice the fact that - this
integrates Edge on every application there is, and with a search bar right
there, people might start using edge more often than what they currently do
now. At least I never open edge voluntarily.

~~~
derekmhewitt
I'm ok with Edge and Bing being the default "web tab" providers for this new
tab functionality, but I'll be instantly changing it for a different browser
and search engine. If it's not possible to change this I'll probably ignore
tabs entirely until it is.

------
russellbeattie
Step one, move the task bar to the top of the screen. Step two, maximize all
your app windows. Tada! Tabs!

I'm joking of course, but this is the problem with Windows in general.
Microsoft always adds new UI features on top of old functionality that usually
does sort of similar things, making the end result more complicated and
disconnected.

~~~
jboles
Step three: Right click taskbar, 'Taskbar buttons:' -> 'Never combine'.
Result: both app _and_ document tabs. :-)

------
nanoscopic
Tabs in browser are a problem for me generally because the basic
implementation is tabs along the top of the screen. Once you open more than
about 10 tabs, that design fails horribly.

Also, in web browsing at least, new tabs opened off of one have relevance to
to the tabbed opened from, so ultimately tabs should be a tree structure.

For this reason I use "Tree Style Tabs" for Firefox...

The thing is, I can only imagine that Microsoft isn't going to implement what
I am describing. They are going to implement tabs at the top, and possibly
side tabs at the best, but they will certainly not make tree tabs... As a
result I fail to see how this will be an improvement.

------
DiabloD3
I've been asking for this for a decade.

I'm glad it is finally coming.

~~~
Numberwang
Me too!! I have so wondered why none of the OS makers was going in this
direction. This is a complete gamechanger.

~~~
wlesieutre
macOS has tabs as an OS feature available in most apps:

[https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25079](https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25079)

But I see the main new thing Windows is doing is different apps grouped into
one window. That should be handy!

~~~
mateuszf
It's not the same thing. In macOS, it has tabs within one application. It's
about tabs across different apps inside one window.

~~~
ksec
Could you explain the reason why this is better? If we have different App Tabs
within the same Window, isn't that a duplicate of Task bar?

Because I see this as very confusing for most users.

~~~
wlesieutre
It's serving the same function that Mac users can do via virtual desktops
("mission control", formerly "spaces"), you group the related things together
even if they're in different apps. This is just doing it in a window instead.

Windows 10 got a similar multiple desktops feature in a previous update, so
this seems like a a second layer of doing the same thing. Whether it's better,
or if people will use one or the other or both, who knows?

I can say that I use multiple desktops on my Mac all the time and never do on
Windows, but that's partly because my Mac is a laptop where screen space is
more scarce and the trackpad gestures are very fast.

There's definitely some diminishing returns of more and more layers of
grouping. Firefox had a "Tab Groups" thing going for a while that let you
toggle between different sets of tabs within one window. Doing something at
the window manager level where it's a consistent way of packing more stuff
into a window across the OS strikes me as more useful.

I'm not convinced I'd use this instead of multiple desktops though. If I'm
single tasking there aren't usually things I want to group with it, and if I'm
multitasking I'll typically want the other window to be visible (or at least
sometimes visible) alongside the main task.

------
DonHopkins
You should be able to drag the tabs around the window so they stick out of any
edge! Tabs on the left and right edges are great because you can stack many of
them in a column and read all their titles -- more tabs fit on the screen that
way.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4)

[https://dev-videos.com/videos/tMcmQk-q0k4/NeWS-Tab-Window-De...](https://dev-
videos.com/videos/tMcmQk-q0k4/NeWS-Tab-Window-Demo)

[http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps](http://www.donhopkins.com/home/archive/NeWS/tab-3.0.2.ps)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HyperTIESAuthoring.jpg)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Psiber-
tabs2.gif](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Psiber-tabs2.gif)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_(GUI)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_\(GUI\))

Large numbers of tabbed windows scale better with the tabs along the left or
right edges of the window, instead of the top or bottom edges. That is because
tab labels are usually much wider than they are tall, and because it is now
common to use displays which are considerably wider than needed for displaying
documents and web pages. The NeWS version of the UniPress Emacs text editor
placed tabs along the right window edge, and laid windows out in a vertical
column, so each tab was initially visible, and the user could use them to
raise and lower the windows, drag them around in the column, or pull them out
to anywhere on the screen.

PSIBER visual PostScript programming environment for NeWS, with tabbed windows
around objects on and off the stack. Better yet, tabbed window interfaces can
give the user the freedom to position the tabs along any edge, so all four
edges are available to organize different groups of tabs as the user or
application sees fit. The PSIBER visual PostScript programming environment for
NeWS had tabbed views that you could stick onto the stack (represented as a
"spike"), and you could move the tabs to any edge. The NeWS pie menu and tab
window manager enabled users to position the tabs anywhere along any edge, and
the tabs popped up pie menus with window management functions, to uncover and
bury windows, etc.

------
zxexz
ConEmu[0], a Windows console emulator, offers something like this - combine
any number of windows GUI apps into one window ConEmu instance. I don't always
use Windows, but when I do, I use ConEmu. It's one of the few apps I install
to make windows tolerable for myself, UX and functionality a wise.

[0] [https://conemu.github.io](https://conemu.github.io)

------
EdSharkey
Will Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab work productively like they did in MDI days
(cycle thru most recently used tab rather than the arbitrary, but
"aesthetically pleasing", left-tab and right-tab?)

Can the tab's currently edited document be associated with the tab beyond
simple "title" metadata? For example, can I get an icon on the tab
representing the tab's in-progress document that I can drag to drop sites like
Slack or an email being composed?

What statuses can be visualized on the tabs out of the box? (Percentage
complete? Ancillary status icons?)

How's accessibility going to work with tabs? What happens to the client area
when you switch tabs? What gets read on the tabs when you cycle through them?

I suspect these Sets are not going to make MDI great again because they will
be underspecified as a UX standard or will be denuded of any productivity
features (mobile first), and thus will be abused by developers who resort to
hacking to get the results they want.

~~~
badsectoracula
Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab already work on Edge (as does Ctrl-
PageUp/PageDown) so i'd expect this to work in a similar way. Not sure how it
will handle applications that need those keys for themselves though... but
probably if an application lets the event reach DefWindowProc, it'll be
assumed it doesn't use the shortcut for itself (for Win32 programs at least).

~~~
amatwl
Apparently, the Tab control is is lifted directly from Edge.
[https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/931595009177960449](https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/931595009177960449))

------
openfuture
About time.

I tire of how slowly the dominant platform can move due to network effects.
Facebook will probably add some similarly obvious features to their interface
as soon as it starts its slide into obscurity.

------
lostmsu
This looks like a really cool feature!

But in its current form it does not seem to fit code editing scenario on large
screens: I need to keep IDE project open next to browser so they are visible
at the same time. On multiple screens this would require something like task-
based full-screen multimonitor layers (as in Photoshop layers).

------
moltar
That’s an awesome feature I’ve been dreaming about for macOS. I wear many hats
and have several clients. It’d super nice to be able to organize into these
virtual sets everything related. Eg term, Chrome, editor.

------
polyterative
Tabs on explorer or GTFO

~~~
neilsimp1
From the article:

Tabs won't just be for browsers; they'll be for Notepad, or Word, or Visual
Studio, or Explorer, or Minecraft.

------
PretzelFisch
I am not a fan the window tab uses too much screen real estate. Also bad for
stardock who released an addon providing this functionality earlier in the
month.

------
executive
Watch this only work with MS Edge

~~~
abrowne
It only works for UWP apps to start.

------
dingo_bat
Kind of redundant since win 10 has proper virtual desktops now.

------
mateuszf
Finally, ion3 concept implemented in a mainstream OS.

