

Close Tab Behaviour in Google Chrome - solipsist
http://theinvisibl.com/2009/12/08/chrometabs/

======
jessriedel
> In placing the close button on the right, Google have assumed that in the
> majority of cases, users are going to be wanting to close the most recently
> opened tabs first (likely to be the ones to the far right of the tab group)
> and have accordingly placed the close button on the right.

Really? Doesn't it make more sense that Chrome is primarily a Windows/Linux
program where the close-window buttons are at the top-right, and Safari is
primarily Mac where the buttons are at the top-left.

~~~
danteembermage
Is Arabic language Chrome more likely to be installed on a Mac? That would
support your theory.

~~~
soamv
A quick google image search for Arabic versions of windows shows that they
have the close button on the left and the window title on the right. So it is
possible that chrome is simply mimicking windows behaviour.

------
jazzychad
Dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=988411> with lots of discussion

~~~
solipsist
My bad. I tried looking ahead of time to see if this had been posted before on
HN and didn't find anything. I think it's because of the post's title, which
differed from the article's. I was also under the impression that HN didn't
allow repeat submissions, but I guess that feature expires after a certain
amount of time. Does anyone know a close to fool-proof way for searching to
see if an article has already been posted before?

~~~
jazzychad
No problem. I guess "dupe" was a bit harsh. I just remember seeing this on
here before and that there were a lot of comments which others might enjoy
seeing. You're right, the post permalink has been changed. HN allows repeat
submissions after some amount of time, though. I use searchyc.com to search
for previous submissions, but it's not completely fool-proof.

~~~
solipsist
Great, thanks for the link. This seems to be a better alternative to a Google
search on HN.

------
simonw
Chrome's tab behaviour is superb. I also /love/ the Shift-Apple-T shortcut,
which re-opens the last tab you closed with its Back button history intact. I
use that several times a day.

~~~
shadowpwner
Firefox also has this, and I presume Safari does too (I don't use it, so
excuse inaccuracies).

~~~
spicyj
Safari does; the shortcut is Cmd-Z, because you're "undoing" the closing of
the tab.

~~~
chaz
But it doesn't resurrect the whole tab's history like Chrome does. Safari
simply opens a new tab with the last-viewed site in the killed tab.

------
pak
Two other Mac projects that bring the excellent Google Chrome tab UI into
other contexts: TotalFinder, a Finder mod that adds tabs to Finder windows
(<http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/>), and Kod--still in beta--which will be a
text editor somewhere in the ballpark of the mythical TextMate 2
(<http://kodapp.com>).

------
toolate
While the tab behaviour is good, the close buttons are hopelessly small. They
are a tiny 12px by 12px on Windows. Compare this to the close window buttons,
which are 64px by 24px.

Compounding the error is the poor choice of middle-click as the alternative
close mechanism. Many older mouses and most laptops don't have middle click.
When browsing on my laptop I can't use the touchscreen to close a tab, as the
hit area is much to small to accurately hit. Likewise, using the trackpad to
land the pointer on the button is something I find difficult to do reliably.

I don't understand why the hit area can't be increased. There is little
penalty for incorrectly closing a tab, as Chrome has a handy "Recently closed
tabs" menu.

Edit: A search turned up the newer "Chrome Toolbox" plugin, which brings the
missing double-click-to-close behaviour to Chrome tabs.

~~~
oakenshield
I disagree about middle-click being a "poor" method. Middle-clicking is
essential to mouse-based browsing these days, both for opening links in a new
tab and for closing tabs. With middle-click, the whole issue of close button
placement becomes moot.

Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a
fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-
clicking. I also haven't come across a mouse in quite some time that does not
have a middle-click (I use a including an 8 year old microsoft mouse).

~~~
underwater
"Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a
fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-
clicking."

Middle click is good because it is consistent with the open-in-new tab,
however there really should be an option for devices without middle click.
It's not just Apple devices. Neither my Toshiba or Acer laptops have middle
click.

~~~
dchest
On Mac it's Cmd+click, on Windows maybe it's Ctrl+click?

------
51Cards
I personally don't like either.

First thing I do in Firefox is set it so I have one close X at the far right
end of the bar. I realize this does require it to be fairly visible which tab
is current but I still like that this button is always where I want it to be.
My mouse always heads to the same location to close any tab, I can close
multiples by clicking multiple times in the same place, and I don't waste
space on every tab with X buttons when I could be seeing more of the tab
title.

Just my personal preference but feels far more efficient to me.

~~~
wahnfrieden
More efficient than Cmd-w (or Ctrl-w)?

~~~
51Cards
No, not more efficient than Ctrl-W for closing, I use that frequently. However
when discussing UI design and wasted space, putting an X on every tab is much
less efficient than just one at the end.

------
JonnieCache
Here is a library for putting chrome tabs into your osx apps:

<https://github.com/rsms/chromium-tabs>

Its basically the cocoa implementation of chrome's tabs ripped out and put
into its own objective c lib. used by kod and other things mentioned in here.
It includes all the seamless dragging and dropping of tabs between windows,
everything the browser does.

------
modeless
The four other major browsers (Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera) have had years to
copy this very useful behavior, and I can't understand why none of them have.

~~~
snprbob86
When I used to work at Microsoft, I explicitly requested this behavior on the
internal IE8 forums (in beta at the time).

I took several tries to explain why this was important and at the end I got a
very typical "Thanks for the feedback" and then the thread went cold. I don't
think that PM ever understood what I was talking about, but several other
commenters did.

------
cobralibre
This close tab behavior would indeed be fantastic if the most important tab
behavior use case was "user should be able to close multiple tabs in rapid
succession using the mouse." But really, how often would a typical user need
to do that?

There may be a good reason to eschew prevailing Mac UI conventions and to put
the tab close button on the right, but this isn't one.

~~~
chrisbroadfoot
I do this often, to clear stale tabs. I'll start from the left (or where I
know stale tabs start from) and repeatedly click.

~~~
cobralibre
I close tabs after reading them.

------
ronnier
I use vimium. I press "t" to open a new tab. When done, I press "d" to close a
tab.

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhhndojpepiihcmeb)

------
itsnotvalid
I've never noticed that in safari, since when it stacks my tabs when there is
too much, I have to use shortcuts anyway.

I guess what chrome need to fix is the side of the button locating at (right
vs left) if Apple did mention that in their "Guidelines".

------
ilamparithi
Other interesting features that amazed me are, i) 'Close tabs to the right'
option in right click menu. ii) New tab open behaviour. (New tab goes next to
the current tab and not to the end. Extremely useful when you have lots of
tabs opened.)

~~~
Prolorn
Woah, I just noticed that when the mouse hovers over "Close tabs to the right"
or "Close other tabs", the tabs that will close start to flash. (Chrome
9.0.597.67 beta, Windows) When did that happen?

~~~
ilamparithi
Wow. I just noticed the flash. They've put so much thought in to this.

------
X-Istence
Along with being Fireballed today, it seems wherever that site is hosted on is
currently not returning DNS records for the domain. Shame, as I have yet to
see the content and would like to.

------
leppie
A bit off topic, but why can't tabbed browsers detect accidental (double)
middle clicks when closing a tab?

~~~
statictype
Well, it goes both ways. Often, I have a whole lot of tabs open that I want to
get rid off so I just rapidly middle-click on the left-most one and keep doing
it until they're all gone.

Of course, you can always right-click and say 'Close all tabs to the right'
but I usually forget about that option at the time when I'm doing it.

~~~
leppie
The annoyance lies in the pain to recover a lost tab.

~~~
pkamb
Chrome has a couple good options, fyi: Right-Click tab strip. or Ctrl-Shift-T
or List of closed tab at the bottom of the new-tab page.

------
dalore
I close my tabs in chrome how I used to in opera, with a middle click anywhere
on the tab control.

------
nowarninglabel
Ctrl + W or Ctrl + F4 I'm making it a pledge to teach one non-technical friend
a month to use these keyboard shortcuts.

------
treblig
Thank God the red close button is gone.

------
drivebyacct2
Fantastic tear down on one of my favorite things about Chrome. I love that I
can middle-click tabs away rapidly and they stay the same size.

