User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030507 In Mozilla, the tab bar is only shown when you open a new tab, and it is automatically closed whenever you go back to having only one window open. This "auto-hide" behavior is inconsistent. This quickly becomes apparent as a user cycles between having one tab and two tabs open and the viewable browser area "jumps" up and down. Not only is this a problem, but there is no option in the View menu for the tabs to always be shown -- the option is there, but it doesn't appear to work in the way it should. The best resolution, as I stated <a href="http://www.mozillazine.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11096">in the MozillaZine forum</a>, is to have the View menu have three options for viewing the tab bar: 1. Always on (default; shows the tab bar even when there is only one tab open) 2. Always off (disable tabbed browsing) 3. Auto-hide (current behavior; auto-hides the taskbar when there is only one tab open) Having the "always on" setting be the default would make the browser more consistent in its behavior. As I mentioned in the forum, think of it this way: The Windows start menu doesn't disappear or shrink back to only a start button when you have 0 or 1 programs running. When you have no programs running or one program running, the taskbar is still there; it just shows 0 or 1 programs. The tab bar should be the same way by default; it should show tabs even if there is only one tab open, and the View menu should contain the "Disable tabbed browsing" and "Auto-hide tabs" options. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open web browser. 2. Open a link in a new tab. 3. Close one of your two tabs. Note the inconsistent behavior that throws users off -- a navigation item that they have just used has now disappeared. 4. Go to the View menu to change the tabbed browsing options. The "tab bar" option is there, but is broken. This is a bug. Actual Results: Tabbed browsing turns itself on and off and makes users confused. View -> Show/Hide -> Tab Bar is there, but the option doesn't seem to work. Expected Results: -explained above- Also broken in Phoenix/Firebird 0.6.

See Edit -> Preferences -> Tabbed Browsing -> Hide the tab bar when only one tab is open. Uncheck it and the tab bar will always be shown, making everything consistent. (Except for bug 154849, but that's something else.)

I think there's a strong case for having the tab bar be always open by default, and making the preference be to auto-hide it instead. Also, this doesn't explain the View -> Show/Hide -> Tab Bar problem, which is still broken. The preference you detailed should be moved to the View menu, as well.

> I think there's a strong case for having the tab bar be always open by > default, and making the preference be to auto-hide it instead. Yes, that would be a valid request - it just isn't what this bug was originally about. If you want to morph it into that (change the Summary text, etc.) go ahead and do that. > Also, this doesn't explain the View -> Show/Hide -> Tab Bar problem, which > is still broken. It's not broken, it's by design (however much some people might disagree). See bug 150099 comment 19 and subsequent discussion. The module owner meant it to work as it does currently.

Changed the summary to "Tab bar should be 'always on' by default." This is now the direction where this bug is heading. I'll file a separate bug for the View menu problems.

I'll confirm this bug as New as per changes. "Hide the tab bar when only one tab is open" should be *unchecked* by default, not checked.

i disagree: Why should I spent some place for a useless tab-bar if I don't need it )one tab open) ?

You may misunderstand this bug. (Then again, maybe not.) You will be perfectly free to change the setting so that you don't see the tab bar. (And if you already have an installation of Mozilla with a user profile this bug won't affect you at all.) All this bug is requesting is that the *default* setting (with a clean install of Mozilla and a new user profile) will be to display it so that tabbed browsing is more discoverable than it currently is.

I hope this bug will be implemented in Firebird too.

I'm still not sure I see why we should by default use up a good chunk of the UI for the tab bar... (including for people who never discover either how to use tabs or how to turn it off, which is a pretty large number of "end users").

You may not consider this an argument in favour ;-), but the tab bar was turned on by default in NS 7 as a result of their usability testing which said that the tab system was brilliant, but not discoverable enough. Gerv

eh, isn't this being _implemented_ in another bug currently? Why isn't this marked dependent on that bug, or marked duplicate of it? (I am also against this bug, btw)

> isn't this being _implemented_ in another bug currently? Do you know which one? > I'm still not sure I see why we should by default use up a good chunk > of the UI for the tab bar... One might say exactly the same thing about the sidebar (which actually uses up even more space) - and it's on by default. It seems a little inconsistent. I'd be happy if they were either both off or both on, unless there were some clear reason to treat them differently. (I realise that comment is partially off-topic, but only partially.)

jason: see bug 212809 comment 4

Well, how about that. Since that bug explicitly calls for the resolution of this bug, and a patch is in the works *there*, I'll go ahead and dupe this one as suggested. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 212809 ***

Gerv, did the usability testing show that showing the tab bar greatly increased users' chances of discovering the existence of tabs? Jason, the sidebar should, by default, include sidebars that are useful. If not, that's a bug. The tab bar, by default, includes nothing useful unless the user discovers the whole tabs thing.

bz: I wasn't shown the usability results - Netscape kept them confidential, unfortunately. But it seems fairly intuitive to me that having the tab bar visible by default would increase the discoverability of tabs. Gerv

Gerv, if we're basing this decision on "fairly intuitive", let's not use the words "usability study" in the same sentence -- the two approaches to making user interface decisions are pretty much unrelated. I do agree that the tab bar likely makes tabs more discoverable. The question is how much (see my original question, especially the use of the word "greatly"). We're making a tradeoff here, and it would have been nice to know what we're gaining, exactly. I have no real concern which way the decision goes here, since the whole thing is a pref. If we just decide to have it on, that's the prerogative of the module owners of this component. But if we're going to claim that usability testing shows that we should have the tab bar on, we better have at least a synopsis of the usability testing results...

Fair points. I can't provide such a synopsis - it's only hearsay. And the fact that Netscape did take the decision to turn it on by default in 7. That's all the evidence we have. Gerv