Safari 4 Tabs - Simply Mini-Titlebars

Written by on Feb 27, 2009

There's been a lot of debate on the new interface approach introduced by Safari 4 where the tabs are part of the title bar. There is a hidden preference to disable the new tabs and restore the tab bar from Safari 3, and many people have done this. But the more I use the new tabs, the more they make sense to me. First, what are tabs? Multiple windows within a single main window. When tabs first came on the scene, people either took issue with them, or loved them. Since they were new, many folks didn't understand their limitations and wanted tabs everywhere. But they don't work everywhere, at least not without adding complexity to the interface. And as tabs have become a standard interface paradigm, users have adjusted to the added complexity, and therefore their incorporation into new applications has increased. Let's take a look at the pre-tab world, though. Multiple windows. What solutions would we have for multiple windows? Offset stacking, tiling, a list of open documents in a side panel. Now look at Safari's new tabs again. What do they look like? Tiled windows. Exactly. Just moving them to the title bar has made them like mini-Title bars, all attached to the same window. It's really not a big leap interface-wise afterall, once you realize that.