[Macworld]

Post your comments for Safari?s new tabs: Good or bad? here

[problematic]

While I do appreciate saving a few pixels of vertical space in my browser window, the tabs open up a few other problems. I often use a Wacom tablet and its not worth switching to my mouse when I get out of Photoshop. Almost every time I want switch between tabs I have to hold my pen very carefully or Safari will interpret my gesture as a desire to move the whole window. This is very annoying and sometimes I have to click several times to switch.
As far as an aesthetic change, it is odd, but when Apple rolled out one of the early versions of iTunes with a redesigned (aqua?) interface, it was a hint of whats to come. Who knows, this might make more sense as part of a larger retooling of Apple's interface. Lets remember that almost every aspect of the current OS was at some point a hotly contested issue.

[gkbrown]

"The address bar, toolbar buttons, search field, and bookmarks bar now appear within each tab, rather than at the top of the Safari window. This makes logical sense, since the functions these items perform are specific to the currently-visible tab, rather than to all tabs."
Apple did something similar in Mail.app with the toolbar buttons that apply to the message list - they are aligned with the right edge of the list. In my opinion, this isn't necessary. Toolbars generally apply to (and change in response to) the current selection - there's no need to create any stronger association between them.
That said, I hardly ever use tabs in Safari. So, while I don't personally like it, this change won't affect me much anyways.

[adobephile]

Ah, FINALLY something to write about and generate some CONTROVERSY!
Let's see how far we can blow this all out of proportion!
Winter's getting a little long up there in Nova Scotia, EH?

[fitz]

As Emerson said, "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." Although I don't believe there was anything foolish about Apple's prior interface consistency, the fact that they have changed something in the interface doesn't necessarily mean it was a change for the worse. Maybe this change will now become the standard for the Mac OS X interface. Time will tell. My updated version of Emerson would read, "Stubborn consistency is an impediment to positive change."

[AldoraWorld]

Aside from the minor annoyances Mr. Frakes pointed out, I like the idea of making titlebars tabbed throughout the OS.
One thing that seems to be throwing me off is how two tabs take up the entire titlebar, but before tabs were small and the extra space was just filled in empty.
I'm just not used to the gigantic tabs.

[Steve_S]

While this is a departure from Apples previous interface standards, overall, this new scheme does seem to make more sense in the context of a web browser.

[natmusak]

Macworld said:

Finally, there are areas where Safari 4?s melding of the title bar and the tab bar just doesn?t look right. For example, as shown to the right, there?s no separator between the left-most tab and the area of the title bar containing the close, minimize and zoom buttons. This makes it appear as if those buttons affect only the left-most tab, when they?re actually window-wide controls.

Agreed. Might be smarter to have it always look like this:

!http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g318/fergusonnathanf/Picture4.png|thumbnail=true!

[iimacboy90]

What I'm really looking for isn't so much an interface makeover, but an implementation of Chromium. I don't know how many times I get crashes because of some stupid Flash object, or some other crazy plugin. I know there are plugins to turn that kind of thing off, but I don't want it off, just what isn't working.

[griffman]

Dan lives about as far from Nova Scotia as you can get and still remain within the North American contient. (Jim Dalrymple is our Nova Scotia-based editor extraordinaire.)

As for controversy, yes, it's controversial when a company tosses 20 years of GUI rules to the side for the sake of about 15 additional browser pixels. In my opinion, tabs at the top are right up there with the translucent menu bar and the garish 3D dock in terms of useless innovation. That's my opinion, of course, and I'm just glad I was able to easily move the tab bar back to where it belongs.

-rob.

[hayesk]

Agreed. This could be solved by only processing tab clicks if the window was already the key and front window. Can't forget about drags too. Clicking and dragging in another tab should not switch, just move the window.

[leicaman]

problematic said:

While I do appreciate saving a few pixels of vertical space in my browser window, the tabs open up a few other problems. I often use a Wacom tablet and its not worth switching to my mouse when I get out of Photoshop. Almost every time I want switch between tabs I have to hold my pen very carefully or Safari will interpret my gesture as a desire to move the whole window. This is very annoying and sometimes I have to click several times to switch.

I just tried it with my Wacom. And you do have to click on the top right corner of the tab to switch. A bit disconcerting at first, but now I know where to click with my pen, no problemo.

[IEBA1]

As a natural progression of how sucky and inconsistent OS-X is compared to 9, obliterating the universal (every application) title bar is indeed an awful advancement. It's like an attempt at innovation when no other good ideas are available.
If we're looking to open up vertical space for browsing (because pages are tall and computer screens are getting shorter (widescreen) every day, how about looking back at Mac IE-5 and how, with one click, the user could get rid of the entire title-bar, url, bookmark mess and STILL be able to navigate back and forth because all that information was available on the side of the screen- something we have MORE of with widescreen displays.
Yea, how about do something like THAT for "innovation." Something that worked, and breaks no 20 year old HUI guidelines. That makes a lot more sense.
Anthony

[trip1ex]

I think the tab color scheme is off. Kind of strange they use light grey for the front tab and dark grey for background tabs when light grey represents background windows and dark grey represents a forward window.