[HN Gopher] WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management o... ___________________________________________________________________ WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management on the desktop Author : Emendo Score : 30 points Date : 2021-01-29 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | pidg wrote: | Not free (or 'free') but there is a commercial app that does this | very well indeed - Stardock Groupy. It was bundled in with | something else I bought years ago and I just leave it running as | it's quite handy. | | https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/ | nxc18 wrote: | You beat me to it. They've got a bunch of cool utilities. In | the windows 7 days I was a huge fan of logon studio. | | Microsoft could learn a lot from what they're doing, as for the | most part I still prefer not using 3rd-party utilities to mess | with things. | pidg wrote: | Their 'Fences' app is excellent (which was the app I bought | the bundle for). | | In particular, the ability to create a view on the desktop | onto another folder. This lets me split my desktop into | 'local' and 'cloud' areas by having a fence containing a view | onto a Google Drive-hosted folder. | smusamashah wrote: | Is it for Windows 7 only? Will it work on Windows 10? | nxc18 wrote: | Stardock Groupy is a commercial supported utility that does the | same thing, IIRC released during the long period when Microsoft | was teasing Windows 10 Sets. | | https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/ | | I think Microsoft must have abandoned sets when they moved to | Edgium; their engineers were somehow under the impression that | Sets was 100% dependent on Edge, and I think they must have been | planning the feature as a cudgel against other browsers. IDK, I | wish the Windows PMs were like 40% less user hostile and didn't | treat us like children to be manipulated. | | Tldr, Groupy is pretty cool and at least appears to fit in with | the windows 10 desktop better than the open source utility, for a | price. | pidg wrote: | > for a price | | At risk of seeming like a shill (I just like Groupy!) there | seems to be a 50% discount code here, making it the price of a | coffee: https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/groupy | josephernest wrote: | Please add a screenshot to see how it looks like. | ajtjp wrote: | Seconded. Marketing 101: Make it easy for the consumer to see | why they might want to try the product. | | I use Stardock's Groupy, and it does this well (and is | inexpensive). I'm not sure why I'd want to switch to this when | I already have Groupy, although the general idea is one that I | think should gain more traction. | wtfrmyinitials wrote: | The sway window manager has this feature built in and it's | wonderful. I use it all the time. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | Awesome. Microsoft themselves had planned this feature for some | time, but abandoned it for some reason. Instead they were | probably focusing their efforts on making it harder to prevent | automatic updates. | kepler471 wrote: | Is the feature you mean called Sets? | | https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/introducing-sets | | Looks like it was removed from Windows preview due to feedback, | they may be reworking it in the background. | dusted wrote: | the other half of their time was spent making sure you can't | disable that blue full-screen "Let's finish setting up your | device" nag. | esalman wrote: | My go-to file explorer power tool on Windows is Q-dir [1]. It | supports tabbing among other useful features. | | [1] http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/Q-Dir | helloworld wrote: | In 1993, the Windows Taskbar actually began life as tabs across | the top of the screen: | | https://www.businessinsider.com.au/history-of-the-windows-st... | WaldoLydecker wrote: | Ahead of their time in breaking the desktop analogy. | afterburner wrote: | Seems a key change was to name the button "Start" instead of | "System". It's a built in instruction! | pidg wrote: | Reminds me of the (apocryphal?) story that the 'OK' button is | only labelled that way because in user testing people read | the original text - 'Do It' - as 'Dolt'. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Funny. I never liked the taskbar at the bottom of the screen on | Windows, so I always move it to the top. To this day, it still | screws up new window alignment, twenty five-ish years later. | | After I moved to Linux and 16:9 monitors became mandatory I | moved my gnome/mate taskbar to the left side, where it has | stayed for about a decade. It is a bit clumsy in the vertical | position, but does the job. | ajtjp wrote: | That isn't quite the same a what this software is or what | Groupy does, but that is a fascinating article. I loved this | part: | | --- | | For instance, one study subject took twenty minutes of staring | at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text | editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was | unacceptable, to Oran's relief. But that relief would be short | lived: "Our customers are morons!" exclaimed the programmer. | | This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to | that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion | engineer for Boeing. | | "He was literally a rocket scientist," Oran says. "And even he | couldn't figure out Windows." | | --- | | IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more | mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non- | technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your | userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for | realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major | improvements to that over the years. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain | more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier | for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of | your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit | for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made | major improvements to that over the years._ | | ... I don 't know. On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment. | On the other hand, general computing needs of technical users | are already becoming a niche too small for the market to | serve. If Open Source community gets into their heads that | they should optimize for non-technical users, I fear we'll | have a dearth of tools... | donatj wrote: | I'm surprised no one has mentioned BeOS / Haiku who's windows | titlebars Tab automatically across all programs. | | https://discuss.haiku-os.org/uploads/default/original/1X/abb... | rkagerer wrote: | Cool! | | If you want tabs in Windows Explorer, I've been using QTTabBar | for years and it's pretty good. | reaperducer wrote: | Is this like the tabs in macOS Finder, or something better? | Toutouxc wrote: | It's many different apps now, even 3rd party ones, not only | Finder. | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | From playing around with it for a bit, it allows you to tab any | application, including tabbing different applications together | in a group. There's also something to do with workspaces that I | haven't played with yet. | lostmsu wrote: | Self-ad: Stack WM (for Windows 10). Also shows tabs for windows, | but works more like a tiling WM. | | https://losttech.software/stack-whatsnew-2.0.html | moyix wrote: | I remember enjoying this with Fluxbox back in 2003 or so :) | mauricef wrote: | Hah! A friend just shared this with me, I'm Maurice the original | author, long time anonymous hn lurker. This was a labor of love, | I still remember the sheer exhilaration when I made my first | sale! | [deleted] | civilized wrote: | Windows 95 had this, we just didn't call it tabs back then | mkl wrote: | VS2019 but Windows 7? | | A similar app is TidyTabs: https://www.nurgo- | software.com/products/tidytabs | | Has anyone tried it? It's not open source, but "free for personal | use". | Gualdrapo wrote: | I miss when KDE had this in the KDE4 days. The only place I know | where you can have window tabs by default is in Haiku. | clircle wrote: | i3 and any similar window manager have this feature. | adamnew123456 wrote: | A sibling comment mentioned Sway, and I've also used this on | both Fluxbox and i3. I would be surprised if Awesome didn't | have it as well. | | The only problem is that (at least in Fluxbox's case) it | suffers from poor discoverability, since it's a modifier to the | window drag action that has no corresponding buttons or | "landing zones" like what you get if you try to tear tabs out | of a Firefox window. | greggyb wrote: | I've had this for years in i3 on Linux. | WalterGR wrote: | The README says it's been available since 2009. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-29 23:00 UTC)