Pinned Tabs: Now and Future

Alan Kilborn

If it were up to me (feel free to give thanks that it isn’t)…

Definitely some wisdom in all the info in the post.

the solution is to remove the clickable tabs, and force the user to use a Document View to manage their complex document tabs

Heresy! :-)

Alan Kilborn

@Coises said:

pinned tabs would be separated from ordinary tabs by a space about as wide as a third of the height of a tab.

I wonder how feasible this is. I mean, sure, with software most things are possible, but that sounds like it might be a lot of customization to the tab container window thing to make it happen. If true, that would make it much less likely to be realized.

dragging a tab to a position on the other side of the space would automatically pin or unpin the tab

This makes me wonder if, even without the space, if the user attempts to drag an unpinned tab to a position in between two already-pinned tabs (or to the very left of the first pinned tab), if that tab should become pinned by that action – I’m thinking yes, it should. But perhaps the other way should be disallowed, as a pinned tab should have more protection from that sort of change than an unpinned tab.

Alan Kilborn

@Coises said:

Right-clicking a tab or clicking a pin or close tab should not change which tab is active.

Right now, it looks like right-clicking activates the tab,

Are you inclined to make an “issue” of this?
I’ve noticed this behavior before and wondered about it myself.
Now I’m wondering if there is a good reason for it, i.e., would changing it mess with some other Notepad++ functionality?
I’m also wondering if a change in behavior would bother some of the scripts I’ve written and depend upon…

clicking the close button does not,

This is true if the file is not modified; if modified, then the tab will be activated before the prompt-to-save box appears.

and clicking the pin button activates the tab if and only if it causes the tab to move.

This seems like a definite problem. First, it should be consistent. Second, it should IMO operate like the close button (for a saved-file); it shouldn’t activate the tab.

Lycan Thrope

@Coises said in Pinned Tabs: Now and Future:

If it were up to me (feel free to give thanks that it isn’t):

Interesting suggestions, but a lot of work and moving parts to further confuse users? Just a thought, but it would be up to the developer if it’s to be implemented, I still like simple, though. :-)

Lycan Thrope

@Alan-Kilborn said in Pinned Tabs: Now and Future:

Heresy! :-)

I’m evil that way. :-)

I just would hate to see so much whizbangery that it in essence starts to slow and complicate the application. :shrug:
I mean, look at the problem I encountered just changing my background color, that ended up affecting my Smart Highlighting coloring. Too many moving parts creates more potential for problems. I’m not against improvements, just not for the sake of improvement at the costs of simplicity.

rrmoch

The pinning is a nice function, but i dont understand why the pins scrolling left out if i have opend many tabs and use the left/right button at the tab bar?
I think a pin was at the left site a fixed position for fast access. If the pins are no more visible, they are useless

Coises

@rrmoch said in Pinned Tabs: Now and Future:

The pinning is a nice function, but i dont understand why the pins scrolling left out if i have opend many tabs and use the left/right button at the tab bar?
I think a pin was at the left site a fixed position for fast access. If the pins are no more visible, they are useless

Good point. For now, all you can do is enable Tab Bar: Multi-line; but if you have that enabled, pinning doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do with a mouse drag.

What do you think should happen if a user pins so many tabs that they fill or overfill the space, leaving no room for unpinned tabs? (My suggestion would be that when you run out of space, multi-line mode is forced for the pinned tabs only, leaving the bottom row of tabs with room for at least two unpinned tabs, which can still be scrolled.)

I have to admit, pinning tabs strikes me as something that sounds good when it’s envisioned as a simple feature, but as soon as you add it there are a lot of details that crop up, and when it’s not so simple anymore, it’s unclear to me if it’s even worth the effort. I could honestly see leaving it as it is and figuring: it’s clunky and incomplete, but if it helps somebody, fine, if you don’t like it you can turn it off, and it just isn’t important enough to justify all the time and effort that would be required to polish it to a high gloss.

Alan Kilborn

@rrmoch said:

The pinning is a nice function, but i dont understand why the pins scrolling left out if i have opend many tabs and use the left/right button at the tab bar?
I think a pin was at the left site a fixed position for fast access. If the pins are no more visible, they are useless

I don’t think you’ll see a change to the software for such a circumstance.
It’s sort of implied that “multiline” is used with the pinning feature, although it doesn’t go so far as to be a requirement (i.e., the software doesn’t prevent the pinned tab feature being enabled if multiline is not enabled).

It’s sort of like if the tab bar is set to hidden; pinned tabs aren’t of maximal usefulness there, either. Presumably, in such a case the user uses the “document list” feature (the pinned tabs would be shown first in the window for that, but aren’t identified separately from the unpinned tabs).