Workflow: Number of open tabs
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How many people here routinely have a dozen or more tabs open at once in NPP, and how many have no more than a handful?
I’ve come to suspect that this is behind the kerfluffel over pinned tabs and over close buttons on tabs being visible/invisible/only visible on hover. The people whose workflow involves lots of tabs open at once would find pinned tabs and the decluttering of making close buttons vanish to be a Useful and Desirable feature, while those who normally have only a few tabs at once find those things to be an annoyance.
Are there people here who contradict this? Who run NPP with a few tabs open at a time but like the pinned-tab and invisible button features? Or who have many tabs open at once and don’t like those features?
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@ErolB1, I prefer less clutter but not at the distraction free mode extreme. Thus I was happy that the close button was made optional as I have always use
Ctrl+wto close tabs.While I have been following the pinned tab topic with interest I don’t use Notepad++'s official “pinned tab” feature. For years, I have “pinned” tabs by using
Ctrl+Shift+PageUpand/orCtrl+Shift+PageDownto move a tab of interest to be one of the first nine tabs and then usingCtrl+Numeric #to jump to that file. When I’m working on a project that has dozens or hundreds of files open then I usually “pin” the main project file by making it one of the first nine tabs and just keep mental track of the up to nine active “pinned” tabs.I also have dozens of mini-scripts that open a main project file and via command line flags can open associated files in Notepad++. In a sense, these are also “pinned” files as I can get to them in a couple of keystrokes.
My personal workflow may well put me in your “Are there people here who contradict this?” category.
Something I often run across is a need to toggle between two or more files. Let’s say I’m at tab #12 and realize I need to toggle between tab #12 and tab #47. I have been toying with the idea of creating what I call “toggle groups.” They should be fast and easy to set up and tear down. If a file is a member of a toggle group than something like
Ctrl+PageUpandCtrl+PageDownwould shift between members of a group and perhaps a way to pull up a Document List or Switcher style list of the files in the group. For now, I create poor-person’s toggle groups by moving the files in group so that they are adjacent tabs. I have done some thought experiments (without success) plus testing to see if I could use Notepad++'s pin mechanism to implement toggle groups -
@ErolB1,
I’m one of those that rarely has more than a handful open, and if I have more, I know I will have to navigate to those files or use the tab wrap option…but I’m not one to really criticize (at least not vehemently. :-) ) a non cluttering shortcut way to close/pin UI without using menus to do so.My keyboard shortcut navigation in editors/word processors etc, stopped when we got GUI’s. Yeah, it’s faster, but I’m getting older and my penchant for not wanting to memorize excessive amounts of key combinations to do things, especially in bloatware and non-standard key combinations across applications, has made me a mouse keyboard cowboy. :-) I love right click menu options, as it should mean those options are the most likely to be used for this UI component. Since the tab mostly just tells me the name of my document, whether it’s active, I don’t find the close/pin tabs confusing, as many applications have them, but again, they are a mouse option and I’m welcoming to that aspect.
The fact that I can turn it off, makes it all that much better, so I have no grudge. That’s one of the reasons I like NPP, options. Since DOS, Windows GUI (in particular) has been trying to keep the users(especially stupid ones), from tampering with settings that allow them to control their environment and the way it behaves…funny considering how OOP (which Windows claims to be) was supposed to make setting options easier…and instead they hid it from the user so they can’t shutdown the more aggravating of Windows behaviours, defaults and other bloatware features…slowing even the fastest computer down, and pushing the need for faster and faster hardware. My only gripe with NPP is that it keeps up with Windows. :-)…but I also can use NPP’s older versions for older tamer versions, albeit security hazard versions of Windows.
So although I’m in the handful groups, I also don’t find the options annoying, especially when I can shut them off if I do. :-)
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I almost never have more than 12 (or so) tabs open at a time, but when I do, I think that the NavigateTo plugin (can’t link from this computer, sorry) is pretty handy. It has a form that shows a list of files that match a query string.
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@Lycan-Thrope
I figure GUI commands come in tiers.
The first tier are the very frequently used keyboard commands.
The second tier are toolbar buttons
The third tier are the right-click context menu items.
The fourth+ tier are the commands in the menu.The second and third tiers I prefer to have a limited number of commands, if not quite so limited as the fistful of keyboard commands. So I’m happy to be able to customize toolbars to prune the many default items. In particular, I’m a fan of the Customize Toolbar plugin for NPP.
That the pinned tab feature can be turned off is a good thing, yes. The complaints come from the change to “Show close buttons on inactive tabs” which no longer shows the close button on the inactive tabS, but only on the one inactive tab that’s hovered over.
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@ErolB1 said:
The complaints come from the change to “Show close buttons on inactive tabs” which no longer shows the close button on the inactive tabS, but only on the one inactive tab that’s hovered over.
I’m not sure why that’s a complaint.
Why do users want to look at a bunch of buttons?
We all know the button is there.
Just show me exactly where it is on the tab I’m intending to use it on; that’s the only close button I need to see.
I think this complaint stems from years of just blindly seeing all those buttons.
If the buttons were hidden on the inactive tabs from Day 1, no one would have missed them.
People just hate change, even when it is a change for the better, or how something should have been from the start. -
@ErolB1 said:
I figure GUI commands come in tiers.
- The first tier are the very frequently used keyboard commands.
- The second tier are toolbar buttons
- The third tier are the right-click context menu items.
- The fourth+ tier are the commands in the menu.
This is interesting.
Maybe it is also interesting that first and second tier commands are available ALWAYS and have no categorization. The third and fourth tier take some effort to get to, but have some logical grouping to them. -
@Alan-Kilborn
I get annoyed by buttons appearing and disappearing, even when I know they are there, and that’s why I want to always see the buttons.I only know the button is there because I’ve seen it always there before. If I hadn’t, if I were a new user of NPP, I would NOT know the button was there. I’d turn on the “show close buttons on inactive tabs” - and then come here to ask for help: “I turned on show close buttons on inactive tabs, but I still don’t see the close buttons. What’s wrong?” In fact, I might even have done that as a moderately experienced user, if I hadn’t seen the posts here describing the change. So no, “We all know the button is there” is actually not the case.
You only want to see the close button on the tab you are intending to use it on - but you are not me, and I am not you.
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@Alan-Kilborn said in Workflow: Number of open tabs:
People just hate change, even when it is a change for the better…
Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.
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@ErolB1 ,
To be honest, I never even realized NPP had tab right click menus. I was using the menus, until I saw a blurb about them, and started using them, so, NOT seeing something, isn’t all that catalyzing of a thing, especially for new users, especially neophytes that are overwhelmed by the options to start. I believe using and playing with the environment and searching for answers when a need arises is the most important part of learning the environment.Interestingly enough, I started doing a revamp on the dBASE Plus UDL, to do keyword categorizing so I can set them up for individual users to color as they wish, and I had all these tabs open that ran off screen, so I was using the little navigating arrows to move in them, and I figured, ah…it’s time to setup a Document List view, and a Project Panel, and while trying to see if I could select all the tabs at once, I found out about…a keyboard shortcut to navigate between open tabs…Cntrl-Keypad#. Wow…imaging using this software all this time and never knowing that.
My point is, the software and it’s invisible features are just fine, especially for folks that don’t need to be overwhelmed with a plethora of options that they don’t even know they need yet. Let people have the fun of discovering the features as they are able to run in the enviornment and learn new things they didn’t know they needed. Curiosity will lead them to wonder why the tab visible controls appear and disappear as they move the mouse over them…and unless they are intrinsically incapable of learning, they’ll figure it out and maybe want to learn more. One more reason to like NPP…always a surprize around the corner, but not one that will prevent you from functioning in the environment, no matter what your preferences or skill level is. Just two more cents.
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@Lycan-Thrope I can’t speak for new users in general with regard to invisible features. But any time I’m forced to try to do something on my wife’s iphone, I have to give up after 30 seconds or face the possibility of a massive heart-attack!
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@Alan-Kilborn said, “People just hate change, even when it is a change for the better, or how something should have been from the start.”
Anyone whose ever used multiple versions of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements recognizes that sentiment as Adobe’s First Commandment!
I like a more general form : People hate change for the sake of change.
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Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.
Notepad++ is not a democracy; it’s a dictatorship. :-)
The Notepad++ author decides what is “better”.
And, he’s decided on this topic. -
@Jim-Dailey said:
People hate change for the sake of change.
The Notepad++ author does not make changes just to make changes.
If a change is made, it is deemed that it is bettering something. -
@Jim-Dailey ,
I don’t touch my wife’s phone, because as much as she doesn’t know about tech, she seems to still think she knows more than me, so I don’t even try to help her…it’s better this way…she gets to learn herself, and I don’t have to listen how things used to work until I touched it. :-) -
@Alan-Kilborn said in Workflow: Number of open tabs:
Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.
Notepad++ is not a democracy; it’s a dictatorship. :-)
Let me rephrase: Please let people decide for themselves what they like and what not.
The Notepad++ author decides what is “better”.
Yes, that is his privilege and no one else’s.
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@Alan-Kilborn I wasn’t referring to Don. I was speaking in general.
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@Andi-Kiissel said :
Please let people decide for themselves what they like
Of course.
But there’s an understanding that you don’t always get what you like. -
@Alan-Kilborn ,
Or in those famous lyrics:You can't always get what you want But if you try sometimes you just might find You get what you need—Writer(s): Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
:-)
