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DeveloperTools · 1 mentions
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I dislike tabs. I use them very sparingly. Tabs a symptom of poor operating system level window management. Windows management is so bad that application developers had to implement workarounds in their own applications. But tabs defeat the primary reason of why I want something open on my screen—to see it. If it's hidden behind a tab, I can't see it. A tab is yet another barrier I have to go through to get to the thing I want. I hate barriers between me and my computing. I prefer using overlapping windows. I can choose how much I want to overlap them (if at all), and I can see and operate on multiple things concurrently. If an application supports multiple windows, I can achieve this, but if they force tabs on me I cannot. I'm unwilling coerced into a deficient workflow where I'm forced to do tab management and where I am required to keep mental state about what's behind tabs. (I don't like tiling window managers, but that's a topic for another time.) Did you see how many negative or oppressive words I had to use? "Unwilling", "coerced", "deficient", "forced", "required". That's how bad tabs are. I do use sometimes use tabs in browser windows. Mind you, I use multiple browser windows. It's common for me to have ten browser windows open, but within each window I use tabs to keep track of context. I open links in new tabs using middle-click (which sadly many websites break), and I can go back to previous tabs within the same window. Does this mean tabs are good? No. I have to do this because history management in browser is broken. The back button is useless and there is no way to "see" where in the history you'd want to go back to. Again tabs are but a workaround to boorish user interface. I suspect most people use tabs because they only use one application at a time, in full screen. I cannot understand and I abhor this. I wish I could disable full-screen at the operating system level (just like I wish I could disable all keyboard shortcuts).