The browser IU: Tab Ordering

I switched to Chrome from Firefox probably close to a year ago on my Mac permanently. Firefox got too slow and crashy for me to handle, and Chrome had snuck up as an amazing alternative for its speed and well thought out UI. I’ve become increasingly open to changes in my workflow and its interface over the past year or so, especially while dropping my five or six previously vital Firefox extensions in favour of slightly more manual processes that keep things lean.

“Tabs should be relational not only in how they are displayed on screen, but how the user has been utilizing them.”

One thing I haven’t been able to let go of completely, though, even after a year, is functionality called ‘focus last selected tab’. I used a plugin called exactly that (looks like it’s no longer in development) at one point, as well as Tab Mix Plus which includes the functionality at another time. What both of these plugins effectively did is change the way both closing tabs and control+tab switching work. By default, all of the major browsers have similar behaviour: When a tab is closed, the next one to the right or left is focused. When the user hits control+tab once, that same tab is selected, followed by the rest of the tabs in sequence from left to right or vice-versa. These plugins adjust this behaviour so that instead of basing the next tab to focus (either on closing another tab or control+tab input) on the left/right relationship in the tab bar, it bases it on whatever the user was last viewing. This behaviour seems overly logical to me. Perhaps abstract from an application map point of view, but from the user experience, I believe it’s the expected behaviour and most have had to adjust to the common behaviour instead of what’s most intuitive.

Chrome does something to meet half way between my described ideal behaviour and the default. It opens new tabs next to the origin tab. CMD+click a link and it opens just to the right. Close that new tab and it goes to the first tab on the left, but assuming you’re not doing anything crazy, that’s the origin tab. Firefox and Safari, however, do it nonsensically. Safari opens the tab on the far right (no visual relation whatsoever), and on close, goes to the next tab to its left, again, no relationship to the origin tab. Firefox is slightly better but no more helpful: It opens new tabs to the right of the origin tab, but on close, goes to the tab on the right. I’m not sure who made that decision at Mozilla, but if you’re reading, let’s get coffee and discuss UX.

Today I had a series of tabs open and had the need to switch back and forth between two tabs frequently, looking at the contents of either one. This involved moving my mouse between the two tabs before every switch, because control+tab is effectively useless in this situation if you have more than those two tabs open. Tabs should be relational not only in how they are displayed on screen, but how you have been using them.