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Bug 354107

Summary:	Tab behaviour like Google Chrome
Product:	[Eclipse Project] Platform	Reporter:	Roy van Rijn <roy.van.rijn>
Component:	UI	Assignee:	Platform UI Triaged <platform-ui-triaged>
Status:	NEW ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	enhancement
Priority:	P3	CC:	aobuchow, daniel_megert, emoffatt, gheorghe, Lars.Vogel, mmarchand, pinnamur, remy.suen
Version:	4.2	Keywords:	usability
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Whiteboard:

Description Roy van Rijn

2011-08-08 03:44:22 EDT

Build Identifier: 20100917-0705

Google Chrome has revolutionized the use of top-tabs. For example, when closing a tab, the other tabs don't resize, this causes the next tab to slide in exacly the correct position. A good explaination here:
http://theinvisibl.com/2009/12/08/chrometabs/

The effect is subtle, but very good usability wise. If it isn't too much of a hassle it would be great to have this feature in Eclipse as well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open three tabs
2. Close the middle tab
3. Now you have to move the mouse to close another tab, they don't align properly

Comment 1 Remy Suen

2011-08-08 13:52:41 EDT

Not clear to me how difficult this will be to implement. You can use the middle mouse button to close tabs in Eclipse which removes the need to go searching for the 'X'. Of course, the subsequent resize may still screw things up in terms of alignment.

Comment 2 Lars Vogel

2020-08-05 10:11:43 EDT

Adding Mike and Andrey our CTabRendering champions for opinions.

Comment 3 Andrew Obuchowicz

2020-08-05 12:16:31 EDT

This is actually quite an interesting topic IMO.

Some observations:
- A listener would be required to see if the user is currently hovering on tabs that need a resize. When the mouse stops hovering on the tabs, a resize should occur. (See "Closing tabs from the left" from the article posted in comment #1)

- The tabs need to be able to be dynamically resized, I'm not sure if this is currently possible

- Firefox seems to have the same behaviour with its tabs as Chrome

Comment 4 Mike Marchand

2020-08-05 13:38:30 EDT

I feel like we should link the other bug about having the close button on tabs always visible.

I do feel that there are some really nice things about how Chrome tabs work, but on the other hand I feel like the view tabs aren't supposed to be the same as Chrome tabs.

I don't feel like this is an extreme hardship for users in Eclipse, we previously discussed how the middle mouse button closes a tab even if the 'x' is not visible (same behavior in Chrome, although the close button will always be visible).

In Eclipse there are generally many parts with multiple tabs (views). These are located in more than just one place, so we are generally not dedicating the full width of the application to a single tab bar, as is done in Chrome.  

In this use case, I'm not convinced the effort has enough value.