WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management on the desktop(github.com)

69 pointsby Emendo5 tahun yang lalu58 comments

WindowTabs: Browser-style tabbed window management on the desktop

https://github.com/leafOfTree/WindowTabs

60 comments

mauricef5 tahun yang lalu

Hah! A friend just shared this with me, I'm Maurice the original author, long time anonymous hn lurker. This was a labor of love, I still remember the sheer exhilaration when I made my first sale!

criddell5 tahun yang lalu

I'm not going to ask for numbers, but did you make a reasonable income selling this?

The reason I ask is because I've been wondering about why the Mac seems to have a fairly healthy market for small software. It surprises me that Windows, being a much larger market, seems to have fewer opportunities for indie devs.

filoleg5 tahun yang lalu

>I've been wondering about why the Mac seems to have a fairly healthy market for small software. It surprises me that Windows, being a much larger market, seems to have fewer opportunities for indie devs.

I think it comes down to the target audience. Of course both Mac and Windows have their fair share of users across all categories. However, it seems that, in the US, most devs and enthusiasts prefer to use Mac/Linux, while Windows is used a lot by gamers/office workers/etc. (not alleging that enthusiasts and devs don't use Windows, far from it, just talking comparatively). Given the price of an average Mac being higher than a Windows machine, it would also be fair to suggest that Mac users, on average, tend to have more disposable income as well.

With this in mind, it makes sense that the platform with more devs with more disposable income would be a better target to sell niche indie software as well.

For a similar phenomenon, look up the breakdown of earnings from apps on iOS vs. Android. There are plenty of analysis on this over the years, so here is a recent article I just found as an example[0]. Not even diving into the actual revenue per user or per app, iOS apps generated overall almost twice the revenue of Android apps in Q3 of 2019 (using numbers from the article I found), despite there being more of both Android users in the world and Android apps on the store. My reasoning as to "why" boils down to a simple guess that whichever device has more users with higher disposable income is the one that is gonna bring the developer more revenue.

0.https://www.techaheadcorp.com/blog/android-vs-ios/#:~:text=A....

skinnymuch5 tahun yang lalu

I thought perhaps better curated listings, better communities, blogs, et al could be what could get Windows software to sell better. Especially like productivity and other sort of loved ones that have a consistent market with indie Mac Devs.

But Android I believe has all of the above like Mac and iOS do. Yet as you say, Android lags behind.

I need to check the article. Wouldn’t the sheer number of Android users mean there are enough of them with high disposable income? I’d think there’d be more (outside the US, UK, Canada markets)

criddell5 tahun yang lalu

> Given the price of an average Mac being higher than a Windows machine, it would also be fair to suggest that Mac users, on average, tend to have more disposable income as well.

I don't think it means much to talk about averages when the Windows market is so much larger. There are plenty of Windows gamers who spend thousands on their machines. There are also plenty of highly paid developers and white collar workers who primarily use Windows. So I don't think there's a shortage of Windows users who could buy indie software, but for some reason they don't.

So I don't think it's a financial reason. Maybe it's cultural? Maybe Mac users enjoy their computers more than Windows users and aren't afraid to pay a little bit more to make it even better. Mac users picked the minority platform whereas Windows is the default and people who don't care about computers end up on the default platform.

tyingq5 tahun yang lalu

Do you know if this is the "most maintained" fork? There sure are a lot of them, and this one is a fork of a fork of yours :)

donatj5 tahun yang lalu

I'm surprised no one has mentioned BeOS / Haiku who's windows titlebars Tab automatically across all programs.

https://discuss.haiku-os.org/uploads/default/original/1X/abb...

em-bee5 tahun yang lalu

I am still looking for a way to get BeOS/Haiku like behavior for linux

btschaegg5 tahun yang lalu

If you're willing to write it yourself, `awesome` (the window manager) might be what you're looking for.

It's surprisingly powerful. As an example, I once had a cobbled together WM version of emacs' `ace-window` way of jumping between windows going. It wasn't even that much code…

There also supposedly is a Wayland based "successor" for it called `way-cooler`. I've never used that one, though.

Edit: OTOH, I've come to find the `i3` model of just allocating 10 virtual work spaces to work better for me, since that works way better with just a keyboard than tabs. But I guess this is a matter of personal preference.

Edit2: It looks like `way-cooler` was discontinued last year: http://way-cooler.org/blog/2020/01/09/way-cooler-post-mortem...

em-bee5 tahun yang lalu

virtual workspaces is what i am using now. trouble is that on a dual monitor setup that does not work very well, because either both workspaces move on both monitors at the same time (like kde does) or one monitor is static and only has one work space (like gnome support). the latter is slightly better, but wastes space because i can only organize one screen into multiple workspaces.

there are few window managers/ wayland compositors that do that right. enlightenment is one, but i couldn't get used to it. wayfire is a new compiz style wayland compositor that does it right too. loved that one, as i was a fan of compiz before (and i got wobbly windows with kde now too :-) but unfortunately not stable enough for daily use.

bjoli5 tahun yang lalu

I have used it in fluxbox and in kde(3?). Fluxbox probably still does it if it is maintained.

Today it seems forgotten, though.

helloworld5 tahun yang lalu

In 1993, the Windows Taskbar actually began life as tabs across the top of the screen:

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/history-of-the-windows-st...

ajtjp5 tahun yang lalu

That isn't quite the same a what this software is or what Groupy does, but that is a fascinating article. I loved this part:

---

For instance, one study subject took twenty minutes of staring at a Windows 3.1 desktop before being able to open a text editing program. Finally, a programmer spoke up that this was unacceptable, to Oran’s relief. But that relief would be short lived: “Our customers are morons!” exclaimed the programmer.

This was frustrating enough, Oran says. But then they talked to that user, and it turns out that he was actually a propulsion engineer for Boeing.

“He was literally a rocket scientist,” Oran says. “And even he couldn’t figure out Windows.”

---

IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major improvements to that over the years.

TeMPOraL5 tahun yang lalu

> IMO the #1 opportunity for open source software to gain more mainstream acceptance is focusing on making it easier for non-technical users to use. Which is hard when most of your userbase is technical users. Microsoft deserves credit for realizing they had a usability problem, and having made major improvements to that over the years.

... I don't know. On the one hand, I applaud the sentiment. On the other hand, general computing needs of technical users are already becoming a niche too small for the market to serve. If Open Source community gets into their heads that they should optimize for non-technical users, I fear we'll have a dearth of tools...

mixmastamyk5 tahun yang lalu

Funny. I never liked the taskbar at the bottom of the screen on Windows, so I always move it to the top. To this day, it still screws up new window alignment, twenty five-ish years later.

After I moved to Linux and 16:9 monitors became mandatory I moved my gnome/mate taskbar to the left side, where it has stayed for about a decade. It is a bit clumsy in the vertical position, but does the job.

afterburner5 tahun yang lalu

Seems a key change was to name the button "Start" instead of "System". It's a built in instruction!

pidg5 tahun yang lalu

Reminds me of the (apocryphal?) story that the 'OK' button is only labelled that way because in user testing people read the original text - 'Do It' - as 'Dolt'.

WaldoLydecker5 tahun yang lalu

Ahead of their time in breaking the desktop analogy.

lostmsu5 tahun yang lalu

Self-ad: Stack WM (for Windows 10). Also shows tabs for windows, but works more like a tiling WM.

https://losttech.software/stack-whatsnew-2.0.html

pidg5 tahun yang lalu

Not free (or 'free') but there is a commercial app that does this very well indeed - Stardock Groupy. It was bundled in with something else I bought years ago and I just leave it running as it's quite handy.

https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/

nxc185 tahun yang lalu

You beat me to it. They’ve got a bunch of cool utilities. In the windows 7 days I was a huge fan of logon studio.

Microsoft could learn a lot from what they’re doing, as for the most part I still prefer not using 3rd-party utilities to mess with things.

pidg5 tahun yang lalu

Their 'Fences' app is excellent (which was the app I bought the bundle for).

In particular, the ability to create a view on the desktop onto another folder. This lets me split my desktop into 'local' and 'cloud' areas by having a fence containing a view onto a Google Drive-hosted folder.

esalman5 tahun yang lalu

My go-to file explorer power tool on Windows is Q-dir [1]. It supports tabbing among other useful features.

[1] http://www.softwareok.com/?seite=Freeware/Q-Dir

maverick745 tahun yang lalu

KDE Plasma also had this many years ago (before Windows' Sets), but they ended up removing it in Plasma 5.

(there is a bug report about it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343690

)

olejorgenb5 tahun yang lalu

I think pwm/ion3 (now notion) was (one of?) the first WM for linux supporting tabs. Released in 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_%28window_manager%29#/medi...

mkl5 tahun yang lalu

VS2019 but Windows 7?

A similar app is TidyTabs: https://www.nurgo-software.com/products/tidytabs

Has anyone tried it? It's not open source, but "free for personal use".

pseudalopex5 tahun yang lalu

The free version is very limited.[1]

[1] https://www.nurgo-software.com/pricing/tidytabs

josephernest5 tahun yang lalu

Please add a screenshot to see how it looks like.

ajtjp5 tahun yang lalu

Seconded. Marketing 101: Make it easy for the consumer to see why they might want to try the product.

I use Stardock's Groupy, and it does this well (and is inexpensive). I'm not sure why I'd want to switch to this when I already have Groupy, although the general idea is one that I think should gain more traction.

kodablah5 tahun yang lalu

For anyone else wanting to, this might be fairly easy to do in Qt with QWindow::fromWinId and then using a tab widget. I have recently done similar w/ a POC to embed FF into a tabbed UI on Windows[0] when researching making a new browser backed by FF instead of Chromium (granted I used Go to test out their Qt binding at the time).

0 - https://github.com/cretz/ffembedpoc

wtfrmyinitials5 tahun yang lalu

The sway window manager has this feature built in and it's wonderful. I use it all the time.

nxc185 tahun yang lalu

Stardock Groupy is a commercial supported utility that does the same thing, IIRC released during the long period when Microsoft was teasing Windows 10 Sets.

https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/

I think Microsoft must have abandoned sets when they moved to Edgium; their engineers were somehow under the impression that Sets was 100% dependent on Edge, and I think they must have been planning the feature as a cudgel against other browsers. IDK, I wish the Windows PMs were like 40% less user hostile and didn’t treat us like children to be manipulated.

Tldr, Groupy is pretty cool and at least appears to fit in with the windows 10 desktop better than the open source utility, for a price.

pidg5 tahun yang lalu

> for a price

At risk of seeming like a shill (I just like Groupy!) there seems to be a 50% discount code here, making it the price of a coffee: https://www.techradar.com/uk/reviews/groupy

Gualdrapo5 tahun yang lalu

I miss when KDE had this in the KDE4 days. The only place I know where you can have window tabs by default is in Haiku.

adamnew1234565 tahun yang lalu

A sibling comment mentioned Sway, and I've also used this on both Fluxbox and i3. I would be surprised if Awesome didn't have it as well.

The only problem is that (at least in Fluxbox's case) it suffers from poor discoverability, since it's a modifier to the window drag action that has no corresponding buttons or "landing zones" like what you get if you try to tear tabs out of a Firefox window.

arendtio5 tahun yang lalu

This is actually a feature I wish the KDE guys would bring back.

maverick745 tahun yang lalu

Bug report:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343690

maverick745 tahun yang lalu

Bug report:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343690

clircle5 tahun yang lalu

i3 and any similar window manager have this feature.

lallysingh5 tahun yang lalu

Yeah it's a simple addition to an xmonad config

thunderbong5 tahun yang lalu

I use QtTabBar -

http://qttabbar.wikidot.com

greggyb5 tahun yang lalu

I've had this for years in i3 on Linux.

WalterGR5 tahun yang lalu

The README says it’s been available since 2009.

anthk5 tahun yang lalu

And Fluxbox had it far earlier, I remember that among a proper taskbar the ultimate advantage against Blackbox.

greggyb5 tahun yang lalu

And that is only tested on Windows versions as late as 7.

hsbauauvhabzb5 tahun yang lalu

Can you run i3 on Windows through third party tools? Is not your point is moot.

greggyb5 tahun yang lalu

I can run i3 or other WMs on Windows with a combination of first and third party tools. WSL with an X Server will happily run a desktop environment and window manager of your choice. Windows makes a great desktop Linux :D

I have run such a setup before on work machines that were required to run Windows.

Beyond that, it is entirely valid to compare features across OSes.

moyix5 tahun yang lalu

I remember enjoying this with Fluxbox back in 2003 or so :)

rkagerer5 tahun yang lalu

Cool!

If you want tabs in Windows Explorer, I've been using QTTabBar for years and it's pretty good.

anthk5 tahun yang lalu

Fluxbox stacked applications on Window tabs, too. And still does.

smusamashah5 tahun yang lalu

Is it for Windows 7 only? Will it work on Windows 10?

[deleted]5 tahun yang lalu

reaperducer5 tahun yang lalu

Is this like the tabs in macOS Finder, or something better?

filoleg5 tahun yang lalu

Equating it to macOS Finder tabs is the same as equating it to tabs in Google Chrome.

Your example is of tabs within a single application. While software in the OP is for tabs for your entire workspace that can contain any application (or multiple application). Basically, it is one meta level above.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5 tahun yang lalu

From playing around with it for a bit, it allows you to tab any application, including tabbing different applications together in a group. There's also something to do with workspaces that I haven't played with yet.

Toutouxc5 tahun yang lalu

It's many different apps now, even 3rd party ones, not only Finder.

AnIdiotOnTheNet5 tahun yang lalu

Awesome. Microsoft themselves had planned this feature for some time, but abandoned it for some reason. Instead they were probably focusing their efforts on making it harder to prevent automatic updates.

kepler4715 tahun yang lalu

Is the feature you mean called Sets?

https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/introducing-sets

Looks like it was removed from Windows preview due to feedback, they may be reworking it in the background.

dusted5 tahun yang lalu

the other half of their time was spent making sure you can't disable that blue full-screen "Let's finish setting up your device" nag.

[deleted]5 tahun yang lalu