Tabs may be everywhere in future Windows

[WMGroomAK]

Windows Central is reporting that a new feature called 'Tabbed Shell' may be coming to Windows in a future update.  From the Windows Central article:

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-tabbed-shell

Quote

Per our sources, Tabbed Shell is a feature being worked on at an OS level, and doesn't require work from app developers to take advantage of it. By default, Tabbed Shell works with any app window, whether it be Photoshop, File Explorer, or Microsoft Word. Any UWP, Win32 or Centennial app will work. Much like in Edge, you'll find a tabbed interface at the top of a window where you can switch between instances of the same app.

Basically, this would allow you to group multiple instances of a program into a single tabbed window or separate those tabs out into their own instance.  As for when we may see this, Ars Technica is reporting from Windows Central

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/tabs-could-be-coming-not-only-to-explorer-but-everywhere/

 

Quote

Windows Central's sources are uncertain on when Tabbed Shell will materialize. It is claimed to be considered for both the Redstone 3 and Redstone 4 timeframes. Redstone 3 is due in about six months, with Redstone 4 coming a further six months on.

 

Personally, I will be really glad to see something like this for at least the Office productivity suite and Windows Explorer.  Will hopefully make it a lot easier for manipulating data between different instances of Word, Excel and Explorer for me at least and should still have the ability to just drag out an instance into a separate screen to do a side by side comparison.  

[LewisSpring]

Seems interesting. If it were intergrated into Office only, I'd like it, Having tabs for multiple files in Word (for example) would be handy.

[silberdrachi]

I hate grouping and tabs, drives me up the wall on just about everything that isnt a browser. It just ends up being extra clicks in order to get to the thing i want, instead of just clicking the window i want off the task bar or using alt+tab, etc. I must be in the minority but i really dont see how people like this set up.

[Scruffy90]

Isn't something like this similar to mission control on osx where the apps get their own tab next to the spaces?

[elfensky]

It would be amazing for explorer. No more need to install Clover.

[Enderman]

Is the taskbar not enough?

Are people really so unorganized that they need tabs inside their tabs?

[Misanthrope]

Indeed everybody is keeping tabs on windows, the NSA included:

 

 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, WMGroomAK said:

Windows Central is reporting that a new feature called 'Tabbed Shell' may be coming to Windows in a future update.  From the Windows Central article:

http://www.windowscentral.com/windows-10-tabbed-shell

Basically, this would allow you to group multiple instances of a program into a single tabbed window or separate those tabs out into their own instance.  As for when we may see this, Ars Technica is reporting from Windows Central

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/tabs-could-be-coming-not-only-to-explorer-but-everywhere/

 

 

Personally, I will be really glad to see something like this for at least the Office productivity suite and Windows Explorer.  Will hopefully make it a lot easier for manipulating data between different instances of Word, Excel and Explorer for me at least and should still have the ability to just drag out an instance into a separate screen to do a side by side comparison.  

[Teddy07]

Who in gods name even use apps? I certainly not.

[Energycore]

Just now, Teddy07 said:

Who in gods name even use apps? I certainly not.

I mostly use programs but I don't see an issue with calling them apps.

 

You could call them thingies for all I care.

 

Also tabs in explorer! I'm all for that, but I wouldn't pay the price of having to re-do my telemetry permissions and have to disable Cortana every 22 hours so I'll stay on the January build which is when I disabled Windows Update

[vorticalbox]

32 minutes ago, silberdrachi said:

I hate grouping and tabs, drives me up the wall on just about everything that isnt a browser. It just ends up being extra clicks in order to get to the thing i want, instead of just clicking the window i want off the task bar or using alt+tab, etc. I must be in the minority but i really dont see how people like this set up.

how is clicking a window in the task bar less clicks than clicking a tab? It's the same amount of clicks. One. And seeing as most of the control me for programs are at the top its less of a move to change a tab than moving to the bottom. 

[Qub3d]

32 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

Indeed everybody is keeping tabs on windows, the NSA included -snip-

Woah, hold up... back up a moment here. WTF is this and can someone supply some context? I mean, Edward Snowden just linked to a serious hack released by a brony.

[RedRound2]

Another feature inspired by macOS

https://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/ (Right at the bottom)

[HelplmChoking]

Soo... Tabs in Explorer? Just like the tabs that were in MacOS' Finder for years? I missed that big time when I switched back to Windows.

[grayperview]

Using clover I have had tabs in explorer for years, its one of the things that should have been in windows natively years ago, i can imagine it would be very useful in office and multimedia editing software too.

[silberdrachi]

45 minutes ago, vorticalbox said:

how is clicking a window in the task bar less clicks than clicking a tab? It's the same amount of clicks. One. And seeing as most of the control me for programs are at the top its less of a move to change a tab than moving to the bottom. 

As in: if i am in program A and i want to go to a specific instance of program B, instead of just clicking one bar on the task bar i will now need to click the bar representing all instances of program B and then click the specific tab of program B i want if its not selected. So an extra step.

 

Im not saying its the end of the world, but from a UI design perspective it pisses me off. Its the same irritations that i feel when all the Office products moved initially to the ribbon bar because it consistently added extra steps to find basic functionality. UI updates should never increase the action depth tree, it just causes more user frustration and confusion.

[2FA]

32 minutes ago, Qub3d said:

Woah, hold up... back up a moment here. WTF is this and can someone supply some context? I mean, Edward Snowden just linked to a serious hack released by a brony.

Remember the Vault7 leak? Well those exploits are now being used in the wild.  The NSA had kept these exploits to themselves and never informed Microsoft.

[vorticalbox]

7 minutes ago, silberdrachi said:

As in: if i am in program A and i want to go to a specific instance of program B, instead of just clicking one bar on the task bar i will now need to click the bar representing all instances of program B and then click the specific tab of program B i want if its not selected. So an extra step.

 

Im not saying its the end of the world, but from a UI design perspective it pisses me off. Its the same irritations that i feel when all the Office products moved initially to the ribbon bar because it consistently added extra steps to find basic functionality. UI updates should never increase the action depth tree, it just causes more user frustration and confusion.confusion

I get you now, inter app navigation would probably be slower but in the same app it would pretty handy.

[WMGroomAK]

31 minutes ago, silberdrachi said:

As in: if i am in program A and i want to go to a specific instance of program B, instead of just clicking one bar on the task bar i will now need to click the bar representing all instances of program B and then click the specific tab of program B i want if its not selected. So an extra step.

 

Im not saying its the end of the world, but from a UI design perspective it pisses me off. Its the same irritations that i feel when all the Office products moved initially to the ribbon bar because it consistently added extra steps to find basic functionality. UI updates should never increase the action depth tree, it just causes more user frustration and confusion.

My understanding from reading this is that you don't need to keep all the tabs for a program in the same window.  Similar to how in most tabbed browsers, you could easily just drag the tab off into it's own window.  

[rhavimarques]

well, now we know why windows 10 is the last windows, because the next one might be called Tabs 11 :-D

[Wolther]

Yes pls. This will be amazing for note taking and documents 

[mcraftax]

So tab nesting will be:

(User) -> Desktops -> Instances/Taskbar -> In windows tabs/This -> Tabs if the app has their own.

Cool

[Enderman]

4 hours ago, silberdrachi said:

As in: if i am in program A and i want to go to a specific instance of program B, instead of just clicking one bar on the task bar i will now need to click the bar representing all instances of program B and then click the specific tab of program B i want if its not selected. So an extra step.

 

Im not saying its the end of the world, but from a UI design perspective it pisses me off. Its the same irritations that i feel when all the Office products moved initially to the ribbon bar because it consistently added extra steps to find basic functionality. UI updates should never increase the action depth tree, it just causes more user frustration and confusion.

edit-replied to wrong person oops

 

[Drak3]

4 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

Another feature inspired by macOS

https://www.apple.com/macos/sierra/ (Right at the bottom)

Except the feature has been in browsers for years before Sierra, and addons for Windows file explorer have existed for quite some time as well, and it's nothing more than a GUI skin of an already native function of Windows: stacking on the task bar.

 

The main difference being that tabs are persistantly displayed undividually (until you run out of screen real estate) in the window, and not an icon stack on the taskbar that displays all tasks when hovered over (aka context sensative).

 

Hell, disable stacking in taskbar options, use names instead of icons, and put the task bar at the top. Bam, tabs, albeit a persistant version that really is akin to a web browser.

[Kherm]

Tabs in Windows Explorer would certainly be cool