Google has done some usability studies on tabbed browsing with the Firefox web browser. They designed a study to see how well people responded to tabs and how easily they were able to switch between them and close them.
“The results showed that the set of people sampled were generally capable of recognizing the tab strip, and switching between documents. We found though that unpredictable behavior of the back button (new tab = blank session history) is still a problem, since users expect clicking back to go back. What we also found is that the users we sampled were by and large using the context menu to close tabs.
So here are a couple of things we have been experimenting with.
1. Put close buttons on the tabs. This makes it a lot easier to close tabs with the mouse. People weren’t seeing the close box in the usability test. It’s also out of the way and not connected with what’s actually being closed. Mindful of stealing space from the tab strip when there are many tabs, the close boxes on inactive tabs are hidden when the tab width falls below a certain minimum value.
2. Implement a simple heuristic for z-index handling. When a new tab is opened in the foreground by any operation (targeted link, external application link, Ctrl+T, etc.), set the new tab’s “owner” to be the tab that opened it. When the user closes it, select the owner, not the next adjacent. So that the mass-close condition doesn’t become annoying (with selection jumping around as many tabs are quickly closed), forget the owner property when the tab is switched away from. This more closely matches behavior of window z-index.
3. While we’re here, consolidate the preferences for links sent from external applications vs. targeted links internally into a single pref: “Open links that would open new windows in tabs” instead, since web applications are becoming more advanced to the point where it seems odd that clicking on a link in Thunderbird should open a link one way, but clicking on a link in GMail should open it a different way.”
(Source: The Inside Track on Firefox Development - Improving Tabbed Browsing)
I personally really like the tabbed browsing feature of Firefox and it could be greatly benefit by these research results. For implementing closable tabbed panes in Java, without changing L&F classes, have a look at Joerg Plewe’s Blog on ‘Close’ icons on a JTabbedPane w/o UI interference.
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