Proposed Enhancements For Web Browsers
I was listening to Muxtape (quite possibly the best user interface for a web application). I use Firefox and I have lots of tabs open. Muxtape is playing the background, in another tab. Sometimes a song comes up on Muxtape that I don’t like and wish I could skip, however, I’m in “the flow” and don’t want to leave my current tab or application.
I’d like to propose an enhancement for web browsers to simplify the interaction with tabs in the background. Web applications should be able to specify a small menu of commands which can be executed from the tab without having to pull that tab into the foreground.
I’d love to be able to right-click on the tab and see options such as “Skip”, “Pause”, “Back”, or “Repeat”. This context relative menu is specific to each tab, and by clicking on any of the options, a Javascript function would be called.
I envision this as easily specified as part of the larger effort of HTML 5 to address modern day requirements of web applications to offer a richer experience.
June 11th, 2008 at 1:33 am
lot to be said for just sticking to just? documents […]
June 12th, 2008 at 6:43 am
Isn’t IE8 doing something with context menu’s? I don’t think they are tackling this exact situation, but I know it was something like that.
IE, doing something right? It can’t be true!!! >;)
June 14th, 2008 at 7:53 am
The same context menu could come up when right-clicking a window button on a task bar, for GUIs that have such things. (I can’t think of a place where that would appear in OS X.)
I’d also still like to see browsers incorporate buttons for LINK tags specifying next page, previous page, etc.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
A more browser-centered solution that doesn’t involve changing HTML (!) would be to make a way to temporarily jump back to a designated tab or tabs. I could use that kind of solution on any existing website, not just ones who use your extension. And, the same system would work if there’s a little bit more than some commands that I want to easily jump to, e.g. a chat window.
Example implementation: when I’m hovering on a tab and I press ctrl-0, add a [0] to the tab label. I can make 10 such markers with ctrl-0..9. When I press ctrl-0 later, render that [0] tab’s page on top of my current page, inset from the edges a little. At the top of the inset render, write “Showing [title of tab], ctrl-0 to close”. That will reinforce the idea that this is meant for temporary usage, and that the page I was previously viewing is just underneath the [0] page. I.e. there’s a visible stack of two pages.