Strange/random observation: it is surprising that Chrome-style tabs seem to be the default tab representation given the pushback over the past few years over skeuomorphism in digital design.
This editor looks cool though. I haven't really looked at Atom, so I assume that it has good PHP/Python/Ruby support. I will try this out when it is released, I love the autocomplete
I would go further—I'm confused by the proliferation of "tabs" as a UX metaphor. Do people really think they're the best thing they can get, compared to, say, ZUI zoomable groups?
They're great for browsers because the affordance fits: you have one active "browsing session", and then a bunch of inactive ones, and the inactive ones don't matter, and when you switch, you're asserting that the active one now doesn't matter.
But for productivity applications, tabs are just kind of silly.
In the OSX Finder, for example, if I have two windows open, I'm likely rearranging files between two-or-more folders—I need to see the state of both the source and the destination. You can drag-and-drop a file onto a tab, but you lose the visual cue as to where it's gone—it might have just ended up out of scroll-range in the current folder, or in some other random folder. To do the task quickly, I need to see both places: something done much better† by the window metaphor.
† (Though not perfectly: having to rearrange the windows to get the drag-sources and drop-targets all visible is a big hassle. Mac OS almost had something going for a while with MDI applications having their own virtual desktops, but they never far enough with it; if you could tell a given MDI application to auto-arrange/snap its document windows, people might actually start to want MDI interfaces again, rather than uberwindow "I know what's good for you" interfaces like FTP programs or Xcode.)
Then again, I'm also astounded that "tabs" aren't just a window manager feature (i.e. being able to group arbitrary windows into a single tabbed window, and noting when windows in a tab group spawn a new window and spawning it inside the tab group instead.) That would have cost too much GPU power decades ago, but it's costless with compositing window managers.
I love OS X's exposé (app and all window). I have mine setup to be hot corners. I often drag a file to a corner and then drop it onto one of the exposé'd apps. I feel like I went back in time when I use OSes that doesn't support this functionality.
> Then again, I'm also astounded that "tabs" aren't just a window manager feature (i.e. being able to group arbitrary windows into a single tabbed window, and noting when windows in a tab group spawn a new window and spawning it inside the tab group instead.) That would have cost too much GPU power decades ago, but it's costless with compositing window managers.
I'm trying to achieve this using i3 as window manager and a minimal browser like vimb which has no tabbing built-in. That way you can search for a browser page just like you would any other window.
Atom (and most other "tabbed" applications) isn't limited to just tabs-- it supports both multiple windows and arbitrary splitting inside a window. Tabs can be dragged and dropped freely between any pane. So, you can have tabs when it works well (IME, for the type of text editing one is doing while writing code, you're usually only actively using one file at a time, much like in a web browser), and you can have more than one file visible when you need that too.
(File management, on the other hand, is completely different; there, you're almost always going to want to have more than one thing visible and a windowed interface is better. That's why no mainstream file manager supports tabs OOTB.)
ZUIs are far too esoteric for the average WIMP paradigm nearly all computer users are familiar with. I wouldn't count on it anymore than I would on getting an Oberon/Cedar-like programmable text window interface.
Apple has been experimenting with zoomable UI a bit recently: the Apple Watch home screen is essentially a ZUI. On the iPhone, Photos and Calendar zoom as you progress through the levels of hierarchy (though you can't zoom interactively). Safari on the Mac and iPad also lets you zoom out to see your tabs in a ZUI-ish way.
Atom, Electron and this are all based on Chromium so why would it be surprising? Change for the sake of change or masking that their heritage isn't Google's Chromium?
This editor looks cool though. I haven't really looked at Atom, so I assume that it has good PHP/Python/Ruby support. I will try this out when it is released, I love the autocomplete