Tabs vs. Title Bar
The Safari 4 Beta drew a lot of criticism for its implementation of tabs. Perhaps drawing some inspiration from the recently released Google Chrome, that version of the browser moved the tabs to the top of the window, above the address bar. This makes a lot of sense, as the address shown in the bar changes as you change tabs. For a strict tab metaphor, anything that changes should be contained within the tabbed pane.
However, unlike Chrome, Apple decided to replace the title bar, or more accurately, merge the tabs with the title bar. It broke all windowing conventions and caused confusion. Safari was the first browser to introduce draggable tabs, and now there was a conflict. Where do you click to drag a tab, and where do you click to drag the window? Apple decided that dragging the window was more important, so the majority of the tab/title bar was given to window dragging. The right corner of each tab was textured as the grip for dragging a single tab. This took some time to get used to, but I became comfortable with it. Another issue was that the tabs automatically grew to fill the width of the window. As a result, the tabs would all shift every time a tab was added or removed from the bar. This could be disorienting. The bigger problem, to my mind, was the inconsistency within the operating system. Why should a single application have a completely different title bar from all the others?
I just installed the final release of Safari 4 and was surprised to discover that the tabs have been moved back down below the address bar. I find this interesting, and uncharacteristic. Apple doesn’t tend to go back on its changes. They have decided that this tabbing model isn’t optimal, so I’m expecting them to change it again in the not too distant future. For now, given the choice between this model and the Beta model, I think they made the right decision.
