Re: Why do we have editor tabs?

I don't use the editor tabs to switch between files unless there's a problem
using the other means that I use.  The one thing the tab is useful for is to
determine the name of the file you're currently viewing and I do use it to clone 
documents.  Both of these can be done by other means if implemented.

BTW Ctrl-Tab switches between the last 2 files you viewed.

I use the Documents (Window->Documents, Shift-F4 is the default 
keystroke) dialog almost exclusively.  Once the dialog is displayed, you can use 
the quick search feature (just start typing), which, BTW, is also available in 
the explorer, to find the file you want.

-d


On Wed, 30 Nov 2005, Ivan Soleimanipour wrote:

> I've found that I hardly ever use editor tabs.
> 
> It seems easier to use the explorer to open a new or an existing file.
> Once you have a lot of files open the fact that _some_ of them might be
> accessible via the tabs becomes immaterial. Instead of trying to decide
> whether it's available and "scrolling" left and right it seems easier
> to just [re]open the file from the explorer.
> 
> There is the "recent" files menu in the editor that seems of more
> utility than the tabs because it gives you the list of files at a
> glance and again you don't have to scroll the editor tabs. However it
> shows files alphabetically which seems counter-productive, because I
> expect it to be an LRU list.
> 
> Another thing I often want to do is to go to the "other" file. 
> This is captured by the 'vi' ":e#" command. Again tabs don't
> help here because the other file is usually not visible in the limited
> space of 4-5 tabs.
> 
> So the tabs make little cognitive or task-oriented sense ...
> what am I missing?
> 
>