Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Dan Rosen
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:26 pm

Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Dan Rosen »

The current method of opening a topic in a new tab is, in my opinion, cumbersome. When you right click on a topic in order to open it in a new tab, the topic is first opened and replaces the document in the left most tab and then if you select "open in new tab" puts another copy in a new tab. This has 2 problems. First, it leaves two tabs pointing to the same document, but they aren't synchronized, and second, it replaces the document in the left most tab. For me this means I have to go back and re-open the topic that was just replaced. Makes no sense.

I suggest 2 changes.

1. When right clicking on a topic, don't open automatically open the topic and when open in a new tab is selected from the context menu, simply create a new tab. This makes a lot more sense. Frankly, I can't see a reason to auto-open a topic on a right click at all. Add an "open" to the context menu if you want to preserve this current feature.

2. Would be nice to have a program option to always open topics in a new tab and not replace the document in the current tab. This is how products like visual studio work, and is more typical of the way most other multi-document applications work.

While I'm here:

3. An old wish list request, if when you double click on the mouse to select a word and then drag the mouse, the selection should advance by word. Again this is standard behavior in most (almost all?) Windows applications such as Word/Office, Visual Studio, even Notepad.

Thanks, Dan
Tim Frost
Posts: 319
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:45 pm

Re: Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Tim Frost »

No! Please don't change this; I find it completely logical and extremely useful. My current topic is copied to a new tab, and the focus remains on the leftmost tab so that I can load a new topic there which I now want to work with, retaining the previous one parked on the right of it, for reference. I understand that another behaviour may appeal to other people, but I am thoroughly used to this one now, and use it often.

I would also hate to be without the ability to double-click a word to select it and then drag it somewhere else, because I quite often type words in the wrong order! I opened Notepad to look at what happens when I double-click a word and try to drag the selection: truly bizarre!
Dan Rosen
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:26 pm

Re: Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Dan Rosen »

Tim, Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If I have one topic open, call it topic A1. Then how do you open topic B2 without replacing the topic A1 tab?

You may like dragging the word around, but it's not consistent with other windows apps. Maybe H&M can make it a configurable preference.
Tim Frost
Posts: 319
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:45 pm

Re: Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Tim Frost »

There's nothing right or wrong; it's just the way I like to work with the way H&M operates now.

Suppose I am finished working in A1, but there are some things in A1 that I want to reference for my next task in B2. A1 is current, and highlighted in the TOC, so I right-click it there and open a copy in the next tab. Then I can load B2 and it opens in the left tab. If I want to copy something from A1, I can easily switch between them, but the left tab I treat as the new principal one. Partly this is because in older H&M releases, I recall that the tabs other than the first had some limited functionality.

I find it logical because of its name; I have always thought of it as opening this topic in a new tab, so that matches the way I learned to use the feature. And I treat the tabs on the right as poor relations: my main tab is always the left one. In consequence I have never felt the need to open a new topic in a new tab, out to the right.

But I have no objection at all to your asking for another way to use H&M, providing this could be done without complicating the options; I just wanted to cast a vote for not losing what I think is the intelligently designed way it works now. And as a software author, my guess is that it works this way because it was simple to implement, and that has benefits for everyone also.

And on the other point; I have spent the last 25 years or so trying to avoid ever using Word, though I sometimes have to. It has a terrible user interface, with all tasks needing more work and thought than they should; and the results produced using it, even by experts, always stand out as sub-optimal. So "make it work like Word does" is not a goal I have ever aspired to.
Dan Rosen
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2012 12:26 pm

Re: Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Dan Rosen »

I work a bit differently. I'm working on A1 and see that it has a link to B2. Now if have to go back to the TOC and right click on A1 to open in a new tab, and then click on B2 to open it. Two steps. However in the new A1 tab, I've lost my position and the original A1 tab which had my current position has been overwritten by B2. Wouldn't it be simpler when I opened B2 either by a TOC click or a ctrl+click on a link to open B2 in a new tab? I don't care if the B2 tab is left tab or right tab, just make the one being displayed. Then both tabs are open and I haven't lost my edit position in A1.

Still don't understand why right clicking a TOC entry performs 2 actions, it opens the topic and then gives you context menu to do something else. Typical right click actions are to bring up a context menu and let the user select the action from that.

Don't confuse my comments about Word as being a supporter of the product, I'm only using that application as indicating the that Windows GUI standard for double click/drag seems to be extending the selection by word. Even editing messages on this board adheres to that standard.
Tim Frost
Posts: 319
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:45 pm

Re: Preference to always open a topic as a new tab.

Unread post by Tim Frost »

Yes, when it comes to the issue of always saving the last position in a topic, we are on the same page! And, we hope, the same position on that page.
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