14 DAY TRIAL // While updates come at a steady pace for Chrome users and are usually, not inconsequential, but quite small, the team is working on bigger features as well. One area that is getting some attention is the tabstrip which is about to undergo a revamp.
The new tab architecture is still in the planning and early development stages for the most part, but some big functionality improvements are planned, notably, the possibility to select multiple tabs for dragging and detaching.
Other planned improvements include an overflow UI, which would enable users to manage a big number of tabs opened in the same window. Currently, Chrome just shrinks the tabs indefinitely.
Another update would implement colored tabs for better management of groups and selections.
These changes and improvements are detailed in a design document on the Chromium website. A number of planned features are listed though it's unclear how old the document is. Some of the features are already being implemented, as detailed by a recent bug entry.
The ability to select multiple tabs for management would be a huge boon for those handling many tabs spread across multiple windows.
Currently, users have to drag tabs one by one. For rearranging tabs, maybe to form 'clusters' or groups for a more intuitive ordering, this works but can be tiresome.
It's worse if you want to detach several tabs to move to another window. You have to detach them one by one and then attach them to the same window, again, one by one. Even for two or three tabs, it's a lot more work than it should be.
Multiple tab selection solves this with an elegant solution. Using standard practices, for example by pressing Ctrl or Shift when clicking on a tab, you will be able to select multiple tabs to reorder or close.
This is where the tab coloring comes in, there needs to be a way to know which tabs are selected and not. Coloring also makes it easier to distinguish between tab groups. The Colourful Tabs extension for Firefox has been doing this for years and IE 8 has a similar feature built in.
There are several other enhancements and new features planned for the "third generation" Chrome tabstrip.
· live tab contents during dragging · full size dragged representations · frame fade transition during detach/attach · dragged representation places tab at relevant position in tabstrip · ability to resume drag in tabstrip after attach · ability to resume drag in tabstrip after move from overflow UI · overflow UI capability · multiselect for drag and close · independent continuous animations · generic TabStrip baseclass that does not deal with TabContentses · BrowserTabStrip subclass that interacts with TabStripModel · testing for Layout · general testable interface - View-Controller separation · tests for drag and drop using testable interface · windows 7 integration for drag and drop targets at screen edges in lieu of the current Dock system that we use on Vista and below. [via Chromestory]