Misbehavior of tabs

[mbesosa]

BC 3.0.1, Windows XP SP2. "Hide tab bar if single tab" disabled.

Launch BC. There is a Home tab. Double-click folder compare session. Home tab replaced with session tab (why?). Double-click a text file. A second tab for the text file created. Click Home button--text file tab REPLACED by Home tab (why?). Select session tab and double-click text file. New tab created for file comparison. There are now three tabs: Session, Home, and file comparison (active). Click Home button. File comparison tab REPLACED by a SECOND Home tab. Close each tab in turn by clicking on its close button. When last tab closed, APPLICATION EXITS.

Clearly, tab handling has some issues.

There should always be exactly one Home tab. Clicking the Home button should simply navigate to this tab. (In fact, if this were implemented correctly, the Home button would be redundant, no?) Closing a tab should never cause the application to close. Again, if the Home tab could not be closed, this would cease to be an issue.

[Michael Bulgrien]

Clearly, tab handling has some issues.

Clearly you do not understand or agree with the implementation of the home screen.

"Home" is not a tab. It is the "location" of the session manager. It is the default location that appears in any tab on which a session has not yet been opened. Clicking "Home" takes the current session back to the session manager just as the home button on a web browser takes the current tab back to a user's default home web page.

Personally, I do not have an issue with the current implementation and would not want a permanent "home" tab taking up residence on the BC3 tab control on my computer...

[Aaron]

Michael presents the idea we are creating with the Home screen. It is the Session Manager that is present whenever a tab currently does not have another session type (project) open.

Firstly, you can change the 'closing last tab closes window' behavior under Tools->Options->Tabs: Miscellaneous. Now closing all tabs will always eventually get you to the home screen. Any New Tab will be a home screen, and tabs are organizable (Drag and drop).

You can save particular layouts of tabs and windows as a Workspace (Session menu -> Save/Load Workspace). Loading a Workspace will reload the layout.

Also under Tools->Options->Tabs you can also set whether new tabs or windows are created. In bc2, when you double clicked on a file from the folder view, you got a new Window. Now we create tabs by default.
Using the Toolbar shortcuts for Home (button) or Session dropdown replaces the current content of the open tab (instead of closing it and starting a new one). To launch a new task without overwriting the old, you can go to the Sesison menu and Open a New Tab, Window, Open Session, or use any of the keyboard shortcuts for these actions (Open Tab is Ctrl+T by default). Keyboard shortcuts are customizable under Tools->Customize Controls.

You may want to experiment with Tools->Options->Tabs, Open Sessions/Open Child Sessions in options. There are 4 possible configurations, and one may be more intuitive to you than the default Tab/Tab.

Let us know if you have any questions about this interface customization.