January 10, 2013
MarkBernstein.org
 

Progress of a Sort

class TanseyTabView : NSObject {...

It’s taken something like six years, but yesterday I finally started work on an idea proposed by Frank Tansey at an early Tinderbox Weekend. The idea is to add “tabs” to Tinderbox views, much as Firefox added them to the Web browser. The tab keeps track of the view settings, and you can quickly move between an outline of the whole document and a map of the part you’re exploring right now.

It’s a good idea, and fits naturally with the current preference for one-window applications. Storyspace and Tinderbox have always embraced tons of windows. I’ve never been convinced that having lots of windows is very bad, but as people grow accustomed to single-window documents they forget that multiple windows are even possible. The move to extreme screens — tiny phone screens, gigantic multi-screen consoles — adds even more tension to the mix.