Tab ( GUI ) - Wikipedia Tab ( GUI ) `` New Tab '' redirects here. For the novel, see New Tab ( novel ). For other uses, see Tab ( disambiguation ). This article 's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia 's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. ( August 2016 ) Example of tabbed interface with two sets of tabs. Vertical tabs to the left represent languages in which a given spelling occurs, where the selected tab shows the word jam ( ' already ' ) in Esperanto. Horizontal tabs at the top allow navigation to different pages within the Wiktionary website. In interface design, a tabbed document interface ( TDI ) or Tab is a graphical control element that allows multiple documents or panels to be contained within a single window, using tabs as a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents. It is an interface style most commonly associated with web browsers, web applications, text editors, and preference panes. GUI tabs are modeled after traditional card tabs inserted in paper files or card indexes ( in keeping with the desktop metaphor ). The name TDI implies similarity to the Microsoft Windows standards for multiple document interfaces ( MDI ) and single document interfaces ( SDI ), but TDI does not form part of the Microsoft Windows User Interface Guidelines. Contents 1 History 2 Compliance with Microsoft User Interface Guidelines 2.1 Comparison to SDI 2.1. 1 Advantages 2.1. 2 Disadvantages 2.2 Comparison to MDI 2.2. 1 Advantages 2.2. 2 Disadvantages 2.3 Window managers that provide a tabbed document interface 2.4 Using Tab in Microsoft Office applications 3 Patent dispute 4 See also 5 References 6 External links History HyperTIES browser and Gosling Emacs authoring tool with pie menus on the NeWS window system The WordVision DOS word processor for the IBM PC in 1982 was perhaps the first commercially available product with a tabbed interface. PC Magazine in 1994 wrote that it `` has served as a free R&D department for the software business -- its bones picked over for a decade by programmers looking for so - called new ideas ''. The NeWS version of UniPress 's Gosling Emacs text editor was another early product, with multiple tabbed windows in 1988. It was used to develop an authoring tool for the Ben Shneiderman 's HyperTIES browser ( the NeWS workstation version of The Interactive Encyclopedia System ), in 1988. HyperTIES also supported pie menus for managing windows and browsing hypermedia documents with PostScript applets. Don Hopkins developed and released several versions of tabbed window frames for the NeWS window system as free software, which the window manager applied to all NeWS applications, and enabled users to drag the tabs around to any edge of the window. HyperTIES was a `` hypermedia '' browser, a term first used by Ted Nelson in 1965. The first `` web '' browser came out later in 1990, and the term `` World Wide Web '' was not invented until 1990. In 1992 Borland 's Quattro Pro popularized tabs for spreadsheets ; Microsoft Word in 1993 used them to simplify submenus. In 1994, BookLink Technologies featured tabbed windows in its InternetWorks browser. That same year, the text editor UltraEdit also appeared with a modern multi-row tabbed interface. The tabbed interface approach was then followed by the Internet Explorer shell NetCaptor in 1997. These were followed by a number of others like IBrowse in 1999, and Opera in 2000 ( with the release of version 4 - although a MDI interface was supported before then ), MultiViews October 2000, which changed its name into MultiZilla on 1 April 2001 ( an extension for the Mozilla Application Suite ), Galeon in early 2001, Mozilla 0.9. 5 in October 2001, Phoenix 0.1 ( now Mozilla Firefox ) in October 2002, Konqueror 3.1 in January 2003, and Safari in 2003. With the release of Internet Explorer 7 in 2006, all major web browsers featured a tabbed interface. Users have quickly adopted the use of tabs in web browsing and web search. A study of tabbed browsing behavior in June 2009 found that users switched tabs in 57 % of tab sessions, and 36 % of users used new tabs to open search engine results at least once during that period. Numerous special functions in association with browser tabs have emerged since then. One example is visual tabbed browsing in OmniWeb version 5, which displays preview images of pages in a drawer to the left or right of the main browser window. Another feature is the ability to re-order tabs and to bookmark all of the webpages opened in tab panes in a given window in a group or bookmark folder ( as well as the ability to reopen all of them at the same time ). Links can most often be opened in several modes, using different user interface options and commands : in a new main window in the same main window and tab panel in the same main window and a new tab panel, which is instantly activated in the same main window and a new tab panel, which remains in the background until the user switches to it. There are minor usability issues such as whether a new tab opens in the end of the tab list or next to its `` parent ''. For example, Internet Explorer marks tab families with different colours. Compliance with Microsoft user interface Guidelines An example of Mozilla Firefox with two tabs open. Each tab shows a different webpage, thus allowing multiple pages to be contained within a single browser window. There is some debate about how the TDI fits in with the Microsoft Windows User Interface Guidelines. In many ways the Workbook window management model most closely resembles TDI. However this is a relatively recent addition to the Windows User Interface Guidelines, and most developers still prefer to view SDI or MDI as the primary document models for MS Windows. Comparison to SDI Advantages Because the tabbed document interface holds many different documents logically under one window, it keeps the primary operating system interface free of the clutter that would be created by a large number of small child windows. Another advantage is that sets of related documents can be grouped within each of several windows. Tabbed web browsers often allow users to save their browsing session and return to it later. Disadvantages Geany text editor with vertically oriented tabs, showing the large number of documents that can be accommodated Although the tabbed document interface does allow for multiple views under one window, there are problems with this interface. One such problem is dealing with many tabs at once. When a window is tabbed to a certain number that exceeds the available display area, the tabs clutter up ( this is the same problem as with SDI but moved to another place in the user interface ). Multi-row tabs are a second issue that will appear in menu dialogs in some programs. Some prefer to have many tabs open, and some programs help making these compact yet identifiable, while normally dealing with multiple rows of tabs in one window is seen to have two disadvantages : It creates excess window clutter, unless it is limited to about 3 rows that can be scrolled by the mouse wheel. It complicates what should be an easy - to - read dialog, and at the same time makes it easier to see the titles of many tabs at once. Finding a specific tab in a 3 or 4 level tabular interface can be difficult for some people. Part of the issue with this difficulty lies in the lack of any sorting scheme. Without such tabs can be strewn about without any sense of order, thus looking for a tab provides no meaningful understanding of a position to a tab relative to other tabs. Additionally, the clutter created by multiple tabs can create a dialog that is unusually small, with the tabs above it dominating the window. Thus, although tabbed windows are adequate in environments where there is a minimal necessity for tabs ( around ten tabs or less ), this scheme does not scale, and alternate methods may be required to address this issue. Among the methods for addressing the problems of the scalability of many tabs : group tabs by dragging / moving them, and or freeze their position, and then reduce the width of individual tabs, so that more can fit within the available area, including multiple tab rows, and change the color of selected tabs or according to source, along with the use of favicons for identification and tooltips on mouseover introduce scrolling to enable tabs to occupy a non-visible region of the screen introduce sections through any of various means, to spread tabs out to multiple areas introduce real - time zooming of a tab, based on the position of the mouse cursor discard tabs in favor of another interface element such as a listbox or drop - down list Large numbers of tabbed windows scale better with the tabs along the left or right edges of the window, instead of the top or bottom edges. That is because tab labels are usually much wider than they are tall, and because it is now common to use displays which are considerably wider than needed for displaying documents and web pages. The NeWS version of the UniPress Emacs text editor placed tabs along the right window edge, and laid windows out in a vertical column, so each tab was initially visible, and the user could use them to raise and lower the windows, drag them around in the column, or pull them out to anywhere on the screen. PSIBER visual PostScript programming environment for NeWS, with tabbed windows around objects on and off the stack. Better yet, tabbed window interfaces can give the user the freedom to position the tabs along any edge, so all four edges are available to organize different groups of tabs as the user or application sees fit. The PSIBER visual PostScript programming environment for NeWS had tabbed views that you could stick onto the stack ( represented as a `` spike '' ), and you could move the tabs to any edge. The NeWS pie menu and tab window manager enabled users to position the tabs anywhere along any edge, and the tabs popped up pie menus with window management functions, to uncover and bury windows, etc. Comparison to MDI Advantages For people used to SDI, MDI can be confusing as windows can be hidden behind other windows. Some MDI applications lack a taskbar or menu to allow quick access to all windows, so for these applications in some cases a window can only be found by closing or moving all others. Practically, however, most MDI environments provide for much richer window - switching functionality than SDI - oriented environments. On the other hand, since in TDI applications most tabs are visible and directly accessible, it is much harder for windows to get `` lost ''. Some MDI applications such as Opera and Eudora also have this advantage, by having tabs to access the windows. Disadvantages TDI windows must always be maximized inside their parent window, and as a result two tabs can not be visible at the same time. This makes comparing of documents or easy copy - and - pasting between two documents more difficult. Full MDI interfaces allow for tiling or cascading of child windows, and do not suffer from these limitations. One example of an application that allows either TDI or MDI browsing is Opera. Using TDI by default, this application also supports full MDI and can also run as an SDI application. In order to mitigate these problems, some integrated development environments, such as recent versions of XEmacs and Microsoft 's Visual Studio, provide a hybrid interface which allows splitting the parent window into multiple MDI - like `` panes, '' each with their own separate TDI tab set. Tiling window managers such as Ion do the same for the entire desktop. This provides many of the advantages of both MDI and TDI, although it can still be difficult for users to get used to. The Konqueror browser by KDE ( available on Unix and Unix work - alikes, such as Linux, and Windows ) supports multiple documents within one tab by splitting documents. In a Konqueror tab, documents can be split horizontally or vertically, and each split document can be re-split. Another strategy for dealing with the limitation that only one tabbed document would ordinarily be visible at one time is to allow a tab to be dragged outside the parent window and converted to a separate window ( which can itself have multiple tabs ). This is supported in the Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, and Internet Explorer 9 web browsers, for example. Window managers that provide a tabbed document interface This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. ( March 2014 ) The following window managers provide a tabbed document interface : PWM Fluxbox KWin - KDE SC 's default window manager, since KDE 4.4 Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0 ( 1991 ) PekWM Using tab in Microsoft Office applications Office Tab enables tabbed document interface ( TDI ) of Microsoft Office applications. Patent dispute Adobe Systems holds patents in the United States and Europe on certain uses of GUI tabs, which are widely held to be trivial patents. There was prior art, in both GUI and text user interfaces ( TUI ). Adobe used these patents to sue Macromedia Inc. for employing tabs in its Macromedia Flash product. Adobe won the case and $2.8 million in damages. However, Macromedia initiated a countersuit which ended in a $4.9 million ruling against Adobe. The suits were settled on undisclosed terms. In 2005, Adobe ended further dispute between the two companies when it bought Macromedia for roughly $3.4 billion. On April 18, 2007, the intellectual property agency IP Innovation LLC and its parent Technology Licensing Corporation filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc. regarding its infringement upon a US Patent originally filed by Xerox researchers in 1987. See also Comparison of document interfaces IDE - style interface Ribbon ( computing ) Tab Mix Plus References Jump up ^ `` Design Specifications and Guidelines - Window Management ''. Microsoft Developer Network. Microsoft. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. ^ Jump up to : Seymour, Jim ( 1994 - 03 - 15 ). `` Everything Old Is New Again ''. PC. pp. 99 -- 100. Retrieved 15 February 2015. Jump up ^ Hopkins, Don ( August 17, 1988 ). `` Email from Don Hopkins to James Gosling, David SH Rosenthal, Owen Densmore, Jerry Farrell about Text selection in NeMACS ''. Don Hopkins ' Web Site. Jump up ^ Hopkins, Don ( September 29, 2005 ). `` HyperTIES Hypermedia Browser and Emacs Authoring Tool for NeWS ''. Don Hopkins ' Web Site. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Hopkins, Don. `` HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Authoring ''. ^ Jump up to : Hopkins, Don ( October 1989 ). `` The Shape of PSIBER Space : PostScript Interactive Bug Eradication Routines ''. Don Hopkins ' Web Site. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Tim Berners - Lee. `` The WorldWideWeb browser ''. World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Tim Berners - Lee. `` WorldWideWeb : Proposal for a HyperText Project ''. World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ van Rantwijk, HJ. `` Mozdev.org - multizilla : history ''. Mozilla. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Jeff Huang, Ryen W. White ( 2010 ). `` Parallel Browsing Behavior on the Web '' ( PDF ). Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia ( HT ' 10 ). Jump up ^ `` Design Specifications and Guidelines - Window Management ''. Microsoft Developer Network. Microsoft. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ http://forum.maxthon.com/viewthread.php?tid=80713&pid=528941&page=7&extra=#pid528941 Jump up ^ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/ Jump up ^ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/colorfultabs/?src=ss Jump up ^ Kozma, László ( April 10, 2007 ). `` FishEyeTabs, tab zooming extension for Mozilla Firefox ''. Laszlo Kozma personal page. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Kozma, László ( March 2, 2009 ). `` FishEyeTabs ''. Mozilla. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ Christian ( October 22, 2006 ). `` Opera Single Document Interface ''. Christian 's MyOpera Blog. Opera Software. Archived from the original on 7 September 2008. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ `` Fluxbox 's old website ''. Archived from the original on 2011 - 07 - 26. Jump up ^ `` Demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0 ( 1991 ) '' ( QuickTime ). Don Hopkins. Jump up ^ `` PekWM features ''. Jump up ^ Office Tab Website, Enables tabbed document interface in Microsoft Office applications. Jump up ^ U.S. Patent 5,546,528 for a `` Method of displaying multiple sets of information in the same area of a computer screen '' Jump up ^ `` Adobe Wins Patent Trial Against Macromedia '' ( Press release ). Adobe Systems. May 2, 2002. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. Jump up ^ U.S. Patent 5,072,412 for a `` User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects '' Jump up ^ Marsal, Katie ( April 21, 2007 ). `` Apple 's interface held to the fire in dubious suit ''. Appleinsider.com. Retrieved 2010 - 03 - 01. External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tab ( GUI ). Navigation and Module tabs at the Yahoo ! Design Pattern Library. Yahoo ! UI Library TabView ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Scriptaculous AJAX tabs Tab Window Demo demo of the Pie Menu Tab Window Manager for The NeWS Toolkit 2.0 ( 1991 ). Widgets ( List of... ) Command input Adjustment handle Button Context menu Drop - down list Hamburger button Menu Pie menu Data input - output Checkbox Color picker Combo box Cycle button Date Picker Grid view List box List builder Radio button Scrollbar Search box Slider Spinner Text box Informational Balloon help Head - up display in computing Head - up display in video games Icon Infobar Label Loading screen Progress indicator Progress bar Splash screen Throbber Sidebar Status bar Toast Tooltip Containers Accordion Client - Side Decoration Disclosure widget Frame / Fieldset Menu bar Panel Popover Ribbon Tab Toolbar Window Workspace Navigational Address bar Breadcrumb Hyperlink Navigation bar Pager Tree view Special windows Alert dialog box Dialog box File dialog Inspector window Modal window Palette window Related concepts File viewer List of graphical user interface elements Layout manager Look and feel Mouseover Widget toolkit WIMP Web browsers Comparison lightweight History List for Unix Timeline Usage share Features Ad filtering Augmented browsing Bookmarks Bookmarklet Live bookmark Smart Bookmarks Browser extension Browser security Browser synchronizer comparison Cookies Download manager Favicon Incremental search Plug - in Privacy mode Tabs Universal Edit Button Web standards Acid tests Cascading Style Sheets HTML HTML5 JavaScript MathML SVG WebGL XHTML Protocols HTTP HTTPS OCSP SPDY SSL / TLS WebSocket WPAD Related topics BrowserChoice.eu CRL iLoo Internet suite Man - in - the - browser Mobile Web Offline reader PAC Pwn2Own Rich Internet application Site - specific browser Widget World Wide Web XML Desktop Blink - based Brave Chrome Chromium Dragon Falkon Opera Sleipnir Slimjet SRWare Iron UC Browser Vivaldi Yandex Browser Sputnik SafeZone Whale Gecko - based AT&T Pogo Avant Camino Firefox Conkeror GNU IceCat IceDragon Swiftfox Swiftweasel TenFourFox Timberwolf Tor Browser Waterfox xB Browser Galeon Ghostzilla Goanna Basilisk Pale Moon K - Meleon Kazehakase Kirix Strata Lotus Symphony Lunascape Mozilla Beonex Communicator Classilla Netscape SeaMonkey Trident - based AOL Explorer Avant Deepnet Explorer GreenBrowser Internet Explorer Lunascape Maxthon MediaBrowser MenuBox NeoPlanet NetCaptor SlimBrowser SpaceTime UltraBrowser WebbIE ZAC Browser WebKit - based Arora Avant Dooble Epic Flock Fluid iCab Konqueror Lunascape Maxthon Midori OmniWeb Origyn Web Browser Otter Browser QtWeb rekonq Safari Shiira SlimBoat surf Torch Uzbl Epiphany WebPositive xombrero Text - based ELinks Emacs / W3 Line Mode Browser Links Lynx w3m Other abaco Amaya Arachne Arena Charon Dillo eww Gazelle HotJava IBM Home Page Reader IBrowse KidZui Microsoft Edge Mosaic Mothra NetPositive NetSurf Qihoo 360 Secure Browser Mobile Blink - based Android Browser Chromium Brave Chrome for Android Opera Mobile Silk Firefox Focus for Android Gecko - based Firefox for Android MicroB Minimo Waterfox WebKit - based BOLT Dolphin Browser Chrome for iOS Firefox for iOS Firefox Focus for iOS Maxthon Mercury Browser Nokia Browser for Symbian Opera Coast Rockmelt Safari Steel Other Blazer CM Browser Deepfish Internet Explorer Mobile Iris Browser Konqueror Embedded Microsoft Edge NetFront Opera Mini Skweezer Skyfire Teashark ThunderHawk UC Browser Vision WinWAP Television and video game console Gecko - based Kylo Presto - based Internet Channel WebKit - based Google TV Nintendo 3DS Internet Browser Nintendo DS & DSi Browser NetFront Steam Overlay Wii U Internet Browser Other MSN TV Software no longer in development shown in italics Commons Internet portal Software portal Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tab_(GUI)&oldid=824395719 '' Categories : Graphical user interface elements Document interface Graphical control elements Web browsers Hidden categories : Wikipedia articles needing style editing from August 2016 All articles needing style editing All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from September 2008 Wikipedia articles in need of updating from March 2014 All Wikipedia articles in need of updating Articles with unsourced statements from August 2010 Talk Navigation Contents About Wikipedia Беларуская Català Deutsch Español Français Galego 한국어 Íslenska Italiano Қазақша Magyar Nederlands 日本 語 Polski Română Русский Simple English தமிழ் Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt 中文 13 more Edit links This page was last edited on 7 February 2018, at 02 : 17. 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Question: what is a tab on a web page
Answer: a navigational widget for switching between sets of documents