Change default tab away from untitled

oplos

This is both a visual and usability request. Having the presence of an Orion window be contingent on an open tab means that moving that tab to a different tab group closes the Orion window as a whole. I feel that the default state of Orion should be no open tabs at all, with a blank vertical tab list and an open search bar at the top. See the below screen recording for reference. When closing tabs generally, closing the last open tab shouldn't close the window as a whole (this would replicate the experience on Safari — see the second below screen recording — whereas the current experience is more similar to Chrome's). Just a note that the Orion window does not quit, it just closes but Orion remains open as an app.

Introduce a different default state that doesn't involve having an open tab.

oplos

For reference, what closing tabs on Orion is currently like — much like Chrome. Again, Orion is not quit, there is just no longer a live window.

Yannick

Have you tried turning that setting off?

oplos

Yannick Hi Yannick, this sort of fixes it. See the below screen recording. My UI expectation when clicking to close that window, though, is that an interface with no open tabs (untitled included) should be displayed, or that the tab shouldn't have a close-able X button in the first place (and have no name/be blank, instead of being called untitled.

Yannick

oplos Okay, I understand better now. We should display the Startpage or the Homepage here, depending on your preference, right?

oplos

Yannick Yes, I feel like this should be customisable! Startpage/homepage/empty page.

oplos

I saw that this was part-implemented in Orion's recent update. Just a few notes on this new behaviour @Yannick.

Untitled tabs should be closeable the same way a regular tab displaying content should be, bringing the default state to zero tabs.
When closing a tab displaying content, the search bar should be cleared too.

oplos

@Yannick I noticed that the behaviour I recorded in my above screen recording isn't replicated anymore. Might it be possible to have the option to choose to have "0 Tabs" shown and have no tabs open? I find the "1 Tab" and "Untitled" tab unclean (although this is my personal preference).

oplos

@Yannick Further to the above, I noticed an inconsistency in the behaviour between windows that previously had open tabs and freshly opened windows (after quitting and reopening Orion). The latter do not have an X button on the only open tab. See the below screen recording for reference.

With this in mind, I can see why it makes sense to not have a zero-tab default, because this would have to be replicated upon startup too. It is regardless my personal preference to have a zero-tab default though, and I think it should be a toggle-able option in Orion's settings (as I am aware one-tab defaults are most people's expectation of their browser).

Yannick

ho yeah .. thanks for noticing !

oplos

Yannick Any update on this?

Yannick

We are refactoring the sidebar for the next major release

akshatpatel

Hi @oplos thank you for reporting.

Regarding:

I noticed an inconsistency in the behaviour between windows that previously had open tabs and freshly opened windows (after quitting and reopening Orion). The latter do not have an X button on the only open tab. See the below screen recording for reference.

I can reproduce this as well, we will fix this.

Regarding the option to have 0 tabs, I don't think it logically makes sense since the search bar is supposed to be tied to the tab. If there are no open tabs, where will the "searched" URL open?

I mean I understand from a UI perspective, it would be possible to do what you suggest, i.e. have 0 open tabs and only show the first tab once the user actually types in something. However, at this point I feel like this is a niche request and I don't think it makes sense to add this complexity and overload the settings page with one more toggle. (It might seem simple enough on the surface, but adding each toggleable option makes testing exponentially harder - we'd need to test this option for all 3 tab modes, with other option combinations on / off, etc.)

oplos

akshatpatel I don't disagree. It does feel niche, and although it fulfils my UI preference as a user, I understand that it isn't what most other users expect of their browser. I can also appreciate the reluctance to overload Orion's settings.

Thank you for addressing that small bug regardless though!