Paths through Knowledge Space Malcolm Gladwell the author of the tipping point wrote an article for the New Yorker titled "The Social Life of Paper" where he explains the role of paper in offloading complexity. For me the tabs perform a similar role with browsing. I consume information as if it were coming out of a fire hydrant and the tabs for me are the stacks of paper on my messy desk. Each one has a different history and was born from its own information need that came up during my journey through the web. In stead of just one instance of IE or opening many different instances and crowding the task bar the tabs are organized and easy to manage. Currently its close to the end of the day and I must have more than 30 open tabs. Each one has meaning. here are just a few.
My conversation with Dina, and the various blogs I found from Ryze also still open the tab with the Teladyn Man which started at the MicroDoc went to daves web log description page and then to Pollard and ended there because I'm not sure in my head where to store that piece of information. The tabs acting like the card used by the air traffic controller offload the complexity of remembering and later I can clean it up when I make a sense of that knowledge mission and have a place to let it go. Now my computer desktop is matching my physical desktop both with stacks and stacks of paths through knowledge.
Tab interaction in FMRadio.
I've got to say that I like the tab interaction of the browser in FMRadio much better than safari, which i use on the mac. With safari, say i'm on my far left tab, my tabstrip is full, and want to open a link in a new window. So the link opens in a new tab that's tucked in the more menu. So now it's a big pain to switch back and forth between those 2 windows. Where as in the tab interaction of FMRadio, the new tab is opened immediately to the right of the tab from which it was launched. They figure you want to look at things in proximity to where you launched them. Now you end up with an ad hoc ordering of tabs, but it means less mouse movement and better sense making for me. Alan says there's an article somewhere about why people think the Mozilla tab interaction is best. I'll have to find that.
I know there's some deeper issues here such as the tab sets you get in safari and mozilla, but that's a different post. [Marcus' Tablet PC Radio Weblog]
4:15:39 PM 
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