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116 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
116 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
The Wonders of Tabbed Browsing
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------------------------------
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In this information age with our stream of consciousness constantly being
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dispersed by links to different resources on the Net, it is a challenge to keep
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track of where you are going. The need for being able to access several pages
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in parallel arises. Tabbed browsing gives you an easy way to browse multiple
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sites in parallel.
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If you are not already familiar with the concept of tabbed browsing you can
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think of a tab as a separate browsing context with its own history and various
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other browsing state information, such as search word and document loading.
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Whenever you stumble upon a link to a document that you want to follow without
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leaving the current document, you can open it in a new tab. This makes it
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possible to more easily jump between pages on the Net and removes the need for
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running more than one ELinks for that purpose.
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Options related to tabs are located under ``User Interface -> Window Tabs'' in
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the option manager. In the configuration file the naming prefix is ``ui.tabs''.
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Tabbed browsing has been supported since version 0.9.0 and is fairly complete.
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The documentation on tabs is therefore divided into two chapters: a general
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introduction and an introduction to advanced topics.
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Introduction to the basic actions involving tabs
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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The tab bar and the tab menu
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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The current state of all opened tabs are displayed in the tab bar. The tab bar
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will, by default, become visible when more than one tab is open, but this is
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configurable. For each open tab, the document title will be shown, possibly
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truncated. The current tab is highlighted. The tab bar will also display
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a load meter for tabs that are loading documents. Finally, any tab that has not
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been selected since its document was loaded will be marked as ``fresh'' by using
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a different coloring scheme.
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The tab menu gives access to tab specific actions along with some other useful
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document specific actions. So even if you haven't configured keybindings for
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all actions, chances are you will find it in the tab menu. By default, it is
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opened by pressing 'e'.
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Creating new tabs
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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When creating new tabs, it is possible to specify whether to create the tab and
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make it the current active tab or if the tab is to be created ``in the
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background'' -- that is, without it taking over the focus.
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Tabs can be created either with or without specifying a desired first document
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to load. That is, you can open links or submitted forms in a new tab or just
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open a new tab. Depending on your configuration, the latter will load the
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configured homepage in the newly created tab or simply leave the tab blank with
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no loaded document.
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By default, 't' will open a new tab and 'T' will open the current link in a new
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backgrounded tab. You can configure keybindings for opening a new tab in the
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background and opening the current link as the active tab.
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Switching between tabs
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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By default, it is possible to switch between tabs by using '<' and '>' to select
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the previous and next tab, respectively. When positioned at the leftmost tab,
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and switching to the previous tab, the tab switching will perform a wrap-around
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so that the rightmost tab will be selected. The wrap-around behaviour is
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configurable.
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Closing tabs
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^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Tabs can by default be closed by pressing 'c'. It is possible to optionally
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have a confirmation dialog pop up when closing a tab to avoid accidental
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closing. To complement closing of the current tab, it is also possible to close
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all tabs but the current one. No key is by default configured for this; the tab
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menu, however, provides this ability.
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Note: downloads initiated from a tab are in no way tied to that tab, so tabs can
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be closed and the download will not be affected.
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Advanced topics involving tabs
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Moving tabs
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^^^^^^^^^^^
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Newly created tabs are always positioned as the rightmost tab, but it is
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possible to move the current tab either to the left or the right. The default
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keybindings have them bound to Alt-< and Alt->. Note, however, that there are
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problems recognizing those keybindings when using XTerm, so you might want to
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rebind them.
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Saving and restoring tabs
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Several features use bookmarks to save tabs; they will create a folder and
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bookmark therein the currently displayed document of each tab:
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- You can explicitly command all tabs to be bookmarked. This will ask you for
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a folder name in which the tabs will be bookmarked.
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- At startup and shutdown tabs can automatically be bookmarked in order to save
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and restore the browsing state. Note that when restoring, all history
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information will be gone. It is possible to configure both tab saving and
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restoring via options in ``UI -> Sessions''.
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- As a mean of crash protection, tabs can periodically be saved so that it is
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later possible to reconstruct opened tabs. In case of a clean shutdown
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periodically saved tabs will be removed.
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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
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