Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Tabbed browsing
Raised as a usability problem by 7 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 7 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Tabs don't work across multiple screens and waste spaceUnreviewed
20142026- Tab bar takes up dead screen space with no way to hide it2026-01-15
- Tabbed interfaces don't work across multiple screens and waste screen space2020-06-13
- Tabs of different sizes can't coexist; app resize requests don't persist when switching tabs2020-03-26
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 7 complaints
- Tab bar takes up dead screen space with no way to hide it2026-01-15
- Nested tabs and page-flip arrows made the data-heavy interface an unwieldy mess2022-04-30
- Average users accumulate hundreds of duplicate tabs they don't understand2020-06-14
- Tabbed interfaces don't work across multiple screens and waste screen space2020-06-13
- Tabs of different sizes can't coexist; app resize requests don't persist when switching tabs2020-03-26
- Swapping between many tabs, windows and desktops is distracting and tiresome2017-08-31
- Tabs are locked to fixed edges and cannot be dragged to other edges2014-07-16