Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Tabs
Raised as a usability problem by 11 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2012–2024), in 11 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
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 11 complaints
- Selected tab is hard to tell apart; no borders, background, or bold text2024-06-03
- Can't rip a tab out into its own window in many apps2023-04-29
- Paid features won't activate because it doesn't recognise the Google profile; export and import are flaky2022-07-02
- More than a couple of tabs cause problems on mobile, especially when they wrap or scroll horizontally2022-04-01
- Some users don't recognise tabs and accordions as controls for revealing hidden information2021-06-29
- No way to search tabs; tab switching and opening feels slower2019-09-02
- Mixed tabs and spaces are hard to read when the tab width is set wrong2017-06-21
- Tabs are a poor UI for managing many open files, harder to navigate than a file list2016-05-10
- Tabs hide the other side of a file move, so the user loses track of where dragged files went2015-06-23
- Tabs are grouped per window, so switching between documents in different windows takes extra steps2013-07-02
- With 25+ open files, tabs become hard to navigate and frustrating2012-04-12