I tend to close other tabs more often than not now

Hello

I gave the new beta a quick go and something I noticed very fast is when switching between tabs, I tend to close them instead of opening them. I don’t know why I’m so interested in pressing in just that area where the close button is, but it’s really frustrating. I liked it more before where you can only close a tab if it’s the selected tab.

I also believe tabs should have a minimum width because some are considerably shorter, like the two most important tabs ‘Scene’ and ‘Game’ and again, I tend to hit the close button. There’s too little space to hit the actual tab.

I might be alone with this but I figured I could bring it up in case anyone else feels the same.

EDIT: I was certainly not alone with this. Nice

7 Likes

Yeah… I keep closing tabs I actually want to stay there all the time as well.

Something like being able to “lock” them (maybe by right clicking on the tab and it’s an option there?), so that the X doesn’t appear on them, would be nice.

1 Like

I rarely ever close down any tabs so I see no reason to have a close option on tabs that aren’t already selected.

It’s not like in VS where you may want to close down multiple scripts at once.

So I agree with RealMTG, only being able to close tabs that are selected is perfectly fine.

3 Likes

old tab title was definitely better… last time that i’ve actively needed to close a tab was probably many years ago… :smile:

also, just wondering that did a large group of developers requested for this feature?
or did UX team came to conclusion that this is a must have feature, and that there wont be any mistake clicks here with 1-2 pixel offset between close and scroll buttons?

for reference:
old (nice minimalistic)
3668113--300568--upload_2018-9-12_20-32-52.png

new (cannot fit much tabs here)
3668113--300571--upload_2018-9-12_20-33-4.png

5 Likes

I agree with others here and I don’t personally really close tabs that often to need a separate button to close them. The right click close tab was fine and far “safer” action. The current close button implementation also eats a lot of screen space from tabs and is deceptive as you can quickly click the tab on the area where the x is hidden.

4 Likes

I also almost never close tabs and am concerned about UX designs like this hidden close button. There are many things that need to be perfected on Unity but you use resources to add a feature designed like a trap? :eyes:

4 Likes

I mean, you can also close them by middle clicking, which is much less prone to errors, making the X buttons a bit redundant.

It’s not like browsers where we open and close tabs all the time. In Unity most of the time, at least 90% of the interface should stay where it is. And if you need to close something, middle clicking or right click → close is as handy as it needs to be.

5 Likes

I vote for restoring the old behaviour. Right clicking to close a tab is better. We usually keep tabs around in Unity… unlike a freaking browser.

That and the nested prefab cubes … what the heck is going on with the editor. Downgrade in usability. Are people from a non-dev background advising Unity? It’s not working for me.

It’s not like I don’t have over a decade working with it. Tabs now suck. Seriously unimpressed, it’s a noob mistake.

Unity needs to stop fixing things that ARE NOT BROKEN AT ALL. That and understanding how long things live for in a dev environment.

Tabs in a dev environment stay around.
Tabs in a browser don’t.

Learn it.

Blindly changing things cos another totally different thing does it is not good design. It’s … it’s time for me to go and make a cup of tea so I can remain polite.

10 Likes

Please restore this or at least give us an option do disable it.

4 Likes

I just want to echo that currently the only bad thing I have to say about 2018.3 is this. Remove this, and life is great. So great!

1 Like

There is a close button on a tab?
[mmb] to close …
and for those unfortunate enough to not use a mouse with a middle button… or laptop touch users
right click > close

anything else and you are catering to a noob audience… disabling the close buttons on top of tabs is the first thing I do with any web browser or ide …or anything.

2 Likes

Please unity focus in providing needed features.

3 Likes

I totally understand people not liking this design change. I havent used it enough yet to form my own opinion, but I wont be surprised if I accidentally end up closing tabs when I didnt want to myself at some point, and then I will probably moan.

What I dont really agree with is the suggestion that Unity shouldnt be making these sorts of changes because they should be focussing on some other feature that people want instead. That doesnt really fit with how Unity develop these days I dont think, where they have very many teams looking at different areas. So even though it is true that ultimately there are finite resources available and correct prioritisation is always important, I really dont believe in thinking about features, progress and lack of progress in terms of a zero sum game where people moan about some new feature because it isnt the feature they want and they dont consider it important. We saw this quite a lot when VR was at the forefront of Unitys marketing, people moaning that all the other stuff wasnt being done because of VR. I understand the frustrations but I would drive myself crazy if I thought about things in that way, and its not the most useful or productive feedback for Unity anyway, the reality is more complex and multi-layered. Unity can correct design flaws in new systems, but asking them to stop progressing on some areas because you were happy with the old way is a dead end.

1 Like

Really, how hard it is it to make these (and other hierarchy window) changes optional? Unity did a bang up great job of depreciating things over time previously.

But here in the editor there is no optional thing about it. No warning. Just bang, suck it up (hierarchy window + tabs). It’s not a problem for me though I can’t speak for other people.

2 Likes

Ive usually tended to see deprecated as something that happens to old systems, eg APIs, and its far less usual to see that stuff happen on the editor UI side of things.

I’m not surprised to see people complaining because there are inevitably two phenomenon here - the merits of or mistakes made when redesigning things, and peoples inevitable dislike of change. Criticism due to the former should not be written off or ignored because of the latter, but the latters effects are part of the mix and should be taken into account when reviewing negative feedback (ie dont ignore the criticism, but take it with a pinch of salt and dont rush to reverse changes).

Hierarchy is fine

They where efectivelly warned during previews for this to be optional, this would have been a win win for all and they’ve simply move on.

This suffers from the same issue that the forced use of hierarchy icons does… the problems get worse the busier the project.

This shouldn’t be the case in a creative tool. It should scale very well, and complexity of project increasing should reveal why some features that don’t make much sense in a simple project are increasingly beneficial in larger projects.

Want an example?

OOP and ECS and all other programming design patterns are designed to scale well, becoming increasingly beneficial with increasing project size and complexity. UI, in a tool for projects, should do the same.

2 Likes

Yeah this for the most part invisible close button is just a waste of screen space, and considering my right side menu already has a bunch of tabs on it. So now just to keep the width I like for that sidemenu means I’ve got some tabs going off the bar, for what… an effing close button I don’t give crap for seeing let alone using!

How hard is it shove things like this as optional features users can turn on/off in the preferences… because it really shouldn’t be hard at all, it should mandatory as just common sense software development for a product with 10,000’s of users.

If you want to do something with tabs Unity… start making that in editor asset store actually damn well use them, or do what Valve eventually did with Steam and allow users to [mmb] on links to open them up in a popup window. I’m so sick of having to go between an actual proper browser to use the store and then back into unity asset store tab just download or browse anything out of it… I can’t stand it single window workflow… I like tabs! lots of them! everywhere! And where is the UGUI specific scene tab layout already!

Also have an option to make the in-editor help button shortcut open the documentation in a unity Tab! and not the desktop default browser already.

2 Likes

huh duuude, now saw it with my own eyes, definitelly that empty space needs to be reworked. Middle button is to me the way to go, yet, what I would do if you need that close X is to keep size form previous version and simply overlay the x with a gray background on top of the text. But as it is now feels wrong.