⚡️ Ideas
Adam J. Richman Adam J. Richman Mar 7, 2024

Tabs (like a browser) for Tana Panes 🪟

Explain the problem as you see it

The panels and docks are fine, but having a global TAB interface, like a browser, would be really useful. I could pin tabs to the top, jump to them via keyboard shortcut, and have multiple tabs within each panel or pane or dock (or whatever it's called) and really build an amazing multifaceted interface. Or, just keep things simple and use tabs-only for all navigation (so I could keep Tana in a nice thin window all day).

Also good would be to have a window switcher shortcut, similar to CMD+K or CMD+S that pop up a lil window, but something that pops me up to what is currently open in tabs. Like CMD+SHIFT+A in Brave, and whatever the Arc shortcut is that lets you jump to whatever open tab there is.

Why is this a problem for you?

The current window management within the app leaves a lot to be desired, and is quite clunky when you try to open more than one other thing at once. I'd like to have many things open, and be able to jump back and forth between them with ease.

Suggest a solution

Add tabs at the top as a way to view nodes. Allow us to have as many tabs as we want within each panel.

⁨3⁩ ⁨Comments⁩

Without a really thoughtful implementation, this is going to become a UX nightmare when we think about mobile and responsiveness. I'd rather see better "session" management (group of panels persistent) than having to deal with tabs on top of the clunky panels (which is the thing that actually requires fixes IMHO)

A similar idea is the concept of sliding panes / stacked tabs. There's a separate idea submission here, where I've just added a comment with two links to a page and an app in which that idea is implemented.

I think a tabbed interface with intuitive keyboard navigation would be a great addition to the Tana desktop app. I like the panels and docks, and I think they have their place in providing a robust interface for managing multiple nodes. However, often times, my laptop screen isn't big enough to make panels and docks usable because I can't see enough of the node content. Having tabs that I can easily switch between with common browser keyboard shortcuts would make navigating between different content much easier.

I also don't see this as being in conflict with this idea, which I see as being a nice UX improvement for the existing panels UX.