Vlad,
“it is exactly what we were thinking about” — that’s not at all what I expected, but that is beyond awesome :-)
Never heard of Firefox’s Tab Candy - thanks for the video! It’s from 2010, wow. Interesting why this kind of tab management did not become mainstream. I’d speculate that it could become visually overwhelming really fast. I’m already lost looking at this screen (and there’s less than 20 webpages visible!):
Paradoxically, a good management tool has constrains that limit your freedom, but instead offers some clever “concept” – to operate quickly and without much effort. Tabs themselves are a good example. There is not much you can do with tabs – but within these limits, they are a very efficient management tool.
For this reason, I’m afraid an infinite canvas is not an appropriate solution (however tempting it looks). You can drag anything anywhere, this means the tool does not really assist you, you’re on your own, and your canvas becomes a mess very soon (unless you are obsessed with keeping things in order).
I believe infinite boards do have their audience, it’s just a niche, not a concept that can be adopted widely.
Since the talk is getting serious :-) I thought I’d make more detailed Figma prototype:
https://www.figma.com/proto/p3DJVYwrHvHzbQ4JELj5fp/Kanban-like-tab-management?node-id=31%3A428&scaling=min-zoom&page-id=28%3A395&starting-point-node-id=31%3A428
(click anywhere and Figma will highlight what’s clickable on each frame).
Try the following:
- click [>] to open next group;
- click [<] to return to the previous group;
- click [||] to open the kanban-like interface;
- click a selected tab in groups 1 or 2 to go back to them;
- back in the kanban-like interface, click [···] on group 1 to open context menu.
Some screenshots:
