I just thought about this yesterday. Is it possible to have system-wide tabs at top feature? It's probably not a huge step forward for many people, but I think it looks nice and saves a lot of screen real estate. It makes logical sense, too. Since both the top title bar and the tabs are supposed to display the name and status of the application, so why not combine them together? I have searched around the web but haven't found any talk about this feature. I would love to this idea comes to life. Is it something KDE can do? Or is it qt's job to manage the position of tabs?

This definitely is a wishlist item. You may file a 'wish' at bugs.kde.org if you want to give more exposure to this idea.

This is a feature in KDE3, you can simply choose the style "B II" in KDE3 window decorations and have this feature.

Don't know if it is on KDE4 now...

I can confirm it is not an innovation of Google, it is a pretty old feature since KDE2, and it seems that there aren't too many people like it.

IMO, if all you want is that tab, you can simply disable window decorations in compiz and put your task bar at the top of screen. which saves more spaces than you have expected.

s1300045 wrote:Or is it qt's job to manage the position of tabs?

It is the Window Manager's job to draw the window decorations, if you want to draw tabs as window decorations, simply choose a style which do that, and that can be implemented in a style, without breaking anything in KDE.

pansz wrote:I can confirm it is not an innovation of Google, it is a pretty old feature since KDE2, and it seems that there aren't too many people like it.

IMO, if all you want is that tab, you can simply disable window decorations in compiz and put your task bar at the top of screen. which saves more spaces than you have expected.

That's interesting. Well, I know Google didn't invented the tabs at top feature, but I am certainly not aware of they already have it in KDE3. I might set up a virtual machine and check on that.

I am not sure if this is related to what you wish but KWin developpers have proposed a tab window system as a potential GSoC topic

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Summer_of_Code/2009/Ideas#Project:_Window_tabbing

If this idea is implemented, KWin will then have Google Chrome-like tabbing capacities, which can maybe be adapted to suit your needs (for FF, for instance, I am thinking of disabling the tab bar and force all new pages to open in a new window. KWin settings would then maybe allow it to be tabbed with the previous FF windows...

At least, that's an idea...

saphir is correct, the feature is window tabbing and is handled by the window manager. There is also an extra $500 bounty on this feature in KWin so if any developer decides to do it for GSoC (If KDE gets chosen) they will get another bonus. =)

WOW! I am just so excited with all the possibilities this feature can have! Too bad I have never had a chance to be a good coder, and right I have all my time stuck with work and school. I really wish someone can pick it up and turn this into a reality!

I'm not sure what do you want, but I'd checked that KDE4 have this feature: simply choose B II as your window decoration style and you will get this feature if your window manager is kwin.

B II style is a long-living style since KDE2...

see the second line in my image: system settings, konqueror, dolphin and konsole are in tabs.

@pansz:

BTW there is a bugreport about improving of appealing of BII and it definitely needs such:
#174216

I think the "B II" theme need some appearance polish...

SeaJey wrote:@pansz:
BTW there is a bugreport about improving of appealing of BII and it definitely needs such:
#174216

sure, but this topic saids some *new* project attempting to invent a new style to implement tabling feature.

Isn't it much better to improve the existing B II style than to write a new style from scratch?

B II's tabbing is a hack and breaks very easily. Just move/resize a window or navigate within a window that changes the window title.

A Google Summer of Code student has just been accepted for implementing a real decoration tabbing system in KWin so "Chrome-like" tabs will be possible for KDE 4.4 assuming the project is a success.

Zarin wrote:A Google Summer of Code student has just been accepted for implementing a real decoration tabbing system in KWin so "Chrome-like" tabs will be possible for KDE 4.4 assuming the project is a success.

Great, I hope it will not behave like the xbar for bespin, which only works for bespin style.

If that is implemented in Kwin, it should be a global option, instead of a hack in some particular style.