Currently when clicking on X in a tab, the document hides and keeps on running in the background. Please let it actually close, that is super confusing…
I can see that this won’t work for node definitions, as they are part of a document, but could these hide and documents actually close? Maybe tabs of documents and definitions could have a slightly different shade of gray to indicate that they have different behavious on close?
I wonder if it would be nice to see all the open files somewhere. For the help patches, you can see which ones are bold and have the x next to them, but otherwise you only really know what files are still open when closing vvvv altogether and it asks you if you want to save them.
I just checked and the Applications menu in the quad (and All Documents below it) seems like the only place to see open documents.
Or maybe give each document it’s own dedicated menu up top? That would remain there for each open document and then you can close a document from there. Then you could even have it where each document has its own set of tabs below.
+1 to above. the window/document functionality definitely lacks in some transparency. Since Close / Ctrl+W seems to produce the predicted affect of the X I’d rather either:
-not see it
-have it behave as Close
-have it replaced with something implying minimization, with something like the above to make its continued presence clear and easy to revisit
I often find myself realizing there are a ton of patches still running in the background after closing their tabs without paying attention to Ctl+W them beforehand…
To me, “closing it” means “you don’t need it”.
I also understand/agree that closing the tab of definitions should only close the view because you just don’t need to see the insides anymore, but closing the tab of the parent app should kill the app imho.
ok, I’ve got to say this is super unclear. it is not at all ovious where the closed tab “goes”, as it actually behaves as minimizing. the X clearly implies closing.
Yeah, the confusion I think comes from the fact that tabs are basically patches, not files. Often you have files that reference other files and need to be open as well.
Say I have a main.vl file and it references a shared.vl and uses some nodes from it. So when I open a node from the shared.vl it also opens that document. If I close the tab with that node, I dont want to actually close the file, because it will mean the shared nodes are no longer found. That is why closing one document, that is a dependency of another, will close all of them:
What I would suggest is, that it needs a better way to see what documents are open and to quickly close them. As far as I can tell, that “All Documents” or “Applications” menu in the quad is the only place you can see it.
My suggestion was to have them as another row of tabs above the other tabs. Then its really quick to close them and more importantly you can still see which are open.
Another point would be that it could ask if you want to close the document if you close the last tab from a given document. It would probably need a “don’t ask again” for that file, so it doesn’t get annoying when patching with multiple dependent files, where that will happen often.
Thanks for the feedback. In the latest preview build we changed the behavior that upon closing a tab the system will also close the document if
a) it was the last open tab on that document and
b) the document is not referenced by any other document
But this now has the opposite problem, you always need to keep a tab of your app document open. Many bigger apps have loads of referenced documents and only a small app document and the bar gets full very quickly, so often you just close loads of tabs to only focus on some patches and you would then accidentally close the app.
I think having the open documents represented in the bar that’s currently only showing one document is much clearer. There you have an x to close the doc and all tabs oft it. It would also help tremendously with navigating the documents. Currently, it’s really difficult to find the right patches in the tab view.
I’ve been thinking about our persistent tab management challenges—especially when large projects turn our workspace into a chaotic “tab hell.” Instead of focusing solely on closing individual tabs, why not tackle the broader issue of overall tab management?
I’m proposing an Open Entities Inspector. This tool would provide a centralized overview of all active entities, making it easy to see which tab corresponds to which document. With features like filtering, pinning, and quick-access actions, it could streamline our workflow and help us manage our workspace more effectively. This tool allows you to hide and close entities and see which ones are currently active. Having an unclosed document that is not in the tabs is a great way to free up workspace without losing this functionality (‘patch working in the background’). You could even ‘stop’ documents, which is sometimes VERY lacking.
(As a quick nod to the past: remember the Beta Inspector that let you access node properties for quick configuration? That spirit of intuitive assistance could be evolved here to manage documents as well.)
What do you think—would this approach solve our issues more holistically?
This vivaldi screenshot is already very similar to vvvv so heres how it would work with that type of tab management. The applications listed are the Entrypoint vl documents, the tabs are only shown when the application is selected in the drop down. All other tabs are filtered.You can only close Aplication via X in the dropdown via X. Besides closing all its tabs or closing the renderer, which triggers a “Close application / Save” prompt.
Theres lots of things to consider like opening a tab thats references in both applications. A new management system would be nice but i feel like webbrowser behaviour is a good base and its already almost there. Features like “Close tabs to the right / left” or “Close other tabs” etc. would also greatly enhance the experience.
Yes, I think the browser metaphor is the most sensible, because most likely the one most people are familiar with.
I would love it if every open document has a tab at the very top like in a browser. You open a tab and it shows the small tabs inside it for the individual patches.
Backwards/Forward should be per document, which I think it is right now as well. But it would be more obvious. Right now it seems like you should have back/forward globally, but it isn’t. I have yet to figure out in what order it goes back/forward.
Having tabs per document would also enable us to quickly undock a tab and have a separate window PER DOCUMENT. This would be very helpful, because I could easily distinguish, which window is what. one window = one document.
I would also keep the familiar shortcuts for tabs known from the browser. Cmd-T (or Cmd-N) for a new tab (=new document). Cmd-Shift-T to open the last closed document (usually because you accidentally closed it). Cmd-1…9 to switch to that tab.
I can see only benefits to having documents as tabs in a familiar style to a browser.
Actually if you look at Vivaldi with its Tab Stacking and the way the menu is placed with a small icon at the top left, you could really imagine vvvv gamma looking similar to that. I would just make the 2nd row of tabs look a bit different, like they are currently in the editor, but not with the variable width.
Thinking about this, this could be a dockable window already. I think it would be very easy to do and it would help a lot, because you could read all the names and instantly see everything that is open. It would be much better than the combination of these 2: