Sunday, December 27, 2009

Return to the parent tab

Continuing talking about the web browser features wish-list, lets consider this new feature: Return to the parent tab.
Let’s examine the situation in which we’ll need such feature and see how would it solve the problem.

Remember when you are going to click some link but wish it to be opened in a separate tab so that it would not overlap the current one. Usually you would do so by right clicking the URL and choosing “Open in new Tab” or “Open in Background Tab”. That seems to be convenient enough until that after a time you decide to return back to the page you've originally come from. It is possible that you already closed it. Or you simply do not remember which one of this mess of tabs was a parent to the one in focus. This happens because there is no any “Back” navigation button for such a situation.

Returning to the parent page could be rather important. It allows you to navigate through the logical branches of your web surfing session.
Consider an example when you found yourself on some good gifts website and now you are eager to return back to the catalogue which has a link to such a useful resource.

Lets imagine where the “Return to parent” button could be placed. In Opera© browser for example:



I don’t know what exact effect should this button trigger. I have 3 ideas:
  1. If parent tab is still open, then clicking on “Return to parent” button should bring focus on this tab.
  2. Button could move directly to parent address, thus overlapping current (child) tab.
  3. Button could open a new tab with parent address filled in.
Which would be the best? Any other ideas?

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