BTabView - Tabs on left, right or bottom

zittergie · April 25, 2026, 3:06pm

I would like to make (an effort to) XiXMusicPlayer from scratch using only Haiku API.
In Lazarus it was posible to place tabs where you want, but using the Haiku API I only see the possibility to have them on top.
Is it possible to have the tabs not on top?

madmax · April 25, 2026, 4:22pm

I don’t see it documented, but I knew I had seen it done before. Skimming the source (I mean I have not tested it), it seems you’d want to SetTabSide(BTabView::kLeftSide) on your BTabView..

zittergie · April 25, 2026, 6:07pm

Thanks @madmax , that did the trick.

jscipione · April 27, 2026, 2:27pm

Side tabs are supported. The most prominent place they are implemented in Haiku is the PowerStatus/Battery Desklet. I even made side tabs work in BeControlLook if you’re into that kind of thing. You can look there to see how it was done.

phoudoin · April 29, 2026, 9:26am

Can icons be used instead of string labels ?
Because in vertical orientation, it will make way more sense to have icons to spare space.

An icon with tooltip text, ideally…

zittergie · April 29, 2026, 10:09am

Using SetTabSide(BTabView::kLeftSide) worked fine.
I still trying out the layout with BLayoutBuilder. It is very different than using a RAD as Lazarus.
Probably I am doing a lot wrong.
I will be putting it up on Github, so that it will be possible to learn from my mistakes