Please, for the default Haiku theme, do not use gray in the active tab like in this screenshot:
Instead, use only yellow and red like this (didn’t have time to change gardients which also use gray):
I hope you make it skinnable, cause I have some good ideas and would like to contribute.
thank you
And I’m sorry for the very huge image :oops:
An option would be to use the current R5 design. The R5 tabs are brighter, good looking and more distinct than the current Haiku design.
I’m not sure if a final design for the Haiku tabs has been decided upon yet though. Guess there are more important tasks to finish first.
The R5 scheme is clean. By comparison, the Haiku equivelant of the titlebar looks ‘grubby’ because of the use of grey.
BTW… This is NOT intended as a criticism, just a personal comment about the aesthetic.
Yeah, I also prefer the R5 scheme, I thought they used their own style due to copyright reasons.
One easy step to modernize the tabs, without deviating too far from the R5 look, would be to add a slight gradient to the whole tab, like this:
edit: I’m not on my own, computer, so I had to use MS Word to make the gradient, hence the gradient over text and overall blurriness, but I hope you get the idea.
I, as a potential Haiku user, would really like an option to color/highlight the entire active window.
That would lead away from the concept of tabbed cards towards a mix between that and a window, because of the emphasis the frame gets.
Windows’ windows don’t make as much sense as the tabbed paper archive card concept BeOS uses, so I would’t vote for this suggestion.
I haven’t worked in any tabbed card environment so I don’t have any real experience from it. However, I know that once you have a bunch of windows open at the same time (currently, at work, I have 14 open windows) everything turns into a greyish slush. This can cause the user to accidentally press buttons or scrollbars that belong to another window.
A clear concept leads to visual understanding…this can "outweigh" the amount of contrasting colour used.
Conceptual slush is much harder to get used to than any slush of colour, IMHO.
Are there any papers describing this concept you’re talking about? Would be interesting to read a little about it is and what it’s supposed to do for computing.
Since I’ve been using window based OSes for a while I have no problems related to understanding things. Instead I struggle against everyday usage issues.
I’m not talking about understanding as a conclusion of having managed to work with something, but more about understanding as subconsciously and instantly grasping the meaning and functioning of things by the logic of their visual concept.
What I want to add is that when you make a reference to an actual desktop -like we know them from real life- by calling the always underlying screen ‘Desktop’ (which is a clever idea), it makes sense to shape the “windows” (that lie on top and hold information) like something that has an analogy to paper - also like we know from real life.
BeOS does this with their concept: the mentioned ‘tabbed paper archive card’, which answers your first question.
If you’re too young to have ever seen anything like that (for example in libraries) maybe a google image search will help.
Anyhow, if it is ever decided that the frame of an active window should have the same colour as the tab, one might as well get rid of the concept of tabs…either result would make an everyday usage issue to struggle against.
This is what I meant:
Paper card archives (the library model) might work fine for a simplistic single-index database, but that’s about it. As soon as you want to sort by anything else that author’s last name or reference other cards you’re pretty screwed, and that’s probably why they’ve been removed from all libraries that can afford a set of computers.
Furthermore paper card archives aren’t intuitive by design. We had to go to library classes in school to learn how to search, and even after that most kids asked the librarian for help. I doubt anyone under 20 (I’m 26 btw) thinks a bunch of paper cards are more intuitive than a couple of virtual containers called windows.
What it all comes down to is that inputs and outputs have to be grouped together in a clear and understandable way. It can be helpful to users if an analogy is used (work area = desktop, directory = folder etc). However since all users have different backgrounds and experiences there can’t be one ultimage analogy that works for everybody.
If you insist on using the paper (card) analogy I must add that they usually have some kind of blank border, unlike the applications I’ve seen, that helps distinguishing the different pages when you have filled your entire desk with them 
What Meanwhile is trying to say is that the BeOS title bars allow you to stack windows for "tabbed" selection. The tabs can be moved around on the top of the window. This allows you to group windows of similar content on top of each other - thus, no need for cascading the windows, or tiling the windows as you have to do in a Windows environment.
See here:
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=152400976&size=o
Furthermore, you can have multiple workspaces (basically separate desktops), so you can switch between workspaces where you have grouped windows of similar purpose. This way you can maybe have one workspace for internet browsing, one for email, one for development, one for image editing, etc. - this allows you to separate your tasks and switch between them as needed. If you need to launch a game and play for a bit, go to an empty workspace and do your thing.
Additionally, each workspace can be different screen resolutions and color depths - allowing all sorts of potential.
There really becomes little need to distinguish the active window from other windows once you have adjusted your usage of the OS - sometimes it’s hard to imagine how a “window manager” could be any different when you’ve been using MS Windows (and wannabe-lookalikes) for so long. I know this, as I’m a windows user/developer myself for the last ~12 years.
It’s Saturday evening and the vino has been flowing quite freely thus far but…
Here are my hazy, enibriated thoughts on the subject so far.
If you can ‘stack’ windows via a ‘z’ order or some other such mehtod of window levels, why not go the whole way with the paper card analogy and color code the tabs according to the ‘z’ order of the window stack?
This, if possible, would rid the Haiku world of “greyish sludginess” and negate the window border colour argument by providing levels of tab colours based on the implemented window level order.
No matter how many windows were open in any number of workspaces, there would be a logical visual ‘cue’ to their level…
Pheeew! going for more wine now…sorry for the stream of bull 
…if I could host an image, I could explain what I meant :oops:
If you can 'stack' windows via a 'z' order or some other such mehtod of window levels, why not go the whole way with the paper card analogy and color code the tabs according to the 'z' order of the window stack? This, if possible, would rid the Haiku world of "greyish sludginess" and negate the window border colour argument by providing levels of tab colours based on the implemented window level order.
While I’m not crazy about different colors for depth (if the user is able to change the colors using the “decorator engine”, it would be painful to know which colors represent which depth) – You DO have a good point there.
Having the focused window tab be bright and obvious, with the remaining tabs being various blends of that active color with gray depending on “depth” would probably be an easy thing to do and might add some interesting character to the OS. I can’t for the life of me decide why an indication of depth would be all that useful - but it would still be interesting nonetheless… and shouldn’t add much performance overhead
I would make it a very obvious jump from active to the “highest” inactive tab though - so there’s no mistake about it being inactive.
Nice suggestions here, I like this ‘thinking out loud’ approach.
Some issues I see:
When using various blends of the active colour:
*With every new window added, the gradients of the other non-active window tabs would have to change slightly too. (But maybe this is no problem technically and not confusing at all in practice).
*The more open windows = the less contrast between the tabs, and so a bigger chance of getting ‘yellow slush’ in the bright half of the spectrum.
*With many windows open, the colour of the tabs belonging to the lowest-lying windows would become so dark that the black text on them becomes illegible.
When using various colours:
*This issue of the black tab text risking to lose contrast also limits the colours that you can use.
*There would probably be an ideal number of open windows (maybe 4 or 5) at which it functions really well for the brain, but the more windows open, the less ideal it may become.
To avoid these issues, you can choose to use these effects only on a fixed number of windows, for example the highest 4 or 5.
All underlying windows would then get the same light-grey tabs.
What Meanwhile is trying to say is that the BeOS title bars allow you to stack windows for "tabbed" selection. The tabs can be moved around on the top of the window. This allows you to group windows of similar content on top of each other - thus, no need for cascading the windows, or tiling the windows as you have to do in a Windows environment.
Now that’s a concrete and practical design idea. It would definitely be useful for having lots of small windows (can I still call them windows? ;)) open at once. Personally I use lots of large windows that couldn’t be stacked next to eachother so I’d end up with one large stack of all my programs, which is pretty much like full screen windows in Windows + taskbar, but that’s just me.
Getting a bit off topic, eh? 
pretty much like full screen windows in Windows + taskbar, but that's just me.
If you’re not familiar with BeOS’ Deskbar, you might be surprised at its versatility also. It has various options for “grouping” like windows into sub-menu selections, etc…
All-in-all BeOS (and eventually Haiku) is quite a nice windowing system - it needs a little polish and tweaks here and there, but has potential even in today’s Windows XP/Vista, Mac OSX environments.