Interface idea for the tabs

For that I use:
- <Ctrl>+<Alt> Left/Right arrow to go to previous/next opened file (I run under ubuntu, where I had to first disable this operating system reserved shortcut
- Or I use <Ctrl>+E, it shows me the recently opened files (with focus on the last one)

Hello Kevin,

The background tab color is already used up to signify file scopes (see Settings
| File Colors). To get back to a recently edited file, you can always use
Ctrl-E or Ctrl-Tab.

When working with many tabs open, and you switch tabs, its hard to see
the last one you worked on, and sometimes that "back" thing doesn't
really work as expected (or hoped, anyway).

Change the background color of the tabs to reflect recent selections.
So, the one currently selected is darkest, and the last 2 or 3 have
darker shades.

--
Dmitry Jemerov
Development Lead
JetBrains, Inc.
http://www.jetbrains.com/
"Develop with Pleasure!"

After a year of working with IngelliJ I got quite used to the way its tabs work and using CTRL+tab (still with tabswitch plugin because intellij's now built-in ctrl+tab doesn't work if you accidently move the mouse one pixel while doing it).

But I'd still find that the tabs of IntelliJ would be improved a LOT if:

1) there's a single row of visible tabs, and a dropdown list to the right of the tabs

2) the visible row of tabs has the most recently viewed documents. If a new recently viewed document is added, then the rightmost visible tab goes into the dropdown list instead of remaining visibible (depending on how much space there is on screen)

3) the tabs in the dropdown list are always sorted alphabetically

4) there is no limit to how many tabs can be open: a few are visible horizontally, all the rest are in the dropdown

5) when opening a tab from the dropdown list, it is moved back to the visible row, to the leftmost position

Note: this is roughly the way visual studio works, and it's a very productive way. This is because the documents you're working on are always in a predictable order in a single row, and the documents you worked less recently on are sorted nicely alphabetically in a dropdown

Unfortunately no Linux text editor with multiple documents that I know has ever placed tabs that don't fit on screen anymore in a dropdown. They always either fill multiple rows of tabs (being confusing to find stuff in), use hard to use arrow navigation to go to "invisible" tabs, or close documents :(

Well, for me, having Tab Groups, like I can do with the Firefox Tab Groups addon, would make working on certain tasks so much easier and organized.

I put this out a while back, for what it is worth: http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/IDEA-12130


I had forgotten about it, until someone recently posted on it.