'File ▸ New Tab' menu how?

General
1

When on a Mac document-based application, even the ones made with Xojo, if you press the option key (⌥) when you select the ‘File ▸ New’ menu, you get a new tab rather than a new window. This is cool but how you can create a ‘File ▸ New tab’ menu that emulates that? I know it is a macOS preference and you can set all apps to default to tabs. My question is about creating a menu to do it directly with a menu.

I don’t think this is even possible on Windows :thinking:

Thanks,
stan

2

Apple’s Tabbing system was designed to work with “Document” based applications, created with Apple’s own developer tools. As such they’re more complicated to implement correctly with apps made using other tools.

Some of the functionality is available, but not all of it. With elbow grease, it is possible to fill in the gaps to make a Xojo built application support most of the required functionality (I have done a lot of it in the past). However there are some things to consider.

  1. Like you say, you’ll also need to provide a solution for Windows yourself.
  2. Apple’s tabbing system is NOT supported by Xojo, so there can be problems if you try to go this on your own, it requires modifying things behind Xojo’s back.
  3. Window Restoration gets a lot more complicated with tabs, especially if you have different types of Windows, I have never gotten Apple’s Window Restoration to work 100% in a Xojo made application, and I never completed an upgrade to my own window restoration solution for tabs. Simply due to the lack of demand, and effort required.

Most x-plat developers prefer to roll their own solution so it will work on all supported platforms.

3

One Windows ‘semi-equivalent’ is the MDI model.
(Which oddly always felt like each app was emulating its own Mac screen… a big bounding window containing several resizable document windows all sharing the same menu.)

1 Like
4

MDI is definitely obsolete.

1 Like
5

Perhaps you could get an approximation with a tab panel. But natively, Windows windows (!) don’t have the notion of tab.

6

TabPanel on Windows does not support dark mode.

7

Then it seems container controls are in order.

Although I don’t really believe into forcing macOS style design into Windows.