Tab thumbnails

What features would you like to see in Pixelmator Pro?
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2021-05-10 20:08:35

It would be awesome if thumbnail previews appeared when hovering over tabs, like Safari added in Big Sur.
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2021-05-12 12:08:55

There isn't currently an API for third-party developers that would allow this but I really like the idea, if you ask me! :ok_hand:
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2021-05-27 01:24:21

Thumbnails should be displayed in the tabs at all times. Perhaps having them zoom a bit larger when hovering would be a nice bonus, but it should always be possible to tell what's in what tab at a glance.

At this moment my tab bar looks like this:
Image
This is not useful.
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2021-05-27 08:38:33

It would be OK to show thumbnails for 4, 5, or 6 tabs but it would probably get quite cluttered with 20 or 40 of them open. It's a tricky addition from the design side of things. At the moment, Show All Tabs from the View menu should be pretty close to what you're looking for. You can use the Command + Shift + \ shortcut to quickly switch to this tab viewing mode.
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2021-05-27 12:43:09

by Aurelija 2021-05-27 12:38:33 It would be OK to show thumbnails for 4, 5, or 6 tabs but it would probably get quite cluttered with 20 or 40 of them open.
Perhaps. But it is standard practice for a UI to adapt as element size changes. And so, perhaps when the tab width gets below a certain size (due to crowding) then you hide the thumbnail, and the user will have to rely on "Show all tabs".

On the other hand, in cases where there is extreme tab crowding, the thumbnail (however small) might often be a more useful label on the tab than whatever little snippet of the name is going to fit. This is why browsers typically keep the favicons in the tabs, even while the page name gets truncated down to nothing. Pinned tabs in Chrome/Edge *only* show the favicon, ever, and it's useful a glance.

Admittedly, thumbnails of large images would need to be larger than a favicon in order to be useful. Paint.net uses 68x68 thumbnails exclusively instead of names on tabs, and it generally works well. If there are too many open at once to fit, the thumbnail list scrolls. That *is* annoying, because, Paint.net doesn't offer the ability to split some tabs off into a separate window, as Pixelmator Pro does.

(note I often use Paint.net for comparison because I'm so intimately familiar with it. In many ways it is a less powerful program than Pixelmator Pro, but its UI is exceptionally consistent and well thought-out, almost shockingly so for a freeware Windows app).

Anyway, it seems like a solvable problem, *if* you believe that it is a problem worth solving.
At the moment, Show All Tabs from the View menu should be pretty close to what you're looking for. You can use the Command + Shift + \ shortcut to quickly switch to this tab viewing mode.
That is certainly a good feature (and I didn't know about it so thank you :)) but it's not the same as having the information in front of you at all times.