| Tab (gui) |
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Information AboutTab (gui) |
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In Graphical User Interface s, a tab is a navigational Widget for switching between Documents . It is traditionally designed as a text Label within a rectangular box with its top borders rounded. Activating a tab (usually by a Mouse click) makes its associated document visible and the tab itself usually becomes highlighted to distinguish it from other inactive tabs. Generally, only one tab can be active at a time. GUI tabs are modeled after traditional card tabs inserted in paper files or card indexes and thus they are often employed to give the user interface a more "natural" look. USAGE Tabs in modern GUI s were introduced by IBM Common User Access . They became widely used to make option-laden Dialog Box es easier to understand and navigate. They were designed to group similar or related options into one tab pane. Later, some applications base their main interaction on tabs, using a Tabbed Document Interface . Browsers In the last few years, Tabbed Document Interface s have also become quite popular in Web Browser s, where they are used to switch between different Webpage s without having to switch top-level windows. Tabs are now supported by all major browsers. With the exception of Opera 4 and up, tabs in these browsers are Orthogonal to top-level windows, which means they may be seen as a supplementary rather than competing way of opening numerous browser windows at the same time. Numerous special functions in association with browser tabs have emerged since then, for example the ability to re-order tabs (e.g. in Internet Explorer 7 , Safari 3 , Opera , Konqueror , and Firefox , as well as Mozilla with suitable extensions), and to bookmark all of the webpages opened in tab panes in a given window in a group or bookmark folder (as well as the ability to reopen them all at the same time). Links can most often be opened in several modes, using different user interface options and commands:
PATENT DISPUTE Adobe Systems holds Patent s in the United States and Europe on certain uses of GUI tabs for a "Method of displaying multiple sets of information in the same area of a computer screen", which are widely held to be Trivial Patent s. Some argue that there was clear Prior Art , in both GUI and text-mode user interfaces. Adobe used these patents to sue Macromedia Inc. for employing tabs in its Macromedia Flash product. Adobe won the case and $2.8 million in damages. However, Macromedia initiated a Countersuit which ended in a $4.9 million ruling against Adobe. The suits were settled on undisclosed terms.1 In 2005, Adobe ended further dispute between the two companies when it bought Macromedia for roughly $3.4 billion. On April 18 , 2007 the intellectual property agency IP Innovation LLC and its parent Technology Licensing Corporation filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc. regarding its infringement upon a US Patent originally filed by Xerox researchers in 1987. for a "User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects"2 REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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