Detach windows

Detach windows

In Opera 9.27 and below there was feature where the user could drag the window out of the Opera program and make it a separate floating window which worked independently of the Opera program. Alternatively you could use the Detach command from Opera's menu system in Linux, which if you customized could be added to the menu systems of other platforms. This feature called Detach was removed in Opera 9.50 and made an alias for New Window. I would like to request that Detach be reintroduced into Opera. If the autosaving of sessions is a problem with this feature then I would ask that the detached status be ignored in the autosave.win session file or perhaps session files in general.

I second my support for this! It was a great feature and one of the reasons I loved Opera and I am really sad to see it go.

Supported! I am bitterly in need of that...
... and it's so simple to implement: allow for any restored page to float freely (same as the bookmark dialog is allowed) i.e. only one window property has to be set accordingly...

Main problem was people in SDI mode (usually) who had a detached popup, then closed the main window before the popup. When they restart they have a window with no menu, no panels ...

Someone else had a good suggestion though. Why not close all detached tabs whenever the last window is closed?

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Why not close all detached tabs whenever the last window is closed?

This is what I would expect anyway, as it was before, it was always somewhat awkward...
... you were loosing your automatic old session restore feature,
e.g. having opened always some standard sites in OPERA's normal window, if you forgot an open detached window.

An information message however would be useful: "Attention: detached windows still open! Continue?"

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

An information message however would be useful: "Attention: detached windows still open! Continue?"

Not a bad idea

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

An information message however would be useful: "Attention: detached windows still open! Continue?"

btw: in 9.5 you can reopen windows from the trash bin in the tab bar.
but such a message would be usefull, too. but only if the detach function gets reimplemented

so +1 for this old feature

Originally posted by Ömmes:

btw: in 9.5 you can reopen windows from the trash bin in the tab bar

Thats' true, but if there are only detached (bare) windows left, there's no tab bar any more, one could use...

I think detached windows should have all their toolbars hidden, but when the window they came from is closed, all toolbars from the main window appear on its detached ones, both problems solved

Only thing still keeping me away from 9.5x...
Bring my detachable tabs back !

Detach Try this button.

Detach page,,,,"Cascade" & Restore Window & Set alignment, "pagebar", 0 & Set alignment, "browser toolbar", 0

I really need this old functionality back, the new way of working is useless to me.

Originally posted by shoust:

I think detached windows should have all their toolbars hidden, but when the window they came from is closed, all toolbars from the main window appear on its detached ones, both problems solved

But as an option only, please...

I'll explain a bit more in detail...

I always had several detached (bare) windows open on a second, auxiliary monitor: bookmarks manager as well as notes and transfer manager, additionally the windows panel, plus sometimes multiple notes panels.
I also tried with another, second screen on that second monitor created by a virtual screen manager having a separate virtual screen for all mail administration purposes, switchable to the foreground by one push of a button.

If now I erroneously would close the primary browser instances on my first, main monitor, then all of a sudden my whole configuration on the other monitor would track this by changing all the windows. Nothing what I would like to see...

M/B only one detached window could do this, and should immediately and automatically revert to normal, when a new primary browser window gets created again?

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

Originally posted by Ömmes:

btw: in 9.5 you can reopen windows from the trash bin in the tab bar

Thats' true, but if there are only detached (bare) windows left, there's no tab bar any more, one could use...

Just open a new window (ctrl+n) and you have the tab bar back to open the old window

Originally posted by Ömmes:

Just open a new window (ctrl+n) and you have the tab bar back to open the old window

This is possible, certainly.
But it's a NEW window then W/O all those semi-permanent pages I've normally opened, such as real-time exchange rate, dictionary list, etc.
Normally I don't close that 'last window' at all, but it happened to me by unattentiveness, and then everything got complicated...

I would have to fetch this 'last window' then from trash in a scond step, therefore a warning-message (like that proposition of mine) would come in really handy...

@Pesala : Dragging a tab outside of Opera does the exact same thing than your button ! No, what I -and others I suppose- want back is the ability to have a tab freely floating without any container or menus like it used to be in 9.27.

Originally posted by alicroche:

what I -and others I suppose- want back is the ability to have a tab freely floating without any container or menus like it used to be in 9.27

EXACTLY! Thanks for supporting that wish...

I'm not quite sure what wanting the windows without all the GUI elements has to do with detatching them. It seems like a better option would be a "hide GUI" button which would hide everything except the address bar and a "restore GUI" button next to the address bar. That way nobody would need to worry about which is the "main" window versus which is a "detatched" window. They're all just independent windows, with the GUI showing on the ones where you want it and not on the ones where you don't.

At any rate, I hope if they do bring back the old behavior of detatching windows, they make it optional. I like the new version of detatching, where we get a complete new window with all of its GUI elements.

OK, OK I see.
There's always someone who's 'opposing' the mainstream...
... but to clean-up with any confusions which might rule here, I would like to recall some definitions:

Until now, detaching was an operation which detached a page (or tab) or a panel from OPERA's main window,
thus removing the bounds for these elements from OPERA's main window.
Such pages could include OPERA managers (mail, bookmark, transfer etc.) as well as ordinary web-pages displaying contents from a web-site.
Thus these detached pages were allowed freely floating around the screen, leaving the limits of OPERA's main window.
They could even be transferred to other (virtual) screens or other monitors. Same as every ordinary Windows window...

Additionally there always were separate OPERA windows possible, fully-fledged extra windows, clones from OPERA's main window to a certain extent.
These had all the elements as OPERA's main window, such as panels, toolbars, menus, etc.pp.

Recently now OPERA started calling an operation, where a certain page or tab (which are used as identical terms - tab however is an unclear designation and used also in a flawed manner, because it's not only used for the handle of the page shown in the page bar, it's used as substitute for the whole page instead; 'pars pro toto' is the underlying method applied) has been transferred into a completely new OPERA window by one single operation. They falsely called this detaching, which is plain wrong.
Those operations are generally called spawning in informatics, nothing else, only two separate actions, namely creating a new OPERA window and moving (e.g. with the help of OPERA's window panel) said certain page or tab into this new OPERA window, have been forged into a single action.

This has it's own value, sure - and people would certainly love to use it, but the value of said new spawning operation has almost nothing or very little to do with the benefits of said original detaching operation.

I hope things are now a little clearer...
Both operations are of their own value, however.

Originally posted by alicroche:

@Pesala : Dragging a tab outside of Opera does the exact same thing than your button ! No, what I -and others I suppose- want back is the ability to have a tab freely floating without any container or menus like it used to be in 9.27.

My button produces a detached new window without any toolbars, which can float outside the Opera Window. Detached Window.png

So what can't it do that detached tabs used to do?

Would you like it always on top, and transparent? Transparent Window.png

I see your images, great, but that button of yours doesn't simply do that here...
I've always toolbars, panels and all that stuff included.
What am I doing wrongly?

Please post the code of that button here, separately between code tags, I should compare what I've got here M/B?

Improved version of pesala's button.

Detach

Hides menu bar, address bar and hotlist too.

Originally posted by shoust:

Improved version of pesala's button.
...
Hides menu bar, address bar and hotlist too.

Great, thanks a lot...
Real progress, indeed!
But you know me, how about the personal bar, and the status bar, they are still there...
SORRY!

One remark:
after using that button every new page opened in OPERA window has lost its address-bar, why is that?

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

where a certain page or tab (which are used as identical terms - tab however is an unclear designation and used also in a flawed manner

Hence why I titled this thread Detach windows. I love Saddle Magic's line, "Calling a "page" a "tab" is a concession to the illiterate and another sign of the Apocalypse."

@Pesala and shoust
Thanks for your work on recreating the detaching behaviour .

You really shouldn't need to hide the address bar - I mean, detached tabs should have the address bar in the same state as the original tab, yes?

As far as the page/tab thing - a page is a document, that is a web page. Conversely a tab is that area on the tab bar, neither the document nor the document window. But we don't have a term - except document window - for what we're all talking about here.

(Similarly, I've decided that I'll use the term "access point" for the entries in the mail panel, and "view" for the actual message lists. The Received view is a mail window showing the messages in the Received access point. Well, it makes sense to me. Hey - maybe we should call the document window a view! )

Of course, there's still the size problem. Dragging a restored popup out of Opera's window results in a window the same size as Opera's window, not the original size.

Hmm, neither of these buttons seem to do the trick for me. I am trying to detach the Slamtracker from www.wimbledon.org.

Does it work for anyone else?

Originally posted by Ceri:

Does it work for anyone else?

Yes it does, but it is not straightforward because it is a Javascript popup window.

• Open the page
  
• Detach the tab in a new Opera window with no toolbars (Shoust's button hides most toolbars)
  
• Resize the window
  
• Maximise the popup window within the detached window.

+1.

Another case (I've just been reading through records of the successful revolt against elimination of View bar & responsive keyboard) where dumbing the interface down to avoid confusing noobs has aroused protest from experienced users. And the usual principle is valid: make the noob-obvious form the default if you must, but keep the powerful form as an option. (Training wheels are great - if they're removable.)

Steve: "pane" seems like the right term within the metaphor: physically, it refers to an unsegmented panel within a window.

And: a "show/hide controls" toggle on the browser window context menu, though not completely obvious to those stumped by the lack of visible controls, would be sensible and simple. (Address bar is not reliably visible - there's nowhere to put a button to make it completely obvious.)

let us write a widgetto solve the problem

Having looked at this more closely, it's clear that there's some confusion about how bad the new function is: it's worse than people think, and harder to fix. The current Detach function - and the buttons offered here - don't work properly if pane one wishes to detach is non-maximized: they spawn a new browser window - in the foreground, blocking your view - with a smaller pane floating inside it. (Pesala: it's not javascript which necessitates those steps with Slamtracker - it's the fact that it's not maximized.)

If you restore this pane, and resize it to about 1/3 of the window, then detach, here's what you get:



To get to a real detached floating pane, you must not only suppress UI features, but also maximize the pane within its window, and then resize the window to the original dimensions of the pane.

The old function was pretty darn good. It did all that. It really worked, whether the pane was full-window or not: preserved pane dimensions, and was conceptually coherent as the liberation of an established object. Real shame if they just throw that away. Just not looking closely and thnking carefully, I'm afraid.

Here, here!

A pane has the panel feature, the main bar, personal bar, tab bar and status bar disabled. If you have a window with two tabs and select arange and cascade or tile you have dragable panes inside the window. You just can't drag it outside anymore. If you select "Appearence", guess what? You get a floating pane. So the code is still there.....

I second the request for a way to re-enable this feature in some way including something you have to do in opera:config, if they have a support issues.

"Appearance" is a dialog, like Preferences or Save. It has never been a tab. A better example, sort of, is Dragonfly - at least that's actually in Opera's window and can be detached..

Another vote here for providing a means to detach panes per 9.27.

I used to use Non-Troppo's Breeze Simplified Native Micro skin (until that was broken by 9.5) because I don't want too much oversized window furniture so to have a whole new window forced upon me when I detach a pane (MDI configuration) is a double slap in the face which is made even worse if that pane is fairly small in relation to the window.

Being forced to adjust my way of working to meet the changing demands/behaviours of my browser is not, I'd previously thought, what Opera is all about.

In all the bleating concerning Chrome/Chromium there can be found mention of tabs being detached and re-attached. I haven't tried it for myself but the odd screenshot indicates that it's not unlike the way a pane used to be detached in Opera - no wrapping of overweight window furniture in another window but just a simple detached pane.

How sad that Google saw fit to copy this handy feature while Opera chose to abandon it.

MDI is one of the few special features that still keeps Opera as my browser of choice but detached panes brings other browsers quite some way towards mimicking MDI in practice. "Follower" tabs could work well in MDI - but since they don't survive closing the browser their true utility is limited so losing them wouldn't be such a hardship. My tie to Opera is being weakened as decisions are made to remove features and/or not address long-standing bugs.

I would like to have the old detach function too. Presently, with Opera 9.50, when I detach a tab, it is not resized and comes with all the bars. And it doesn't consider the new position of my cursor when I drop. It just opens a new full-sized window in the same screen as main window.

Is it possible to have the new Opera 9.50 detach function by default, with an option to choose the old Opera 9.27 detach mode ?

And now, with Google Chrome, there is such feature that you can create a shortcut to a page that opens Chrome with no toolbar, no address bar, nothing, just the page covering the full window space.

Thinking for one second, this was exactly what "Detach" feature did, on Opera 9.27.

MAYBE it could be "enough" to have a button, or menu item, or something, called "Hide UI". It shoudl hide all toolbars and panel from current window. This way, we have basically the same feature. (of course, a complementary "Show UI" is needed to restore everything back to normal).

Originally posted by CrazyTerabyte:

...MAYBE it could be "enough" to have a button, or menu item, or something, called "Hide UI". It shoudl hide all toolbars and panel from current window. This way, we have basically the same feature. (of course, a complementary "Show UI" is needed to restore everything back to normal).

NOT "enough"! There would remain the important issue of maintaining the size of the pane for MDI users. I really don't see that the 9.27 behaviour was flawed (despite being able to close the last window while detached panes were still open as a session file for one's "standard" setup could overcome that). Quite why the decision was made to break it is beyond me. What new feature mandated that detached panes be abandoned? Is it (along with the failure to make "follower" tabs survive closure of Opera) a pointer to the abandonment of MDI so that Opera becomes just another tabbed browser?

Rather than create new code to (partly) imitate the 9.27 behaviour, it would surely be better if the 9.27 code were re-enabled and that functionality provided as an option.

I'm currently disentangling my email from Opera 9.52 so that I can revert to using 9.27 even though it means losing the full HistorySearch functionality.

Originally posted by CrazyTerabyte:

MAYBE it could be "enough" to have a button, or menu item, or something, called "Hide UI".

I use this button (customized a button from someone's else post): SM

+1 to the first post.

Originally posted by HaJotKE:

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Why not close all detached tabs whenever the last window is closed?

This is what I would expect anyway, as it was before, it was always somewhat awkward...
... you were loosing your automatic old session restore feature,
e.g. having opened always some standard sites in OPERA's normal window, if you forgot an open detached window.

An information message however would be useful: "Attention: detached windows still open! Continue?"

This is how it should work!

Edit: There used to be an option in Opera 6 to open transfer window "outside the browser". This was removed in version 7 and I immediately began to miss it. All detachable windows should work this way.

Originally posted by bpm:

The old function was pretty darn good. It did all that. It really worked, whether the pane was full-window or not: preserved pane dimensions, and was conceptually coherent as the liberation of an established object. Real shame if they just throw that away. Just not looking closely and thnking carefully, I'm afraid.

The old function was badly broken. If you closed the main Window before the detached tab, and had Opera set to start from last time, you would find yourself in a right pickle. Opera were right to throw away this feature, which was not well thought out in the first place.

Shoust's button works well enough in most cases. If you have to maximize a tab and resize the window, it is not exactly a disaster. Perhaps some users will also want some toolbars in the detached window. They can have them too if they have suitable shortcuts or mouse gestures to show/hide them.

Originally posted by ersi:

here used to be an option in Opera 6 to open transfer window "outside the browser". This was removed in version 7 and I immediately began to miss it.

No problem. You can detach the Transfers window. With the help of PowerMenu you can also keep it always on top. Transfers Window.png

There were straightforward ways of handling the problematic case without destroying a valued feature, Pesala. Four people in this thread describe options. Turin said: change resume so that it always opens MDI windows. HaJoTKE said: add a prompt to prevent the SDI-only state from inadvertently developing. Shoust said: automatically MDI-ify orphaned SDI windows. I said: put an MDI/SDI toggle on the context menu.

Here's another, with the virtue of not imposing anything a user may not want or requiring awareness of non-obvious options: put in a prompt: "You are re-opening a session with only detached windows, and no access to toolbars. Would you like to open a full-featured window as well?" The narrow flaw precisely fixed, and nothing sacrificed.

MDI: multiple-document interface. SDI: single-document interface

Originally posted by bpm:

HaJoTKE said: add a prompt to prevent the SDI-only state from inadvertently developing.

Originally posted by bpm:

put in a prompt: "You are re-opening a session with only detached windows, and no access to toolbars. Would you like to open a full-featured window as well?"

Prompts to warn users that they are about to do something stupid are not as good as preventing them from doing something stupid in the first place. It merely slows down experienced users, and noobies will just click OK and end up in the same pickle as before. Try to come up with a solution that is idiot-proof.

What exactly is the problem with opening a new window? If you detach a tab, you're probably going to resize it and move it anyway. With a custom button the user can decide which toolbars, if any, to have in the detached window.

Idiot-proof solutions are easy to specify; Shoust gave one which prevents the SDI-only state from occurring. Another: when re-opening SDI-only sessions, simply include an empty MDI window without a prompt. That is actually quite decent, because an expert who indeed wants the SDI-only session can get it with one more click - no worse than answering a prompt.

As for why we like the old form, it has been amply explained, in this thread and also this one: Opera's lost features, which should really come back? An elegant and useful feature; a refinement which makes things a little bit easier. Not a matter of life and death, of course - but valued by many.

Originally posted by Pesala:

Shoust's button works well enough in most cases. If you have to maximize a tab and resize the window, it is not exactly a disaster.

There is another thing lost with the drag out : the jevascript title of the window. And it's precisely why I used this feature. To detach a tab in a window, and use this window from the parent URL, to load new content (an example is available with the "enlarge image" feature" of http://www.amazon.com ). Now Amazon open a new tab every time I try to view a product larger view, if old one was detached.

Wow! Another tread about the same issue... Take my +100!
Here are two more:
Detach command not working properly
Detached tab functionality killed with 9.5/9.6

Note that peregrine is maximizing the tab automatically. It's not like having the old functionality back, but it is somewhat better than 9.5 was.

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

Note that peregrine is maximizing the tab automatically. It's not like having the old functionality back, but it is somewhat better than 9.5 was.

I don't see any differences. Cold you clarify more?

this is working in 9.64 and up

Just clik and drag the tab you want to the outside of the window and you now have a new window (aka "Detach windows").
Also you can drag tabs form window to window if you have 2 or more opera windows open.

new window.bmp

Originally posted by pokemoncatdog:

this is working in 9.64 and up

No it isn't! Dragging a tab outside the Opera window merely creates a whole new Opera window - it does NOT create a floating pane as used to be the case and as is explained in this topic.

As your bmp suggest that you use the simple tabbed SDI mode then I suppose that it might appear to you to be working (after a fashion) - but use MDI mode with panes of various sizes within the Opera window and you'll see that it definitely isn't!

+1

Please bring back detach like it was on 9.27