[whatwg] Proposal for a tab visibility API

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 12/20/10 10:21 AM, Alex Komoroske wrote:
> I'm not sure that I understand the point of confusion.  When I say
> 'tab', I mean the current UI construct implemented in Firefox, Safari,
> Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, and others.

I think the point of confusion is that you think this UI construct is an 
important fundamental, whereas others thing it's not.

> Each window can have one
> or more tabs, and in curent implementations (with very few exceptions),
> each window can only have a single visible tab.

As you note, there are exceptions.  What makes you think that two years 
from now the now-common case won't be the exception?

It would be preferable to define whatever visibility API is defined 
without reference to tabs; they're a possibly-transient implementation 
detail.  For example, Firefox on mobile has different rendering areas, 
etc, but they're not surfaced as "tabs" to the user; the UI looks and 
acts totally different, last I checked (and is implemented quite 
differently, iirc).

-Boris