Thread here requested (and got) MRU tab-switching using ctrl-tab. But it wasn’t implemented properly.
Ctrl-tab-tab places me on the second most recently used. So far so good.
But at that stage, the most recent tab has changed. MRU is the tab I was on when I ctrl-tab-tabbed. So when I ctrl-tab I expect it should go back to that, but instead ctrl-tab switches me to the tab I was on two ago.
Microsoft Windows’ alt-tab-tab is the model. Alt-tab doesn’t actually change the app. It gives a preview of the app that will be changed to. So Alt-tab-tab doesn’t actually change to the intermediate app en-route, it changes straight to the app MRU-but-one and updates the recent-used list. The app I was on when I alt-tab-tabbed becomes MRU, so alt-tabbing takes me straight back to it. Hence I can easily toggle between the two apps I want.
Brave doesn’t necessarily need to implement a “preview” of tabs in MRU order like Windows. When ctrl-tab-tabbing (or ctrl-tab-tab-tab, etc) Brave could simply not adjust MRU order until the ctrl key is unpressed. At that stage the tab I was on when I ctrl-tab-tabbed becomes MRU. This would fix.
Hope I’ve described this clearly. Essentially, it needs to work like MRU tab switching does in most other UIs\OSs. Brave isn’t truly MRU at the moment.
I am planning to migrate from Vivaldi to Brave because the Ctrl-Tab switching logic for Vivaldi works in an unpredictable way, it has been faulty for years and no promise for fixing it.
Brave’s logic seems to be predictable but faulty, like described above.
I hope my below description to reproduce it helps understanding and fixing the problem. In order to see, do this:
start the browser with 1 tab
press Ctrl+Tab (on Windows) 3 times, you will have 4 tabs, #4 is active.
press Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+Tab: it alternates between #3 and #4: good.
when on #4, press Ctrl+Tab+Tab (keep Ctrl pressed and press Tab twice): it goes to tab #2: good
press Ctrl-Tab: it goes to #3: bad, it should go to #4.
I understand the logic: because I saw #3 before arrived to #2, therefore, it is logical to go to #3.
But this is not what I want. If I am on #4, I want to go to #2 without touching #3, and want to alternate between #2 and #4 after that. Now I cannot do this.
There should be a way to alternate between #2 and #4, which I cannot do now without touching the mouse.
The list of visited tabs should be updated not after every press of Tab but after every release of Ctrl. I selected a new tab (#2) when I decided to stay there (when I released Ctrl), not when I was at #3 on the way from #4 to #2.
I hope this explanation helps and the bug gets fixed soon. I really would like to migrate to Brave.
It is strange to see that Firefox is the only browser doing this task correctly. It seems to be easy, yet, most of the browsers don’t support it at all, or does it with annoying bugs.