Are there examples of separately grouped tabs?

[jdiewald]

My application has two basic groups of operations, that I'd like to control under a tabbed widget. Logically, there are a handful of operations under group One and a separate handful of operations under group Two. Thus, the logical set of tabs would be "One A", "One B", "Two A" and "Two B". What I'd really like to do is to have the tabs for One be on the left side of the tab widget, and the tabs for Two be on the right side of the widget, like the attached image.

This does not appear to be supported using the basic tab widgets, as far as I can tell.

Has anyone done anything like this? Do you have any code to share?

Thanks,
Jeff

[franz]

I'd look for a different way of separation. I don't think this will be intuitive. Would the Qt Creator options pages setup be suitable for you?

[jdiewald]

Showing paper prototypes to users suggests that they understand the intent of the tab organization. It makes sense in the given context, and more sense than other configurations I've tried - but I'm always open to other suggestions.

I am not, however, familiar with Qt Creator. I've opened it up on my Windows box and I'm not sure what you mean by "options pages setup." Can you be more specific about how to get to the place you've suggested?

Thanks,
Jeff

[franz]

Tools -> options. They have a list view with several items available. Each item provides access to a tabbed set. You might be able to label your semantic separation with this kind of setup.

[jdiewald]

Unfortunately, the options setup mechanism doesn't work for what I'm after, unless I can turn it 90 degrees to minimize its width.

I'm building the navigation mechanism for a schizophrenic application - it really has multiple personalities. The tab bar - the tabs of One A, One B, Two A, and Two B - form the gross navigational choices - each one identifies one part of the application. The tab widget part - what's under the tab - is the more specialized navigation for that part of the application, and is quite involved in each case. There's little commonality between each tab other than the fact that they all drive navigation, which is why the tab metaphor is appropriate. The functions for group One are related and need to be together. The functions for group Two are related, but very different from group One, which is why I want some separation. The navigation mechanisms are all independent, and only one is needed at a time. (e.g. one is devices on a network, another is records in a database, etc.)

Choosing a navigation mechanism defines what's going to be visible in all of the rest of the application window. I need as much space as possible for displaying the appropriate data. Thus, the navigation area must be tall and narrow, to allow for as much horizontal space as possible for the rest of the application.

The number of navigation choices is static for the lifetime of the application, so I don't have to worry about tabs appearing and disappearing.

grossStructure.png