Tabs Studio Blog (organizing Visual Studio document tabs)

When many tabs are opened they are not used equally. Some are used more often, some have been used recently. It would be nice to highlight these more used tabs to reduce time to look for them among less used tabs. Thus, I was thinking about adding tab rating indexes for usage frequency and recent usage. These ratings would be implemented as tab control properties and would be available for styling.

On the other hand, there is a risk to create too much distracting workspace and there is uncertainty whether it would be helpful at all. So, to experiment with this idea a little I’ve added IsPreviouslySelectedTab property that is true for the previously selected tab. Default style doesn’t change color for previously selected tab, but custom styling with this property works exactly the same as with IsTabSelected property:

<Style TargetType="TabsStudio:Tab" BasedOn="{StaticResource DefaultTabStyle}">
    <Style.Triggers>
        <Trigger Property="IsPreviouslySelectedTab" Value="True">
            <Setter Property="Background" Value="#F5F5FF"/>
        </Trigger>
    </Style.Triggers>
</Style>

Oftentimes you can switch to previously selected tab using standard Ctrl+Tab shortcut. But not always, as previous Ctrl+Tab window can be an extension on the currently selected tab for example. Plus, when you close selected or previously selected tab, current implementation doesn’t show next previously selected tab.