More Mac-like tabs

Posted by admin, March 23, 2009

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Part of my New Years resolution was to increase platform fidelity – that is, to make MATLAB fit in better with it’s host operating system. One particular thing that had been bothering me in R2008b and earlier, was the look of the tabs in the MATLAB Editor on the Mac. They just didn’t look right – they were more like buttons than tabs, and they stood out like a sore thumb.

I decided to freshen up the look of the tabs on the Mac, by doing the following:

Use more Mac-like close buttons (the little round “x” below)
Add a subtle highlight gradient on mouse-over
Add a dark inverse gradient for the selected tab

Here is a look at the old tabs, and then the new:

Old Editor tabs on the Mac (R2008b and earlier)

New Editor tabs on the Mac (R2009a)

While this may seem like an insignificant detail, it is the sum of many such details that make an app “fit in”. We’re constantly receiving requests to make MATLAB feel more like a Mac app on the Mac, and I promise, we’re trying very hard to do that.