There’s no question that tabbed interfaces – be they in a web browser or chat application – help to streamline multitasking and window management.
VoIP application Skype, seemingly seeing the benefits of such interfaces, recently introduced ‘all-in-one’ windows into their Windows and OS X clients. Skype for Linux on the other hand still sports the traditional multi-window interface.
SkypeTab enables tabbed conversations in Skype on Linux
Enter a new project called ‘SkypeTab’ by kekekeks, which is able to ‘force’ Skype into using an all-in-one tabbed interface. New conversations, instead of appearing as new windows, instead appear in tabs: –
SkypeTab achieves this by using the ’Xephyr’ X-server to manage Skype’s window. Whilst this results in some screen-flicker as new chats are opened, and subsequently forced into a ‘tab’, the ease of use in using Skype with tabs is undeniably neat.
Download
SkypeTab, available for Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04, can be installed by adding ‘ppa:keks9n/main‘ to your Software Sources.
Update/refresh, then head to the Ubuntu Software Centre and search for, and proceed to install, ‘Skype Tab‘.
Alternatively issue the following two commands in a Terminal:
- sudo add-apt-repository ppa:keks9n/main
- sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skypetab
Remember that while we do our best to make sure PPAs we promote don’t do anything malicious once installed, the responsibility for your computer lies solely with you. Install at your own risk!
Usage
Once installed (see above) you will need to run ‘SkypeTab’ before launching Skype to enable the tabbed interface.
As with all applications and PPAs not provided by Canonical or the Ubuntu Community users use them at their own risk.