The Tabs menu

The Tabs menu

It's one of the features of 4Pane that you're not restricted to just those four panes; you can have up to 26 different four-pane pages, or Tabs. Each of these can have its own individual orientation, pane sizes and contents. When created, they are named "Page 1", "Page 2" etc, but you can rename each tab as you wish.

Wouldn't it be nice if, having created a set of Tabs that suits you, you could save the combination and reload it another time. Well, you can. A set is called a Tab Template, and you can have up to 26 of them, each with up to 26 pages. So you can have a template that contains the folders where your pictures are stored; another for your music...

Back to the menu. The first five items are almost self-explanatory. New creates a new Tab, Delete deletes the currently-selected one. These actions are also available from the toolbar. Insert inserts a new tab immediately after the currently-selected one. Rename renames the current tab, and Duplicate duplicates it.

The next two items configure the page's appearance. Show even single Tab Head means that, even if the current page is the only one, show its tab bit anyway. This is off by default. Give all Tab Heads equal Width does what it says, even if some names are much longer than others (NB this isn't available when using gtk3).

Finally, three items that deal with Tab Templates. Load a Tab Template opens a submenu that holds any templates that you've stored. Save Layout as Template saves the current Tab setup as a template. Delete a Template opens a dialog that allows you to delete one or more of your templates.

Most of these menu-items also feature on the Tab Context menu, that you can open by right-clicking on a Tab head.