Reproduction steps:
Result:
The projects open each in their own window.
Expected:
Same state having tabs in one window as before quitting Scrivener3.
I think this is a serious usability issue, regarding that Scrivener is much about having the working environment the way the user wants and being very customizable. It’s very inconvenient having to drag the tabs into one window after each start.
I’m not commenting on the feature request (not sure it’s a bug, just a different design decision perhaps?) as I don’t use tabs.
But did you know you don’t have to drag the windows onto each other?
When Scrivener has opened all the projects, just select Window > Merge All Windows in one of them and they’ll all be collapsed into different tabs in that one window.
It’s still an extra step for you, but at least it’s not as bad as having to do it manually.
(BTW, do you have Keyboard Maestro? It would be trivial in KM to chain these two actions (open Scrivener then merge all windows) into one keystroke.)
This is complicated by the fact that Scrivener is (a) has multiple window types (project/Quick Reference) and (b) is not a standard window = document type program, such as Pages, Scapple, TextEdit and so forth. Programs such as those get the behaviour you describe for free—the operating system handles tabs from top to bottom.
We’d have to somehow replicate that code by hand, and given the tools available for working with tabs, it’s not obvious how to do so.
Thanks to @brookter for the tip – I wasn’t aware of this possibility.
I’d rather see it fixed eventually, though, since using tabs is so commonplace by now.
No problem — glad it’s a useful workaround.
I never used tabs if I can help it though – they’re ok in a browser but for most applications I use, I want to be able to see more than one window at once…