Put the tabs on the right

This is worth considering. We'd want to test it but I've been doing the same in my own themes as well. Moving them away from the title sets them apart from the title which is the main reason for people not seeing the tabs: they are overshadowed by the title. I think it's only Garland that the tabs are floated besides the title, in other themes they are underneath the title.

(A Garland specific issue is that the tabs are not designed as such, but look like plain links, this is a flaw in the Garland design)

It seems kind of pointless to suggest this idea without some data/evidence to back it up, though it doesn't hurt to talk about it.

As Yoroy has already mentioned, the Garland tabs aren't really tabs in the traditional sense, whether that's a flaw or not is subjective. In my opinion Garland is the only theme where the 'tabs' seem to work quite well when they're positioned on the right, I'd be against this idea if they were styled as common tabs (i.e. for other themes).

I've been showing people how to use Drupal for at least 13 months - all the while using a custom admin theme with tabs on the right. In contrast to that the front end theme always has tabs below the title and I've never seen people miss them, the admin tabs on the other hand will occasionally be overlooked by users.

One theory of why the tabs seem better on the right in Garland is because it forces them to stay in one fixed (consistent) place, as well as the already-mentioned fact that gives them more attention on the page.

For completeness, could someone provide a screenshot of how the secondary-level tabs look with this patch?

I think it's brilliant, and I've long wanted this. I was just too scared to change the tradition. +1

The concept of "Tabs" (Navigational elements) contradicts with the concept of "Local Tasks" (Actions on Object/s) and the Local Tasks API needs an overhaul IMO. This change may (or may not) be an improvement in the short term, but doesn't fix the larger more complex problem that actions should not be confused with navigational elements. If we can fix this, then the "Not seeing tabs" issue will also be made a LOT simpler.

I also agree with ernie, that tabs placed BELOW the Title are probably better-seen than tabs next to it or on the right. However what we all THINK is unimportant -- we should test this.

I suspect the coloring of the tabs may be affecting their invisibility. Zen's tabs result in really good visibility, IMHO.

The concept of "Tabs" (Navigational elements) contradicts with the concept of "Local Tasks" (Actions on Object/s) and the Local Tasks API needs an overhaul IMO. This change may (or may not) be an improvement in the short term, but doesn't fix the larger more complex problem that actions should not be confused with navigational elements. If we can fix this, then the "Not seeing tabs" issue will also be made a LOT simpler.

I don't understand this. Tabs must mean navigational elements? I think local tasks in the form of tabs works because of its placement and visual context. What I think would make more sense is having the local tasks very clear about what state it is in. Some themes do this better than others.

And about the tabs being on the far right.. What happens with sub-tasks? Sorry, I haven't had a chance to look but on first glance on the main tasks doesn't look like an improvement. It feels removed.

edit: Looking at the patch, the sub-tasks will be right aligned. I don't agree with this since the visual hierarchy becomes very odd.

With the overlay on and Seven set to the admin theme, I can't think of any reason that you would see the sub-task tabs. I had to set the admin theme to Garland and turn off overlay before I got to see what the tabs-on-the-right looks like for sub-tasks.

Here's the screenshot:

Considering sub-tasks are infrequent and don't appear by default, I'm personally fine with ignoring them when discussing this question.

Without usability testing, I'm still +1 for this patch. But some tests would be nice.

From my stand point this is RTBC. I personally think its much better then what we have.

And after seeing the usability testing of Garland's current tab arrangement, its impossible for Dmitri's patch to be worse then what we have!

Let's see what the test bot thinks first.

Its UI freeze, this improvement is very questionable this late in the cycle too.

patch does not apply anymore. Does anyone still care about garland?

I'm marking this as postponed, pending the decision to remove Garland from Drupal 8. #911054: Remove Garland from Core
If Garland is moved from core to contribute in D8 then this issue/suggestion can be closed and moved to the theme's issue queue.

I think the current focus for Garland D8 should be to do a straight port of the D7 version. Once that works, we can think about improvements. Hence marking as postponed.

Moving this to the 2.x branch.

Personally, I always found Seven theme's tabs on the right really easy to miss, because I look at the page title.