I was replying to the following comment by Bruno Rodrigues in the Firefox tab annoyances post, but I think that this deserves a new post; it’s a different subject, and longer than an average comment. 
Uhhh? Obviously everyone *knew* that triple-click-control-middle-abcde-enter-enter-space(*) with your leg above your back would close a tab. What would *you* be thinking about? If Apple has close buttons on each tab, and not a single close at the right side, nor no-buttons at all, what do you think is the best user experience?
(*) did you know that most computer-savy users *still* don’t know about the right mouse button? Unbelievable, but true.
Two big problems tere, IMO. First, “triple-click-control-middle-abcde-enter-enter-space with your leg above your back” is a strawman attack. You can’t present something absurd as your opponent’s position, show that it is indeed absurd, and then pretend that you have refuted his original position as well. Middle-click is simple, quick and pratical, and your example isn’t. Sorry, I’ve been reading a lot about logical fallacies on Wikipedia.
Second, you seem to equate Apple with user-friendliness, which is an argument to authority: if Apple does it, then it must be correct. If Apple does it that way, then that must be the most user-friendly way possible.
Well, telling people about the middle button would be a much better idea than introducing multiple “dangerous” close buttons that only get in the way anyway… but maybe that’s just me.
Should the close buttons be added simply because Apple does it? Like I said, I don’t agree that Apple should be considered the “standard” for user-friendliness. If it was, then it would never change, would it? It would already be perfect. But it isn’t.
A thing should be as simple as possible, but not simpler (paraphrasing Einstein). If you take away usefulness (note that I don’t say “features”, but real usefulness) just to make it simpler, you’re making the software less useful. If the software doesn’t do what I want it to do, then it’s not useful to me, even if it’s the most easy to use piece of software in the world… right?
And, historically, that’s what Apple did (I admit that I haven’t used MacOS X yet, though I was familiar with previous versions). Their philosophy was: “normal” users should never need to do this, so we’ll actively prevent people from doing it - even if they happen to be advanced users. For some reason, I have a problem with this kind of attitude. To be fair, I don’t know if it’s changed in OS X.
Besides, “user-friendliness” is a subjective concept. To most people, the most important thing for a piece of software isn’t really being simple, clean, or logical, but simply being what they already know. Between Windows XP and MacOS X, they’d say Windows was more “user-friendly”, merely because, with MacOS, they’d have to learn new stuff - which is the thing people hate the most about computers.
The close buttons on tabs waste space, make it easy to close tabs by mistake, are harder to click on than the entire tab, and there was already a quicker, easier way to do it. People don’t know about it? Find a way to tell them. Hell, pop up an information window the first time a user opens a new tab, or something. It’s much better than adding a redundant, confusing feature that will only make the browser more difficult to use to anyone who already knew how to close tabs quickly.
What’s next? Take tabs away completely, because many people don’t know how to use them anyway, and they only make the browser “more confusing”?
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1st, Mac OS !== Mac OS X.
2nd, my “triple-click-control-middle-abcde-enter-enter-space” was not meant as a “strawman attack”, but just to show that some weird and unknown combination of keys or mouse buttons aren’t the best option for something as simple as closing something. (I mean, aren’t good for general usage, but perfect for “vi” users like us)
3nd, we’ve been educated for too many years to close windows through a “close button”. Then microsoft educated users about windows inside windows (a.k.a. MDI, yes, because tabs are just maximised MDI sub-windows). So, how do a user close a window? Right, with a close button near the window. Not with a close button somewhere else in the screen, nor without any weird mouse button.
4st, what is a middle button? As I said, most users don’t even know about right button. The other part have crappy mouses with the middle button on the same place as the scroll wheel, meaning that a click can mean a inconscient scroll, or vice-versa, and thus they get afraid of using it.
5st: did you know that the middle button started being used because there’s no coherent copy/paste key combination in unix/linux? >:) kidding!
6st: it’s not that “if apple did it, it’s good”, but instead “if it’s good, apple used it”, which can also be said as “if it would be bad, apple wouldn’t have used it”.
You’ll note that I refrained from saying anything bad about OS X, as I have no personal experience with it (though it’s weird how so many people in P* seem to worship it almost religiously…).
My post wasn’t simply a reply to your comment… in a way, it’s also a rant. I really don’t like the current attitude of “it must be made easy to use, even if it stops being useful at all”… or the harming of advanced users to pander to … I wouldn’t even say newbies, they’re worse than mere newcomers.
If you do know about middle-click, the X button is annoying, to say the least. In a couple of days, I’ve already seen a lot of blog posts and comments complaining about it. At the very least, there should be an option inside Edit->Preferences to turn it off (which, incidentally, would also tell people about the magic of middle-click as an easier way).
About middle-click, while I’ll agree that most people don’t know about it, it is pretty easy (compared to most other things) to tell people about.