Keep several screens open at once in the desktop app

In the desktop app you can keep several screens open at once, the way you would with browser tabs. Your inbox in one, the General Ledger in another, a bill in a third, and switching between them is instant.

The tabs sit in three groups along the top of the window: Mail, Ledger and Web, in that order. Each group starts with a small amber icon instead of a word: an envelope for Mail, a ledger for Ledger and a globe for Web. Point at an icon to see its name. A tab always stays in its own group, so a mail tab never turns into a ledger page and the other way round.

The shortcuts below are written with Cmd, which is the Mac key. On Windows press Ctrl in its place, so Ctrl+T opens a tab and Ctrl+W closes one. Ctrl+Tab is the same on both.

The three groups

Mail holds one tab for each mailbox you have connected, and Contacts opens there too.
Ledger holds everything else: the Dashboard, Bills, the General Ledger, Invoicing, Ecommerce, Settings and the Ask screen. It starts with a Dashboard tab, and you can open as many as you like.
Web holds the websites you add, such as your Shopify admin. It is empty until you add one. You can name a site tab when you add it and rename it later by double-clicking its name: see Keep Shopify and eShipper open as tabs.

Settings and the other shared screens open in the Ledger group, even when you click them from a mail tab.

Each mailbox has its own tab

Every mailbox you connect gets a tab in the Mail group, named after its nickname (or its address if it has no nickname). Point at the tab to see the address. The tab has no ✕, so a mailbox cannot be closed by accident, and Cmd+W does nothing on it.

The tab carries that mailbox's unread count, whichever mail screen it is on: inbox, sent mail, drafts, an open message or Contacts.
It is the same number the sidebar shows beside Inbox for that mailbox, it counts down as you read, and a mailbox with nothing unread has no badge.
Connecting a mailbox adds its tab. Disconnecting one removes its tabs.

There is no account switcher in the sidebar of the desktop app. To look at another mailbox, click its tab. With more than one mailbox connected, a line under the mail section of the sidebar names the address you are in. Anything you write from a mail tab is sent from that tab's mailbox by default, and you can still change the sender on a message with the From picker.

A tab never changes mailbox. If you want to read two mailboxes side by side, there is nothing to set up: each already has its tab.

Open a second view of a mailbox

A mailbox can have a second tab, for when you want its inbox in one and a draft or a long message in the other. There is room for two tabs per mailbox and no more.

Click the + at the end of the Mail group.
Under Open a second view of, choose the mailbox.

A mailbox that already has two tabs is listed greyed, with 2 of 2 open beside it. Cmd+T on a mail tab does the same for the mailbox you are in, and tells you when that mailbox already has two.

The second view sits right beside its mailbox's own tab and is named after the screen it shows, such as Drafts or Sent. It has a ✕, and it carries no badge, so a mailbox never shows its number twice. Closing it takes you back to the mailbox's own tab.

The same menu has Connect a mailbox…, which opens the screen for connecting another one.

Open a Ledger tab

Click the + at the end of the Ledger group, or press Cmd+T while you are in that group. A new tab opens on the Dashboard.

Hold Cmd and click any link (or click it with your middle mouse button). It opens in the background in the group it belongs to, so your place is never lost. A link to a mail screen opens as a second view of that mailbox.
Hold Shift and click to open it in a new tab and go straight there.

Following a link into another group

When you click an ordinary link or a sidebar item that leads to another group, TALISK_HQ takes you there. A ledger link clicked in a mail tab goes to a Ledger tab: if one is already open on that exact screen you land on it, otherwise a new one opens at the end of the group. A link to a mail screen clicked from a ledger tab lands in the tab of the mailbox it belongs to.

The sidebar follows your tab

The sidebar keeps both of its sections, HQ_MAIL and HQ_LEDGER, but only the one that goes with the tab you are in is open. The other is folded to its heading, with a small chevron and one number: the unread total on the mail section, the count of books-health findings on the ledger section. The folded mail total leaves out any mailbox whose tab you have hidden.

Click a folded heading to peek inside. It opens that section and folds the other one.
Opening a section by hand is temporary. As soon as you go to another tab, the sidebar folds back to match it.
Click an item in the section you opened and it opens in the other group, in a Ledger tab or in the mailbox's own tab, and the view goes there. When you come back, the section is folded again.
On a Web tab the sidebar stays as it was.

Moving between tabs

Click a tab, or use the keyboard. These all work within the group you are in.

Cmd+1 through Cmd+8 go to the first through eighth tab of this group, and Cmd+9 goes to its last tab.
Ctrl+Tab steps to the next tab in this group, and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to the one before.
Cmd+Option+1, Cmd+Option+2 and Cmd+Option+3 jump to the Mail, Ledger and Web groups. You land on the tab you last used in that group. On Windows these are Ctrl+Alt+1, 2 and 3.

The back and forward control in the sidebar belongs to whichever tab you are in, so going back never drags another tab with it.

Hiding the sidebar

The button at the left end of the tab strip hides the sidebar to give the page more room, and shows it again. It works on every tab, TALISK_HQ pages and site tabs alike, and the strip itself never hides, so the button is always there to bring the sidebar back. Each tab keeps its own choice: hide the sidebar on Dashboard and it stays hidden there when you go to another tab and come back, while the other tabs keep theirs. TALISK_HQ remembers each tab's choice on this computer, even after you quit. A new site tab opens with the sidebar hidden and any other new tab opens with it showing. On a Mac, once the app is updated, View, then Toggle Sidebar (Control-Command-S) does the same.

Rearranging tabs

Drag a tab along its group to move it. The others part around it as you go, so where it is going to land is always what you can already see. A tab stops at the edge of its group and cannot be dragged into another one. Dropping a tab does not switch to it, and the screen you were on stays in front.

Cmd+Shift+Left and Cmd+Shift+Right do the same thing without the mouse, moving the tab you are looking at one place along. Both stop at the ends of the group rather than wrapping around.

A mailbox's tab moves together with its second view, so a drag or one press of the arrows steps a whole mailbox, and a second view cannot be moved away from its mailbox. A mailbox you connect later gets its tab at the end of the mail tabs. The order is remembered with the tabs themselves, so it survives quitting the app. Bear in mind that Cmd+1 through Cmd+9 go by position, so moving a tab changes which number reaches it.

Closing a tab

Hover a tab and click the ✕, or press Cmd+W. A mailbox's own tab has no ✕ and ignores Cmd+W. There is always at least one tab open, so the last one cannot be closed either.

Your tabs are remembered. Quit the app and reopen it and they come back the way you left them. The first time you open the app after tab groups arrived, the tabs start over: one tab for each mailbox, a Dashboard, and any sites you had added, which are kept.

What a tab keeps

A tab you switch away from stays where it was. Scroll position, an expanded row, a bill you were halfway through editing: all of it is still there when you come back, and nothing is reloading in the background while you are elsewhere.

TALISK_HQ keeps the six most recently used tabs live. Beyond that the ones you have not touched for longest are set down and rebuilt when you next open them, which takes a moment and puts the screen back at the top. A mailbox's unread badge keeps counting either way.

When there are a lot of tabs

The strip never scrolls sideways. When the tabs do not fit, it makes room in this order:

Every tab gets narrower, with its name shortened to fit.
Mailbox tabs shrink to the mailbox's initials and its unread badge. The tab you are in keeps its full name, and a badge is never hidden.
Each group keeps at least two tabs on show, the one you are in and the most recent other, and tucks the rest behind a button such as +3. It lists the hidden tabs and can close them all. If a hidden mail tab has unread mail, the button carries the total.
A group you are not in folds down to its icon, with a count of its tabs. Web folds first. A folded Mail icon also shows the total unread.

You can fold and unfold a group you are not in by clicking its icon. A small arrow beside a folded icon lists its tabs. The group you are in never folds.

Choose which mailboxes get a tab

Go to Settings, open the Email tab, and find the mailbox's card. Untick Show a tab for this mailbox and its tabs leave the strip. The mailbox stays connected and keeps syncing, new mail still arrives, but its unread count no longer adds into the folded mail total in the sidebar. Tick it again to bring the tab back. The choice is kept on this computer, so it can differ between your computers. The setting appears only in the desktop app.

A notification for new mail in a mailbox without a tab opens the inbox of the mailbox you were last in. The same goes for an email you open from somewhere else, such as a bill's source email: it opens in the mail tab you were last in, and a short message tells you which mailbox the email belongs to and that its tab is hidden. Nothing is unhidden for you; tick the setting again to see it in its own tab.

Tabs are one account

Every tab in a window belongs to the same TALISK_HQ account. If you run a second business with its own TALISK_HQ account, open it in its own window rather than a tab: see Run a second business in the desktop app.