What is the rationale behind Most-Recent-Order for tab switching?

Question

I can't understand the reasoning behind Most-Recent-Order (how Windows sorts windows when switching via Alt+Tab) when used for tab/window/document/task switching. The way Firefox does tab switching (tabs stay in a consistent order, Ctrl+Tab/Ctrl+Shift+Tab for moving to the next/previous tab) seems much more natural than switching in chronological order.

When there are more than ~5 tabs or windows, I quickly forget the chronological order in which they were opened. So the sequence of switching between them becomes difficult to predict. Even if I remember which tab was active before the current one, and which one was active prior to that, it just takes a lot of key strokes to switch to these. More than if I could simply use direct order as in Firefox or Chrome.

1. Is there any rational reason to use MRO in an application apart from backward compatibility (for users accustomed to the old hotkeys and usage patterns)?
2. Why is it still used in Windows for Alt+Tab switching between applications?

Answer 1

It's used because often you're switching between two applications so it's a simple Alt+Tab to switch back and forth. If it didn't use a most recently used order it could be mulitple keypresses to switch back and forth between the two apps I'm interested in at the moment.

Similarly, in an IDE, I could be switching back and forth between two files and don't want to hit Ctrl+Tab lots of times to keep making the same switch.

Answer 2

I appreciate it in Windows Alt-Tab switching, but hate it for situations where tabs are visually present at the top of the screen. When I can see the tabs, I want to switch between them in the order I can see them, since I can probably at a glance (and without any conscious effort) count the number of times I need to press tab; and generally I'm working with few enough tabs (I'm an avid hater of clutter) that this works for me.

In Windows, when the alt-tab dialog (if dialog is the appropriate term) doesn't persist, I want to use MRO for switching.

Answer 3

People usually work well with a few items at a time, and the attention span allows us to better concentrate onto a couple of recent pieces of information rather than onto lengthy lists. Think of it in terms of caching this recent information: if you've used something in the last couple of seconds, and switched away from it for a moment, it's likely that it will be the first thing that you'll want to use again when you switch.