UX: consistency of the selected tab on the details panel

[wajda]

When I select a certain tab on a details panel (say "Input Schema") and navigate through the graph nodes by clicking them, I as a user expect to continue seeing the selected type of information (in our example it's "Input Schema"). In the current UI the selected tab is always reset to the first tab in a list (whatever it happens to be). Such behaviour results in a suboptimal user experience, for example when I (as a user) am exploring node schemas, tracking the difference between the nodes, looking for a particular attribute, and am forced to do a lot of clicks and tab switching as I'm jumping from node to node.

It especially gets confusing when the first (default) tab of a node that I just clicked on happens to have a visually similar structure with different meaning. For example, I'm looking at the "Output schema" of one node, and suddenly I appear on the "Input Schema" of another node, which looks very similar, but I'm already looking at completely different information. Even knowing this specific app behaviour it's quite difficult to cope with it.

The "view" (a set of selected tabs or other components, e.g. a focus on a selected attribute) needs to be stable as long as possible (or feasible) as the user moves between nodes.