HERE Core UI Supertab windows (Experimental)

info

Experimental preview: HERE Core UI 44. Supertab windows and their APIs are subject to change without notice and are not recommended for production platforms. Contact HERE Support for more information.

In HERE Core UI Browser, a page groups views that users can arrange in columns or rows. In HERE Core UI 44, an experimental supertab window provides a similar grouping model with its own terminology. Do not confuse supertabs with pages in Browser.

A supertab window can hold multiple top-level tabs that users can arrange in columns or rows.

Supertab windows run alongside your current platform and Browser windows, so you can evaluate them with minimal integration work and revert if needed.

Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Core UI version	44 or later
Hosting	Your platform provider must be same-origin to the window UI. ASAR-based hosting used by Browser does not satisfy this.
Self-hosting changes	None beyond upgrading the Core UI version.

Setup

Enable Supertab windows through platform configuration. No application code, self-hosting, or snapshot changes are required; disabling them restores previous windowing behaviour.

Configuration works at two levels:

• Platform defaults: applied to every new Supertab window.
• Window overrides: applied when opening an individual Supertab window.

Default feature settings

Defaults are backwards compatible. Features that conflict with common behaviour are opt-in.

Feature	Default	Notes
Navigation buttons	Off	Opt in; may not match existing client app behaviour.
Notification Center	On	Icon is hidden when the platform is not registered with Notification Center.
New tab	On	Applies to top-level tabs and tabs within a Supertab window. Disable if your platform locks down layout changes.
Global menu	Off	Simplified menu; see Window frame and menus.
Search bar	On	More limited than Home search.
Supertab window color linking	On	Uses your existing Core UI channel configuration.
AI side panel	Off	Opt in; see AI side panel.

Window frame and menus

Global menu. Supertab windows use a single drop-down: New Tab; Save Supertab Window; Save Supertab Window As…; Appearance (light / dark / sync); Close Window; Quit. Custom sub-categories are not supported in this preview.

View menu (right-click). Driven by platform configuration; identical to Core UI Browser windows.

New tab page. Uses the new page URL already defined in your platform configuration.

Storage and snapshots

By default, Supertab window state is held in local storage. Platforms can take custody and persist it via storage hooks (for example, create, update, and delete handlers).

Snapshot structure is compatible with current Core UI snapshots, so existing saved snapshots continue to load.

Window and tab management

Programmatic control over layouts and tab arrangement is deliberately limited. The Core UI Browser window API does not apply to Supertab windows.

Available through existing platform APIs:

• Determine window type (platform, workspace, or supertab).
• Open a saved snapshot as a Supertab window using default options.

Available through the new Supertab window API:

• Read the options applied to a Supertab window (for example, whether navigation buttons are enabled).
• Open content or a URL in a specified Supertab window, creating a new top-level tab in that window's tab strip.
• Open content or a URL in a specified Supertab window, placing the new tab above, below, to the left of, or to the right of the active tab (top, bottom, left, or right).

AI side panel

Enable the AI side panel per platform or per window. When enabled, the AI star icon appears in the window frame. Tabs must opt in before they can supply context to the panel; see AI side panel for configuration details.

Mixed window support

Supertab windows can run alongside legacy Core UI Browser windows on the same platform. Users can drag tabs within a window and between windows of the same type. Dragging tabs, Pages, or entire Supertab windows between different window types (for example, from a Supertab window into a Browser window) is not supported.

Configuration

Supertab windows are configured rather than coded: you specify what to show, how to theme it, and how to connect your data, and the platform handles window and tab management for you.

• Configuration over code. Static values (theme palette, app name, public path) belong in a configuration file. Dynamic values (featured content, search results, initial snapshot, storage, AI panel settings) are supplied through data hooks. For example, dock content is returned as data whose type (such as view or supertab) tells the platform how to launch it on click.

• Separation of concerns. HERE owns the UI and platform; your business logic lives in overrides, keeping your data contract independent of UI changes.

This is a shift from runtime customization: configuration currently fetched at runtime (search providers, for example) is split between build-time static config and runtime data overrides.

info

Illustrative code only. Contact HERE Support for more information.

import { defineConfig } from "@hereio/enterprise-kit";

export default defineConfig({
  output: { publicPath: "platform/" },
  theme: { /* palette + icons */ },
  aiPanel: {
    getSettings: () => Promise<{ enabled?: boolean; url?: string }>,
  },
  content: {
    getFeaturedContent: () => Promise<Content[]>,
    getInitialSnapshot?: () => Promise<Snapshot> | Snapshot,
    search?: {
      handleSearchQuery: (query: { signal: AbortSignal; query: string }) => ...,
    },
  },
  storage: {
    superTabs?: { create, update, delete },
    collections: { ... },
    bookmarks?: { create, update, delete, all },
  },
});

Analytics

Supertab window activity is reported under Event IDs 273–338 and 354 in the event catalog.