Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out(blog.nightly.mozilla.org)
blog.nightly.mozilla.org
Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out
https://blog.nightly.mozilla.org/2024/08/07/firefox-sidebar-and-vertical-tabs-try-them-out-in-nightly-firefox-labs-131/
363 comments
I actively use tree style tabs, and have dozens to hundreds. With auto tab discard, it's not taxing.
This is because I basically use tabs as bookmarks relevant to a project or subject area. Bookmarks are also tree-structured, but are much more high-ceremony to create.
To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until needed, so it's not an eyesore. When you need it again, it's there, in the proper context.
If you close a tab, it goes to history. But a tree view of history is possible, too (there are extensions for that), so that you can track, from which page did you open this link, what links did you open on this page, etc.
This is because I basically use tabs as bookmarks relevant to a project or subject area. Bookmarks are also tree-structured, but are much more high-ceremony to create.
To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until needed, so it's not an eyesore. When you need it again, it's there, in the proper context.
If you close a tab, it goes to history. But a tree view of history is possible, too (there are extensions for that), so that you can track, from which page did you open this link, what links did you open on this page, etc.
> tabs and bookmarks should meld into one
I can see the appeal of this, and more broadly, not having to think about tab management. But for me, I find I actively benefit from the process of deciding what to keep around.
I can see the appeal of this, and more broadly, not having to think about tab management. But for me, I find I actively benefit from the process of deciding what to keep around.
Certainly, you should keep this ability. Close it to not keep around :) Hiding stuff by subtree is not really flexible, I realize, and won't match everyone's tastes equally. Synching tabs and bookmarks could be a configurable option.
I realize that traditional explicit bookmarks are also needed; where else can I easily put arbitrary searches using %s?
I realize that traditional explicit bookmarks are also needed; where else can I easily put arbitrary searches using %s?
> I realize that traditional explicit bookmarks are also needed; where else can I easily put arbitrary searches using %s?
I outsourced that. Since I have seen leah2's anarchaias [1] tumblelog (and one of its successors project.ioni.st from the rails guys, I fail to find a snapshot online - it was pretty) I iterated through multiple software solutions. My bookmark manager is also a tumblog [2] and online accessible.
I would quickly get to overwhelmed by to many bookmarks and the lack of (plattform independent) organisation tools. I have a bookmarklet that adds the current site as entry (non puplic, and I edit it later (or delete)). It also mirrors and downloads stuff (images, reddit videos, etc).
1. https://leahneukirchen.org/anarchaia/
2. https://wecoso.de/bloogmarks
I outsourced that. Since I have seen leah2's anarchaias [1] tumblelog (and one of its successors project.ioni.st from the rails guys, I fail to find a snapshot online - it was pretty) I iterated through multiple software solutions. My bookmark manager is also a tumblog [2] and online accessible.
I would quickly get to overwhelmed by to many bookmarks and the lack of (plattform independent) organisation tools. I have a bookmarklet that adds the current site as entry (non puplic, and I edit it later (or delete)). It also mirrors and downloads stuff (images, reddit videos, etc).
1. https://leahneukirchen.org/anarchaia/
2. https://wecoso.de/bloogmarks
> To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until needed, so it's not an eyesore. When you need it again, it's there, in the proper context.
Have you tried Arc? It's essentially completely designed around the concept you describe. I believe someone is actively working on an "ArcFox" clone of its behavior for Firefox, but I'm not sure what the current state of the project is.
Have you tried Arc? It's essentially completely designed around the concept you describe. I believe someone is actively working on an "ArcFox" clone of its behavior for Firefox, but I'm not sure what the current state of the project is.
Arc is Chromium which I wouldn't want to support. If the clone works for Firefox, I'd be more interested, when it's done in the future.
> To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one.
Different people have different needs, so it is useful to distinguish between the two. For example: I have groups of bookmarks that I like to open as tabs in a separate window. If I only need them once a week, I want to close the window when I am done and pull them up again when they are needed. Fishing them out of a history of all of my browsing is something that I don't want to endure (even if they are stored in the history as a group).
Other people have other needs. Some only want an extremely limited number of tabs open at one time (presumably to help them focus).
Different people have different needs, so it is useful to distinguish between the two. For example: I have groups of bookmarks that I like to open as tabs in a separate window. If I only need them once a week, I want to close the window when I am done and pull them up again when they are needed. Fishing them out of a history of all of my browsing is something that I don't want to endure (even if they are stored in the history as a group).
Other people have other needs. Some only want an extremely limited number of tabs open at one time (presumably to help them focus).
> Different people have different needs, so it is useful to distinguish between the two.
I agree entirely. I don't use the bookmark facilities in the browser at all, because I prefer using separate a bookmark server that I run. That way my bookmarks are available from any machine using any browser that happens to be available.
But I do use tabs. Not to the extent that they need management, though -- I rarely have more than two or three going at a time[1]. Combining bookmarks and tabs implies the addition of complexity that wouldn't benefit me, so I'd prefer not to have it.
[1] If I'm doing something where I need to have many sites open at a time, meaning research, I prefer to have multiple browser instances to organize things, because then I can have multiple pages visible simultaneously and can use the DE to organize things at a higher level.
I agree entirely. I don't use the bookmark facilities in the browser at all, because I prefer using separate a bookmark server that I run. That way my bookmarks are available from any machine using any browser that happens to be available.
But I do use tabs. Not to the extent that they need management, though -- I rarely have more than two or three going at a time[1]. Combining bookmarks and tabs implies the addition of complexity that wouldn't benefit me, so I'd prefer not to have it.
[1] If I'm doing something where I need to have many sites open at a time, meaning research, I prefer to have multiple browser instances to organize things, because then I can have multiple pages visible simultaneously and can use the DE to organize things at a higher level.
What do you use for a bookmark server?
online-bookmarks, by Stefan Frech.
http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/, although I haven't been there for years and it is timing out for me now, so I'm not sure if it's still alive.
http://www.frech.ch/online-bookmarks/, although I haven't been there for years and it is timing out for me now, so I'm not sure if it's still alive.
I do this too; have you found effective ways to tell firefox to maybe chill on eating all memory? I find if I don't restart ~1/week, it will end up reserving ~32GB of RAM for itself, which is just absurd.
Of course, else it would be unmanageable.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
I tell it to never discard certain tabs, like gmail or snack or calendar. Also in some situations it's very convenient to ask it to discard tabs in all other windows, or all tabs but the current one. Otherwise it just discards tabs after some time of inactivity.
It integrates with TST and can operate in terms of subtrees.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
I tell it to never discard certain tabs, like gmail or snack or calendar. Also in some situations it's very convenient to ask it to discard tabs in all other windows, or all tabs but the current one. Otherwise it just discards tabs after some time of inactivity.
It integrates with TST and can operate in terms of subtrees.
Crazy that I haven't heard of this one before. Just installed it and after forcibly putting all the tabs in all my windows to sleep my machine's memory usage dropped from 60% to 30%.
Sidebary has this functionality as well. On top of that it has a setting that allows you to have it auto-unload the parent and its child tabs whenever you collapse the group. I l have a few resource hog sites I use frequently that I keep grouped so I can just collapse the group and get back my ram.
Try disabling accessibility services. (about:config -> accessibility.force_disabled)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1726887
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1907929
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1726887
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1907929
I tried the auto tab discard extension but it didn't help for me. I occasionally force kill FF and have it recover the previous session when it starts up again. Same thing to not lose state when rebooting my computer.
In my experience it is not the amount of tabs that is the problem but that certain tabs (ie reddit) sometimes start to misbehave and eat way too much, so I tend to list the tabs by memory usage and handle it on a by tab-basis.
I'm using TST too, but instead of grouping relevant projects into one branch, I'm using the Simple Tab Groups extension to switch between long-term projects. It simply replaces one set of tabs with another. I have a few groups related to work and several groups related to personal stuff (homelab, Hackintosh, Clojure, finance, etc.). I don't access some of these groups for months, but once I have a bit of free time, they are just two clicks away.
Recommend you to check out Sideberry [it is, I think, just outright better than tree style tabs].
[deleted]
Why not use actual bookmarks at that point? They also are able to be nested into a tree structure via folders. I never had tabs open after a session but I keep bookmarks (it turns out I never actually look at the bookmarks, but let's not talk about that).
Have you tried Simple Tab Groups? It's a similar concept but instead of keeping all the tabs organised as a tree (and generally keeping them all open), you can create groups of tabs that are kept unloaded/hidden and you can load them up on a given window with a click of a button or a hotkey.
I personally use them so I can context switch between projects. I can keep one group for project a, one for project b, one for project c, and so on while also keeping a group for day to day stuff, one for reading material, one for conference talks/background noise, etc.
Then I can just unload a given group when I don't need it without losing anything and I can bring it back up on that window (or a different window) later when I need it again.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...
I personally use them so I can context switch between projects. I can keep one group for project a, one for project b, one for project c, and so on while also keeping a group for day to day stuff, one for reading material, one for conference talks/background noise, etc.
Then I can just unload a given group when I don't need it without losing anything and I can bring it back up on that window (or a different window) later when I need it again.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...
Vivaldi has this built-in, they call it Workspaces. It's the #1 thing I like about the browser.
Firefox had this to back in ancient times, it was called Tab Candy, Panorama, or tab groups, depending on the release number. Then they killed it because "nobody used it."
Firefox had this to back in ancient times, it was called Tab Candy, Panorama, or tab groups, depending on the release number. Then they killed it because "nobody used it."
I use this and love it. One of the most useful adons. Really helps me to differentiate work mode form non work mode. I do wish it was built in because it appears to do it a hacky way by using bookmarks. Which is fine, because you can think of these tabs like temporary bookmarks.
Usually how I do it is at my office desk I have a second monitor I hook my laptop up to. So I open a new window, let that be the group, and then I use my mac for the terminal and my ipad sits to the side with spotify and any chat apps, out of the way and easy to dismiss.
What's extra satisfying is I'm a tab hoarder. But you finish a project and get to see all those tabs go away.
Usually how I do it is at my office desk I have a second monitor I hook my laptop up to. So I open a new window, let that be the group, and then I use my mac for the terminal and my ipad sits to the side with spotify and any chat apps, out of the way and easy to dismiss.
What's extra satisfying is I'm a tab hoarder. But you finish a project and get to see all those tabs go away.
It's using tab hiding, one of Firefox's non-standard extensions to the WebExtensions API. I believe this is also how Panorama used to work
By the way, built-in tab grouping is also on the list of features in development. Hopefully they don't go the Chrome way
By the way, built-in tab grouping is also on the list of features in development. Hopefully they don't go the Chrome way
That's good to know. I've found that it is helpful to add Auto Discard Tabs, if you're a real tab hoarder.
What is "the Chrome way"? What I'd like to see is that the addresses are not cached to ram, but either disk or swap (or a combination). I figure these tools are more used by tab hoarders as well, and if they're working as pseudo bookmarks (at least conceptually) I am very willing to trade some loading time and have non-active tabs have high niceness.
What is "the Chrome way"? What I'd like to see is that the addresses are not cached to ram, but either disk or swap (or a combination). I figure these tools are more used by tab hoarders as well, and if they're working as pseudo bookmarks (at least conceptually) I am very willing to trade some loading time and have non-active tabs have high niceness.
Unfortunately it doesn't work for pinned tabs - I use them for pages that I want to keep for longer and remember about them. Bookmarks are used for something that I store and go back to it seldom (e.g. when I store a recipe).
Tbh I do prefer that it doesn't apply to pinned tabs. I keep tabs pinned when I want them to stay in a window even when I switch tabs. Things like my schedule, etc that I generally want in one place to be able to easily look at regardless of what I'm doing.
I put together a simple TST hack / extension that puts recently active tabs in the horizontal space (with a "user-defined" timeout). Have been using it actively for the last few years.
https://gist.github.com/theprojectsomething/6813b2c27611be03...
It's nowhere near perfect (see comments in the gist), but I genuinely enjoy the paradigm of easy access active tabs alongside a full laundry list. I find myself reinstalling it on new machines as I go. It's also just a few lines of CSS.
That said, keen to try out the nightly version of vertical tabs. Tho I'm hoping my active tabs hack might work with it too.
https://gist.github.com/theprojectsomething/6813b2c27611be03...
It's nowhere near perfect (see comments in the gist), but I genuinely enjoy the paradigm of easy access active tabs alongside a full laundry list. I find myself reinstalling it on new machines as I go. It's also just a few lines of CSS.
That said, keen to try out the nightly version of vertical tabs. Tho I'm hoping my active tabs hack might work with it too.
I love using Sidebery, because I can define a container profile for each group of tabs, which is then applied automatically for new tabs.
That's the next feature on my list of things to use in sidebary!
$Work is actively merging teams from different companies so I'm going to be juggling having to use different accounts on some SaaS platforms until we've gotten everything combined.
Sidebary has so many very useful and powerful features but I'm trying to be disciplined and mixing them in with my typical workflow 1 at a time and actually using it for a while before moving on to the next. (Ok, I might have gone full ham when I first installed it but it was so different from my normal flow that I quickly realized it was counter productive).
$Work is actively merging teams from different companies so I'm going to be juggling having to use different accounts on some SaaS platforms until we've gotten everything combined.
Sidebary has so many very useful and powerful features but I'm trying to be disciplined and mixing them in with my typical workflow 1 at a time and actually using it for a while before moving on to the next. (Ok, I might have gone full ham when I first installed it but it was so different from my normal flow that I quickly realized it was counter productive).
I switched to Sidebery from TreeStyleTabs and I much prefer it. Tab groups are great as I can separate different styles of browsing such as news browsing or work etc.
You must not had ADD :-). I currently have 2630 tabs in my main window (I admit I may need to prune that down _just a bit_). But that many tabs can only happen with a vertical tab-bar. I started with tree-style tabs but I'm now using "Sideberry" which seems to be a little nicer.
> You must not had ADD :-). I currently have 2630 tabs in my main window (I admit I may need to prune that down _just a bit_).
People with ADHD ("ADD" is a very outdated term) aren't always disorganized. In fact, they're often organized to an unusually high degree (sometimes to a fault). I've been diagnosed since 1996 and I rarely have more than 10 or 12 tabs open across all windows at a time. Paying close attention to organization and establishing routines to cut down on distractions and reduce the possibility of variation in daily activities are very common coping strategies.
People with ADHD ("ADD" is a very outdated term) aren't always disorganized. In fact, they're often organized to an unusually high degree (sometimes to a fault). I've been diagnosed since 1996 and I rarely have more than 10 or 12 tabs open across all windows at a time. Paying close attention to organization and establishing routines to cut down on distractions and reduce the possibility of variation in daily activities are very common coping strategies.
> People with ADHD ("ADD" is a very outdated term)
The old naming scheme made more sense than the current one. Under the current definition there are three types of ADHD, of which the "inattentive" type used to be called ADD because it doesn't have the "hyperactivity" trademark. So for that type "ADHD" is a misnomer that causes people to not even consider they may have it.
The old naming scheme made more sense than the current one. Under the current definition there are three types of ADHD, of which the "inattentive" type used to be called ADD because it doesn't have the "hyperactivity" trademark. So for that type "ADHD" is a misnomer that causes people to not even consider they may have it.
That's a fair point and I'm probably just being overly touchy. I have ADHD-C and (perhaps unsurprisingly) favor ADHD-* nomenclature for distinguishing inside the umbrella. I think a large part of my aversion to "ADD" is because in the past I've mostly heard it used by people who saying they're "so ADD" when describing normal behavior (the same way people refer to being "OCD about X").
'ADD' does seem more likely to be used in that flippant way by people who don't have it, but IME ADHDers who self-describe with the term 'ADD' are just older, and for whatever reason have some kind of identity attachment to the nomenclature that was current when they were diagnosed.
That makes sense. I think the earliest evaluation I have is a 1996 one (probably for school accommodations) which uses "ADHD". This tracks with the 1987 terminology switch.
I heard they wanted to change it to just ADD in the DSM5, but it would apparently cause a lot of trouble in various statutes that specifically reference ADHD.
I'm on 1018 right now, I think you're the first person I've ever seen with more open tabs than me ))
I've actually been working hard to have less open tabs every evening than what I had when I started work. Maybe in 1018 day I'll close that last tab. And yes, there is a reason that every single one of them is open.
I've actually been working hard to have less open tabs every evening than what I had when I started work. Maybe in 1018 day I'll close that last tab. And yes, there is a reason that every single one of them is open.
Genuinely curious, what are some of the reasons you keep them around?
Every time I read about someone with that kind of tab count I immediately wonder:
1) if they have that many persistent tabs and actually need (probably the wrong word here) them, how many tabs do they actually close?
2) Does closing a long standing tab invoke a physiological/emotional response?
I'm only poking a little fun with #2. I have to actively overrule my subconscious when it comes to a few categories of physical things. Small electronics and computer parts/peripherals are a couple of things that if I don't verbally tell myself "you won't ever need this random old PC case panel thumb screw" I could very easily end up in hoarder territory.
Every time I read about someone with that kind of tab count I immediately wonder:
1) if they have that many persistent tabs and actually need (probably the wrong word here) them, how many tabs do they actually close?
2) Does closing a long standing tab invoke a physiological/emotional response?
I'm only poking a little fun with #2. I have to actively overrule my subconscious when it comes to a few categories of physical things. Small electronics and computer parts/peripherals are a couple of things that if I don't verbally tell myself "you won't ever need this random old PC case panel thumb screw" I could very easily end up in hoarder territory.
> 1) if they have that many persistent tabs and actually need (probably the wrong word here) them, how many tabs do they actually close?
> 2) Does closing a long standing tab invoke a physiological/emotional response?
I assure you, that many tabs can certainly happen with the standard horizontal tab bar..
I have a similar amount regularly, and have never tried vertical tabs. I did recently start using all tabs helper though.
I have a similar amount regularly, and have never tried vertical tabs. I did recently start using all tabs helper though.
Hey fellow tab hoarder! I "only" have 744 tabs open right now (in Edge). Though chrome, firefox, brave, arc, and supermium have a few hundred each... (they've been force closed by task manager so my laptop still technically runs haha).
It's funny finding fellow tab hoarders online, people rarely hit the thousands - you're pretty much the first person I've encountered who's got more tabs open than me.
Btw what's your PC specs? I'm using a Framework 13 (7840u, 32gb ram) and am currently at 56% RAM usage. I find a fairly big difference when I'm connected to power and when I'm not, for some reason.
It's funny finding fellow tab hoarders online, people rarely hit the thousands - you're pretty much the first person I've encountered who's got more tabs open than me.
Btw what's your PC specs? I'm using a Framework 13 (7840u, 32gb ram) and am currently at 56% RAM usage. I find a fairly big difference when I'm connected to power and when I'm not, for some reason.
I've got a recent macbook. I use Firefox which lazily load tabs which makes it fairly efficient. I also use "Auto Tab Discard" so tabs unload quickly to keep memory down long term. My Firefox is currently using 6GB of RAM. For comparison I also have Chrome open with about 15 tabs and it's taking 4GB.
I've got ADHD and work hard to keep my tabs under control. As soon as they get too small to read (at least part of) the title, I lose the ability to keep track of what I've got open, so there's no value in keeping them open. That threshold is about 20 tabs per window, and at most about 4 windows, and ideally closer to 5 tabs each in 2 windows, when things are under control.
I used to be like that until I installed a plugin that autocloses all non-pinned tabs. Now I couldn't even imagine having so many. Why don't you just close the window? Is there something in there that you can somehow more easily obtain than just searching the history?
Fellow tab hoarder here (though I pale in comparison to your 2630). I had the exact same experience starting with tree style tabs and switching to sideberry. Very comparable, but I agree that Sideberry feels a bit nicer, and it has wicked customizability settings.
> I started with tree-style tabs but I'm now using "Sideberry" which seems to be a little nicer.
Could you qualify this? I always see the recommendation but I never see any reasons to prefer Sidebery over Tree-Style Tabs.
Could you qualify this? I always see the recommendation but I never see any reasons to prefer Sidebery over Tree-Style Tabs.
A few years ago, the main advantage was merely that "Sidebery is far less buggy and much more performant than Tree Style Tab".
Nowadays, the gap has... widened. The little details matter, but there's big feature differences too: panels, saving/restore to JSON, better appearance, tons of options for tweaking (but with sane defaults), ...
Nowadays, the gap has... widened. The little details matter, but there's big feature differences too: panels, saving/restore to JSON, better appearance, tons of options for tweaking (but with sane defaults), ...
> I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need.
I followed the same trajectory. I now keep one window for more stable things that will be left open for a while (calendar, email, some long-lived task) and another for stuff I'm actively working on (the app I'm developing, docs for some API, etc). If I go over more than two windows with ~6 tabs each I just start closing things because I've almost certainly gone past the point of needing some of those tabs and if I need to get back to them it's usually faster to just retrace the steps I took to get to them in the first place or search in my history.
I followed the same trajectory. I now keep one window for more stable things that will be left open for a while (calendar, email, some long-lived task) and another for stuff I'm actively working on (the app I'm developing, docs for some API, etc). If I go over more than two windows with ~6 tabs each I just start closing things because I've almost certainly gone past the point of needing some of those tabs and if I need to get back to them it's usually faster to just retrace the steps I took to get to them in the first place or search in my history.
It really depends on your workflows. I dread tree style on work laptop as I go through tickets a lot, and only what matters to me is last 4 digits out of 10 the tickets have. If I use horizontal tabs second half of tab name is truncated but opposite on tree styled ones
Nobody will probably read this anymore but I had the same problem and used the same solution - starting my browsers as
$ google-chrome --profile-directory=customera (nice dark theme, custom list of extensions and corporate bookmarks)
$ google-chrome --profile-directory=customerb (yeallow-blue theme to stand out)
and a session for my own stuff / firefox with --profile with custom proxy settings to tunnel via a socks around customers corp mitm proxy
That being said, I spent my free computer time working on a server runtime(nodejs) + extension kombo (big thanks to talented folks helping with this project!) which can sync your tabs based on the context you are in - lets say /work/customer-foo/dev/task1234 would index all your tabs for task 1234, but that path is actually linked to bitmap indexes, /work/customer-foo would show you all links for customer foo, if you'd create /work/dev it would show you all tabs that are indexes for work AND dev
anyhow sorry for spam, good to see people are struggling with the same UX problems I've been :)
and a session for my own stuff / firefox with --profile with custom proxy settings to tunnel via a socks around customers corp mitm proxy
That being said, I spent my free computer time working on a server runtime(nodejs) + extension kombo (big thanks to talented folks helping with this project!) which can sync your tabs based on the context you are in - lets say /work/customer-foo/dev/task1234 would index all your tabs for task 1234, but that path is actually linked to bitmap indexes, /work/customer-foo would show you all links for customer foo, if you'd create /work/dev it would show you all tabs that are indexes for work AND dev
anyhow sorry for spam, good to see people are struggling with the same UX problems I've been :)
I recommend Tree Tabs over Tree Style Tabs as it let's you make tab groups. I will basically have one group per ticket or project, coloring the group depending on the state of that ticket (eventually going green when I've completed it but want to keep it around for a short while in case questions arise). Once the ticket has been done for a sprint I'll close the entire tab group.
I feel like tree style tabs made sense when monitors were just a little narrower and so you wanted to make use of unused real estate.
These days I want to split my window in half and have two windows open at once, e.g. code editor & browser/shell/etc.
In general, I prefer having a search interface to my tabs, previously with Tabli, but now it's built into Chrome with Ctrl-Shift-A. I regularly have dozens of tabs open though.
These days I want to split my window in half and have two windows open at once, e.g. code editor & browser/shell/etc.
In general, I prefer having a search interface to my tabs, previously with Tabli, but now it's built into Chrome with Ctrl-Shift-A. I regularly have dozens of tabs open though.
The ancestry information in Tree Style Tabs (and also with Orion's built-in vertical tabs) is an undersold feature, I think. Edge has vertical tabs and they're not terribly useful. You get a constant-sized click target, which is a huge UX bump over Chrome's shrinking targets, but having trees of tabs is amazingly useful for organization.
I hadn't really thought about the side-by-side window thing, though, so I'll keep that in mind when debating vertical tabs. I usually run with a multi-monitor and while I do side-by-side with i3, that's on a large monitor so screen real estate isn't a problem.
I hadn't really thought about the side-by-side window thing, though, so I'll keep that in mind when debating vertical tabs. I usually run with a multi-monitor and while I do side-by-side with i3, that's on a large monitor so screen real estate isn't a problem.
I use Edge on my work PC, and one thing that keeps me sane when dealing with a lot of tabs is using the "tab groups" feature it inherited from Chromium. It ain't quite as powerful as an actual tree, but having at least one level of grouping is nice for things like "I want to keep all the tabs for this ticket together".
> In general, I prefer having a search interface to my tabs, previously with Tabli, but now it's built into Chrome with Ctrl-Shift-A. I regularly have dozens of tabs open though.
Firefox has multiple ways you can do the tab search.
- Firefox View is an icon originally configured at the front of the tab bar that takes you to a dedicated page listing your tabs, recently visited, and lets you search tabs and otherwise manage them.
- Firefox has a tab search built into the address bar as soon as you enter the character '%' followed by a space. So for two sets of two keystrokes you're doing tab search: `Ctrl<L> + '% '`.
IMO the latter especially is fast and easy enough that I don't miss Chrome's tab search, and I often go into Firefox View just to see what I've got open and trim it down.
Firefox has multiple ways you can do the tab search.
- Firefox View is an icon originally configured at the front of the tab bar that takes you to a dedicated page listing your tabs, recently visited, and lets you search tabs and otherwise manage them.
- Firefox has a tab search built into the address bar as soon as you enter the character '%' followed by a space. So for two sets of two keystrokes you're doing tab search: `Ctrl<L> + '% '`.
IMO the latter especially is fast and easy enough that I don't miss Chrome's tab search, and I often go into Firefox View just to see what I've got open and trim it down.
I do this with my browser windows but just open the treestyle tab menu with f1. You only need it when you need it anyhow.
I use Edge currently because of the vertical tabs and I switch between the two modes to suit my needs. 90% of the time, I only use horizontal tabs. For the other 10%, it suits my needs when doing research, keeping all my tabs available and so on.
I'm using less and less tabs the less useful search engines become.
Nowadays I don't get the tabs "squished" at all. But that used to happen often, and with no impact on my capacity to use them.
Nowadays I don't get the tabs "squished" at all. But that used to happen often, and with no impact on my capacity to use them.
treestyle tabs cured my tabs 'saving' syndrome,
I now just close the ones I don't need
it probably helped that I supplanted it with a better way to access history with vimium
it probably helped that I supplanted it with a better way to access history with vimium
Yeah, I gave an honest shot at using vertical tabs for a few months because it frankly does seem like a more logical use of screen real estate. Web pages don't tend to take up much horizontal space, so you might as well put a bigger list of tabs there where they can all show more text.
For one thing I could just never get used to my normal tab-switching shortcuts moving me up and down compared to left and right. And all my other apps with tabs still use horizontal tabs, so I couldn't fully switch over to that model in my head. Additionally the URL is still at the top so it was more work to glance back and forth between the left of my browser for the tab and the URL at the top which in my mind are more "closely linked" for that to make sense.
But you also highlighted a good point, the limited space of traditional tabs does keep my organization in check. Once I get around the 20-tab mark and I'm unable to see any text beyond the website's favicon, I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up.
For one thing I could just never get used to my normal tab-switching shortcuts moving me up and down compared to left and right. And all my other apps with tabs still use horizontal tabs, so I couldn't fully switch over to that model in my head. Additionally the URL is still at the top so it was more work to glance back and forth between the left of my browser for the tab and the URL at the top which in my mind are more "closely linked" for that to make sense.
But you also highlighted a good point, the limited space of traditional tabs does keep my organization in check. Once I get around the 20-tab mark and I'm unable to see any text beyond the website's favicon, I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up.
I think vertical tabs has the exact same effect of being artificially space limiting if that's valuable to you, without the amount of visible text changing every single time you open or close a tab.
I tend to sit with 20-40 tabs open, which is in the vicinity of how many a vertical tab list can accommodate comfortably, but I get about 4 letters per tab. If I needed to be able to see the text, I'd have to cap a window out at maybe 8 tabs, which is just unreasonable for some workflows.
I tend to sit with 20-40 tabs open, which is in the vicinity of how many a vertical tab list can accommodate comfortably, but I get about 4 letters per tab. If I needed to be able to see the text, I'd have to cap a window out at maybe 8 tabs, which is just unreasonable for some workflows.
>I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up.
I wish I had your discipline, I just open new browser windows and start more tabs there
I wish I had your discipline, I just open new browser windows and start more tabs there
[deleted]
This is a failure of the browser setup if you have to resort to a text file for tabs
Also don't get the benefit of the stateless session as a private window - you can just as well close a regular second browser window and not look back at history?
Also don't get the benefit of the stateless session as a private window - you can just as well close a regular second browser window and not look back at history?
I don't use a text file for tabs, I use a text file for taking notes.
The fact that the second window is private isn't hugely relevant, it just helps to stop me from accidentally doing stateful things in it (and reduces cross-site tracking in the process). The point is that I never have to ask "is this tab important?", the decision was already made up-front, based on where I opened the tab in the first place.
The fact that the second window is private isn't hugely relevant, it just helps to stop me from accidentally doing stateful things in it (and reduces cross-site tracking in the process). The point is that I never have to ask "is this tab important?", the decision was already made up-front, based on where I opened the tab in the first place.
Found a recent screenshot of it on Reddit. Looks good, I hope it has similar nesting like Tree Style Tab though. In my opinion that is still the best implementation of this idea across all browsers.
Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either – but it does have groups and profiles. They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more, so I'm glad they finally found some time to do this.
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either – but it does have groups and profiles. They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more, so I'm glad they finally found some time to do this.
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
> They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more
I'm just as excited as you are for side tabs, but I don't think browsers need to be constantly innovating their UI. In fact, the last time Firefox did that it took a week of tinkering to get it back to a usable state, and I now have the constant "Compact (Unsupported)" layout hovering over me, reminding me that one day I'll probably have to tinker even more.
I use the browser for at least 8 hours a day, I don't need the experience constantly changing, it's a tool. "stale" and "boring" is also "stable" and "dependable".
I'm just as excited as you are for side tabs, but I don't think browsers need to be constantly innovating their UI. In fact, the last time Firefox did that it took a week of tinkering to get it back to a usable state, and I now have the constant "Compact (Unsupported)" layout hovering over me, reminding me that one day I'll probably have to tinker even more.
I use the browser for at least 8 hours a day, I don't need the experience constantly changing, it's a tool. "stale" and "boring" is also "stable" and "dependable".
I mostly agree, and don't get all the fuss about Chrome (or any other browser's) UI. To me they look all very similar and function very similarly. The differences just don't seem that big of a deal. I think it is mostly people being resistant to change. I had one friend that I convinced to switch to FireFox after a year[0]. A month after he switched over I got him to admit that it was easy to switch and there's no real change.
I use the browser for at least 8 hours a day, I don't need the experience constantly changing, it's a tool. "stale" and "boring" is also "stable" and "dependable".
[0] Argument is about having legitimate browser competition and the privacy boost of containerizing what data Google could (keyword) collect. I'd really only bring it up when he'd be complaining about Chrome or Google, so quite often.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197798
[2] https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file
[3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-...
> it took a week of tinkering
> They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more
I use the browser for at least 8 hours a day, I don't need the experience constantly changing, it's a tool. "stale" and "boring" is also "stable" and "dependable".
[0] Argument is about having legitimate browser competition and the privacy boost of containerizing what data Google could (keyword) collect. I'd really only bring it up when he'd be complaining about Chrome or Google, so quite often.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1197798
[2] https://kb.mozillazine.org/User.js_file
[3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-...
I also thought that Firefox latest redesign was quite bad.
This project fixes it and it's easy to install : https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
This project fixes it and it's easy to install : https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix
I don't have a problem with the current design, but you're right that this is better. I'll give it a try, thanks!
On the one hand, I completely agree with you (I can prove it with a pile of tools restoring the layout to something more compact), but on the other hand, I am deeply disappointed with the state of current browser experience.
The last innovation that really made a difference for me was the reader mode. I'm sure changing the relationship between tabs and bookmarks would improve things even more, and being able to treat my history as a knowledge store would make web browsing even better.
But even then, I don't want such experiments in my main browser. That's supposed to be dependable. Maybe what I want is a separate browser/profile/mode where features trickle into my main browser after I am comfortable with them.
The last innovation that really made a difference for me was the reader mode. I'm sure changing the relationship between tabs and bookmarks would improve things even more, and being able to treat my history as a knowledge store would make web browsing even better.
But even then, I don't want such experiments in my main browser. That's supposed to be dependable. Maybe what I want is a separate browser/profile/mode where features trickle into my main browser after I am comfortable with them.
> on the other hand, I am deeply disappointed with the state of current browser experience.
Are there specific problems you keep running into? Or is this more a desire they were constantly improving?
My attitude tends to be that every new improvement is just something I risk getting used to and then getting sad when it (inevitably) breaks for me. So these days I just want to use as few features on my computer as possible.
We all have to consume to produce. But there's value in maximizing the yield. Produce a lot while needing to consume as little as possible. Seems more resilient for my own habits.
Are there specific problems you keep running into? Or is this more a desire they were constantly improving?
My attitude tends to be that every new improvement is just something I risk getting used to and then getting sad when it (inevitably) breaks for me. So these days I just want to use as few features on my computer as possible.
We all have to consume to produce. But there's value in maximizing the yield. Produce a lot while needing to consume as little as possible. Seems more resilient for my own habits.
I'm using Firefox.
I keep running into the problem of not being able to find the website I visited. If the concept is not in the URL or the page title, it might as well not exist in the history.
I run into the problem of disappearing documents. Neither bookmarks nor tabs provide persistence. There are online services which save documents, but I don't want to rely ona third party to keep my stuff.
I often want to annotate a document before I bookmark it, so that I know why I should come back to it, and what the relevant sections are.
On top of that, I don't know what bookmarks are relative to tabs. Both are kind of bad at organizing knowledge.
I'd love to try out new paradigms for the sake of more power, but have a safe, reliable browser to return to if the new thing turns out a bad idea. Sure, things take effort to maintain and get taken away. But it's a battle of mindshare. If there are no early adopters, no feature will ever become big enough to be resilient.
I keep running into the problem of not being able to find the website I visited. If the concept is not in the URL or the page title, it might as well not exist in the history.
I run into the problem of disappearing documents. Neither bookmarks nor tabs provide persistence. There are online services which save documents, but I don't want to rely ona third party to keep my stuff.
I often want to annotate a document before I bookmark it, so that I know why I should come back to it, and what the relevant sections are.
On top of that, I don't know what bookmarks are relative to tabs. Both are kind of bad at organizing knowledge.
I'd love to try out new paradigms for the sake of more power, but have a safe, reliable browser to return to if the new thing turns out a bad idea. Sure, things take effort to maintain and get taken away. But it's a battle of mindshare. If there are no early adopters, no feature will ever become big enough to be resilient.
I can totally relate to all of that. My current approach to it is to fill in the gaps in browsers using other tools. Minimize dependence on both tabs and bookmarks since they suck so much. An editor containing my notes open next to the browser. Making copies of things I care about (and giving them good backups) as it's become clear that we can't depend on anything to last out in the world.
I've actually started to think that this kind of hodge-podge of tools is a good thing. Software is hard, bugs are inevitable. Multiple tools from different authors make my setup more resilient. Tools keep growing more complex; adding features to a single tool only exacerbates that trend. I also feel a greater sense of agency. I'm not at the mercy of my tool provider, I can identify problems and solve them for myself.
I've actually started to think that this kind of hodge-podge of tools is a good thing. Software is hard, bugs are inevitable. Multiple tools from different authors make my setup more resilient. Tools keep growing more complex; adding features to a single tool only exacerbates that trend. I also feel a greater sense of agency. I'm not at the mercy of my tool provider, I can identify problems and solve them for myself.
Multiple tools from multiple people make it less likely that the entire ecosystem is going to collapse, but makes it likelier that any one tool will stop working.
But that's not even my main problem. Integration is. Integration consolidates ideas in ways that can be packaged and spread to others, increasing the mind share of the paradigm. Unless a good solution is integrated, it will be the domain of a few hardcore adherents. Once an integrated solution appears, it will become resilient only by the virtue of being popular and cared about (I guess as long as it's free software).
The flip side is that a modern web browser integrates so many things not core to any data management idea that few dare experiment with it.
I'm curious about the Arc browser, but I won't bet my workflows on it unless it becomes open source.
But that's not even my main problem. Integration is. Integration consolidates ideas in ways that can be packaged and spread to others, increasing the mind share of the paradigm. Unless a good solution is integrated, it will be the domain of a few hardcore adherents. Once an integrated solution appears, it will become resilient only by the virtue of being popular and cared about (I guess as long as it's free software).
The flip side is that a modern web browser integrates so many things not core to any data management idea that few dare experiment with it.
I'm curious about the Arc browser, but I won't bet my workflows on it unless it becomes open source.
When you ctrl+S to save a page, by default the first attempt fails, as evidenced by the warning icon in the Downloads button. You click it again to save it, and naturally it redownloads and reexecutes the page and all its resources again. Likewise if you save an already open image, more often than not even when it was just loaded, it will need to be downloaded again.
It's a catch-22 because if you stop innovating your UI for 20 years and alternatives come up with something people actually like then you will lose users to them and slowly fade into irrelevancy.
Firefox succeeded because it was a fresh take on the entire browser UX at a time when Internet Explorer had been stagnant for half a decade.
Firefox succeeded because it was a fresh take on the entire browser UX at a time when Internet Explorer had been stagnant for half a decade.
As I remember it, Firefox succeeded because it fundamentally worked well and was very configurable, not because of the UX. The others at the time were bad at both of those things.
The UX of Firefox was (and, I'd argue, still is) not great, but it made up for that by being configurable enough that you could fix it for yourself.
The UX of Firefox was (and, I'd argue, still is) not great, but it made up for that by being configurable enough that you could fix it for yourself.
That's not how I remember it.
Firefox (Phoenix / Firebird) initially got its userbase from the Mozilla userbase which was this capable browser with many features and flexibility (extensions), but it was bloated, slow, with a kinda outdated (non-native) UI. Firefox's differing feature was its lightness and (native-like, per-platform) UI freshness, not configurability.
FF success against IE was mainly caused by Microsoft completely dropping the ball by simply not developing IE for a couple of years. I think one of the elementary features which has driven mass FF adoption was tabbing support, which IE6 didn't have.
Firefox (Phoenix / Firebird) initially got its userbase from the Mozilla userbase which was this capable browser with many features and flexibility (extensions), but it was bloated, slow, with a kinda outdated (non-native) UI. Firefox's differing feature was its lightness and (native-like, per-platform) UI freshness, not configurability.
FF success against IE was mainly caused by Microsoft completely dropping the ball by simply not developing IE for a couple of years. I think one of the elementary features which has driven mass FF adoption was tabbing support, which IE6 didn't have.
Everyone I knew who wasn't working in tech that switched to Firefox did so because tabs were this revolutionary new thing that transformed their browsing experience.
Of course, Firefox wasn't the first browser to offer tabs, but it was the first that was also fast, highly compatible, and easy for the average person to pick up and use. It's predecessor, the Mozilla suite, included all the same extensibility and customization, but it was also a bloated mess that nobody wanted to use.
Of course, Firefox wasn't the first browser to offer tabs, but it was the first that was also fast, highly compatible, and easy for the average person to pick up and use. It's predecessor, the Mozilla suite, included all the same extensibility and customization, but it was also a bloated mess that nobody wanted to use.
In my opinion, Firefox has never been particularly good. I tried it when it first came out - it was slow and a memory hog. Using IE6 was a much better experience, so I stayed there. It was only once Chrome came out that we had an actual good alternative to IE, and I switched immediately once I tried it.
I would love for Firefox to be awesome, but ultimately (in my subjective opinion of course) it just kind of sucks and always has.
I would love for Firefox to be awesome, but ultimately (in my subjective opinion of course) it just kind of sucks and always has.
Maintaining your UI and being able to tweak it to your liking is exactly the part of "UI innovation" where Firefox is severely lacking
And there is nothing dependable about you failure to do something for many years because the UI is stable in not supporting it
And there is nothing dependable about you failure to do something for many years because the UI is stable in not supporting it
> I'm just as excited as you are for side tabs, but I don't think browsers need to be constantly innovating their UI.
True. I avoid the 2 largest chromium browsers because their innovations have a goal of exploiting end users.
True. I avoid the 2 largest chromium browsers because their innovations have a goal of exploiting end users.
I'm in the group that uses multiple browsers. Its hard going between Safari and Firefox:
* Safari has tab groups. I guess Firefox is working on it again
* FF 129 just got Tab previews, but you have to hover over each to see it. Safari can show you previews for everything in a tab group
It sounds like FF is catching up slowly, but compared to Safari's UI, still feel like IE6. I use it for uBlock mostly.
* Safari has tab groups. I guess Firefox is working on it again
* FF 129 just got Tab previews, but you have to hover over each to see it. Safari can show you previews for everything in a tab group
It sounds like FF is catching up slowly, but compared to Safari's UI, still feel like IE6. I use it for uBlock mostly.
I think the best vertical tabs implementation in firefox is Sidebery. The use of "panes" to group tabs is brilliant. Older versions were buggy, but version 5 has been rock solid for me.
https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery
https://github.com/mbnuqw/sidebery
Another former Tree Style Tabs user, now on Sideberry with no regrets.
I am excited that FireFox is working this in by default so I don't have to keep fiddling with userChrome.css to get rid of the top tab bar.
I am excited that FireFox is working this in by default so I don't have to keep fiddling with userChrome.css to get rid of the top tab bar.
Looks like we won't have nesting in Firefox's implementation which made it kinda pointless to me.
So they've copied Edge's poor implementation of vertical tabs. Blech.
Hey, look on the bright side: maybe chromium will get vertical tabs soon!
Hey, look on the bright side: maybe chromium will get vertical tabs soon!
Can't agree more, have been using sidebery for about a month now, and even completely dropped chromium which I ran beside firefox for the last years to only running firefox with sideberry and container-tabs now.
I've been using vertical tabs (first TreeStyleTabs, now Sideberry for the last ~6 months) and I'm in the same boat.
Chrome is faster, snappier and works better on more websites I commonly use, but the fact that I cannot have "vertical tabs as trees" ruins the entire browser experience for me, so it's basically the only reason I use Firefox for the last decade or something.
Chrome is faster, snappier and works better on more websites I commonly use, but the fact that I cannot have "vertical tabs as trees" ruins the entire browser experience for me, so it's basically the only reason I use Firefox for the last decade or something.
Add NoScript and Firefox will be much faster than Chrome. It will make you aware of how much untrusted code poorly developed sites expect you to run on their behalf.
Well, turn off JavaScript in Chrome and you back to Chrome being faster. Turning off JS is obviously not a solution when the complaint is that (assuming the same amount of work) Chrome is faster for some JS.
NoScript doesn't turn off javascript. It allows you to selectively disable some scripts while whitelisting others. You can't use much of the modern web without JS but you can neuter the dozens of trackers and ad bloat some sites insist on running on your computer.
I'm well aware of what NoScript does, I'm already using it. It seems you're missing the point of the comparison.
Running uBlock Origin in “Medium mode” [1] also does wonders (= blocking 3p-scripts and frames).
It’s interesting to see how many websites work in this mode, and the amount of crap you’re not seeing. Websites load so much faster. And, you can then (permanently, or not) easily whitelist some specific domains like content providers, etc. while browsing.
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...
How have I not heard about this in the bajillion times I whined about tab groups?
I kinda dislike that Firefox only have one good option that involves completely hiding each group currently not in use, but it functioned ith their tab containers which made it worth the hassle.
If this does too, I'm switching permanently
I kinda dislike that Firefox only have one good option that involves completely hiding each group currently not in use, but it functioned ith their tab containers which made it worth the hassle.
If this does too, I'm switching permanently
How do panes scale for many groups? Can you manage 20, 30 panes? Or does it become annoying at this amount?
Sidebery is nice, but it's missing an API allowing other addons to interact with it. This is a big benefit of Tree Style Tabs, especially as you can even exploit it as a user.
Sidebery is nice, but it's missing an API allowing other addons to interact with it. This is a big benefit of Tree Style Tabs, especially as you can even exploit it as a user.
I have 20 panes and it works fine.
I use Sidebery, and I added some custom userChrome.css to have the sidebar collapse to only take up 36px, and expand on hover, absolutely love using it
I switched to sideberry a while back, and yeah - very much agreed, it's leagues ahead of others in terms of base experience breadth (container tabs and whatnot are fully integrated) and customization options.
Their wiki also has a very simple and effective userChrome.css tweak to hide the top tab bar when the side panel is open. That's a rather crucial vertical space savings on a small laptop.
Their wiki also has a very simple and effective userChrome.css tweak to hide the top tab bar when the side panel is open. That's a rather crucial vertical space savings on a small laptop.
I've added commands to Tridactyl that expand/collapse the tabs I'm on in Tree Style Tabs, using their javascript API. Does Sidebery have anything like that?
Started using Sideberry over a year ago and have not looked back since. Very good stuff.
Sidebery is amazing. I have been using it for more than a year now and I love it.
Firefox has profiles. It's just not very user-friendly.
But Chrome tabs don't even have horizontal scrolling. If you work with, say, more than 10 tabs, Chrome squashes them, and the more tabs you have open, the less usable it becomes. Meanwhile, Firefox has horizontal scrolling and neat (geeky) options for navigating lots of tabs.
But Chrome tabs don't even have horizontal scrolling. If you work with, say, more than 10 tabs, Chrome squashes them, and the more tabs you have open, the less usable it becomes. Meanwhile, Firefox has horizontal scrolling and neat (geeky) options for navigating lots of tabs.
They're working on a profile switcher: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/here-s-what-we-re...
Can’t you change the user profile in the command line with a flag? Surprised it takes this long to implement that in a gui fashion.
You can open different profiles by typing about:profiles into the address bar.
https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-remove...
https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-remove...
The most important part of profiles is being able to right-click on a link and open it in a different profile. I don't see that mentioned. I typically have multiple profiles open at once.
Edge has the best implementation where you can define sites opening in certain profiles. Pity ms ruined that browser - it is completely untrustworthy with it auto turning on options such as syncing.
Edge has the best implementation where you can define sites opening in certain profiles. Pity ms ruined that browser - it is completely untrustworthy with it auto turning on options such as syncing.
Also on Firefox you can hold CTRL+T / CTRL+W to open / close multiple tabs, CTRL+Click or SHIFT+Click to select multiple tabs at once and then e.g. move them to another window or close them, etc.
I always assumed Chrome also had all of these features, including scrolling, etc.
I always assumed Chrome also had all of these features, including scrolling, etc.
The lack of horizontal scrolling in Chrome and most chrome-based browsers drives me absolutely crazy, it's such a basic feature...
Firefox on the other hand has terrible support for profiles, I've been using Arc which is good but has worse performance when working with a lot of tabs (hundreds)
Firefox on the other hand has terrible support for profiles, I've been using Arc which is good but has worse performance when working with a lot of tabs (hundreds)
I can't take a browser seriously unless it's open source. Arc may be the best browser of them all in terms of features, but I'd never consider it as an alternative to anything until it opens up its source code. We shouldn't trust a closed-source browser.
I remember chrome has a flag for this.
FF has said that they are finally adding groups, too, but I haven't heard anything about the timing of that. I'm really looking forward to that as I currently use a plugin for that and would love to drop the third-party plugin for something native. I'm always worried about the risk of a third-party plugin like that with such broad access.
I'm a project manager and use it to manage about 200 tabs in about 12 groups. Each group represents a project and I switch between projects several times a day. Groups lets me keep those pages open and provides fast switching.
I'm a project manager and use it to manage about 200 tabs in about 12 groups. Each group represents a project and I switch between projects several times a day. Groups lets me keep those pages open and provides fast switching.
It's called "Tab Containers" and Firefox was the first browser to have the feature
Containers separate context for the websites, e.g. you can log in to the same site with different account at the same time.
Simple Tab Groups separates context for the user, i.e. hides the tabs of inactive groups (while also supporting containers). It's not the same thing.
Simple Tab Groups separates context for the user, i.e. hides the tabs of inactive groups (while also supporting containers). It's not the same thing.
I don't quite see them that way either, but, I further see tab grouping, tab hiding and profile groups as three separate parts of the same overall feature. And Simple Tab Groups directly supported Containers since day 1, so I personally always really found this distinction a bit more lexical than practical.
I absolutely love the hiding feature and find Containers incomplete without them. What's the point of switching context if the context is still visible there at all times? At that point, let me just use a different User. And I'd find Simple Tab Groups weirdly incomplete as well if they insisted on hiding tabs but not providing Container functionality. Because tab groups with hiding don't feel "ephemeral" enough. Takes too long to make a group, and the interface changes too much when jumping around. That dissuades me from going on tangents online and then grouping that tangent and keeping it on the side temporarily. Chrome's approach is better for that latter thing.
I want something in between. Something that let's you see all groups on a single bar or on a tree bar, and then further groups that can be containers and switch the bar. Chrome was close with their group save+hide feature, but they eat into the bookmarks bar with no options about where.
I absolutely love the hiding feature and find Containers incomplete without them. What's the point of switching context if the context is still visible there at all times? At that point, let me just use a different User. And I'd find Simple Tab Groups weirdly incomplete as well if they insisted on hiding tabs but not providing Container functionality. Because tab groups with hiding don't feel "ephemeral" enough. Takes too long to make a group, and the interface changes too much when jumping around. That dissuades me from going on tangents online and then grouping that tangent and keeping it on the side temporarily. Chrome's approach is better for that latter thing.
I want something in between. Something that let's you see all groups on a single bar or on a tree bar, and then further groups that can be containers and switch the bar. Chrome was close with their group save+hide feature, but they eat into the bookmarks bar with no options about where.
I'm not talking about Tab Containers. I don't need to segregate sessions/accounts or such.
Tab Groups is a way to be able to swap sets of tabs within a window. I can have groups for each of projects A, B, and C. Each project group can have a couple dozen tabs. When I switch groups, I only see the tabs for that group. I alternate among several projects each day and need to keep the pages live. Without groups, it is impossible to manage all of the tabs.
Tab Groups is a way to be able to swap sets of tabs within a window. I can have groups for each of projects A, B, and C. Each project group can have a couple dozen tabs. When I switch groups, I only see the tabs for that group. I alternate among several projects each day and need to keep the pages live. Without groups, it is impossible to manage all of the tabs.
Parent is talking about Tab Groups, not Tab Containers.
Can those "tab containers" be collapsed into 1 "fake" tab with the container name and uncollapsed back into full tabs by clicking on that "fake" tab?
> Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either
Brave has had vertical tabs for.. more than half a year now. Maybe a year?
On top of that it has a sidebar, it has a built-in adblocker, the rest of the settings are more hardened than default Firefox, they do tonnes of research (https://brave.com/research/), including really cool one's like SugarCoat that benefit everyone.
Brave is basically the promise Firefox left unfulfilled.
Brave has had vertical tabs for.. more than half a year now. Maybe a year?
On top of that it has a sidebar, it has a built-in adblocker, the rest of the settings are more hardened than default Firefox, they do tonnes of research (https://brave.com/research/), including really cool one's like SugarCoat that benefit everyone.
Brave is basically the promise Firefox left unfulfilled.
I've liked Vivaldi a lot, including it's support for vertical tabs which I consider essential at this point. And they don't constantly mess around with the UI for no reason, unlike Chrome and Firefox. My main major gripe with it, is that it's closed source. I can see Brave is at least MPL, so I think I'll take a look at it.
Firefox has had vertical tabs for more than a decade now. It just required an add-on until now.
The unfortunate thing is that Firefox could be the perfect platform for browser UI experimentation if more care were put into making the project easier to fork and reasonable to keep up to date with mainline.
A few months ago I played with forking it for my own tinkering but bailed because it seemed likely to turn into a rolling mass of merge conflicts if I were to make anything but minor changes.
A few months ago I played with forking it for my own tinkering but bailed because it seemed likely to turn into a rolling mass of merge conflicts if I were to make anything but minor changes.
Some forks are using a nice patch based system: see how the Zen browser is built for instance (https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/). I think that's a better model than merging upstream updates into your own branch.
The truly unfortunate thing is that it was the perfect such platform, then they took it away in the name of security.
> ... it does have groups and profiles.
You probably know this, but Firefox has its own version of profiles, although its a bit hidden.
You can see the profiles by going to about:profiles or launching Firefox with -ProfileManager as a cli option, which launches a profile manager window.
I do agree that this needs a better UI
You can see the profiles by going to about:profiles or launching Firefox with -ProfileManager as a cli option, which launches a profile manager window.
I do agree that this needs a better UI
Container tabs are a much more powerful alternative to 'profiles'.
Profiles are nice for multiple people sharing a pc/account, container-tabs are for seperating online persona's or work/private browsing
Container tabs are much less powerful alternative because they don't have separate history, extensions and settings.
FYI you also need a bit of custom CSS to get rid of the title bar if you want to replicate this screenshot. By default if you turn on vertical tabs you still have an empty title bar across the top.
Changing things just for the sake of changing them is the great bane of modern software. Consistency is a valuable feature! Don't throw it away without a VERY good reason! Meaning improving things is fine, changing them just for the sake of what some SV arsehole things is "modern" and "fresh" is not.
> Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated.
This a feature that Firefox originally had but removed.
In the older versions, Firefox preferences contained a dropdown that let users choose whether to show tabs on the top, bottom, left, or right side of the browser window.
This a feature that Firefox originally had but removed.
In the older versions, Firefox preferences contained a dropdown that let users choose whether to show tabs on the top, bottom, left, or right side of the browser window.
> Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated
How can a UI stagnante? If it ain't broke don't fix it.
How can a UI stagnante? If it ain't broke don't fix it.
In case it helps any reader, I recently discovered the [cmd + shift + a] / [control + shift + a] shortcut in chrome for ‘vertical tabs-ish’ in searchable form
The current implementation still leaves in the tab bar at the top at least on Macs. I hope they iron these bugs out before their stable release.
The bottom button in the sidebar ("Customize sidebar") allows you to turn off the tab bar at the top.
[deleted]
Vivaldi is very far ahead, and it has vertical tabs, not sure how Chrome is the only comparator for a niche browser
Waterfox has vertical tabs
They have tab containers though.
This made me think of one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time with browsers: split-pane view.
In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group".
I frequently arrive at situations where I want to compare the contents of one webpage against the contents of another webpage. So far, the most usable option I've found is to split the 2nd tab off into a new window, then arrange the two windows side-by-side.
There is "Side View"[1], but that shows a bare viewport, which makes browsing in the 2nd viewport much more restricted than regular browsing.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firef...
In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group".
I frequently arrive at situations where I want to compare the contents of one webpage against the contents of another webpage. So far, the most usable option I've found is to split the 2nd tab off into a new window, then arrange the two windows side-by-side.
There is "Side View"[1], but that shows a bare viewport, which makes browsing in the 2nd viewport much more restricted than regular browsing.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firef...
OS window managers do a better job of that. Split view inside the browser has some thorny issues around making sure the user knows what resource they are interacting with. There is a lot of complexity when it comes to focus/blur in HTML, CSS, JS, etc.
Unpopular opinion: Tab management in browsers originally addressed the shortcomings of OS window management (see Windows XP and IE6, and the original Google Chrome tiling capability replicated into Windows 10/11 OS window management.
I also share this opinion. I think we are in a local maximum with tabs. But getting out of it request a lot of coordination between browsers and each desktop environment so it is unlikely to ever happen. Maybe less portable browsers like GNOME Web or Safari that only "need" to deal with one desktop environment can manage it at some point.
https://kevincox.ca/2021/01/11/tabs-were-a-mistake/
https://kevincox.ca/2021/01/11/tabs-were-a-mistake/
The cat was out of the bag, when browsers got tabs.
They are already tiny window managers, and may as well lean into it.
Tabs state management is simpler and more battle tested. Split pane browsers will need to relearn some of the same problems/security found when tabed browsing was introduced. They will have unique problems/security as well. I would be interested to see how split pane browsers deal with focus stealing JS especially with timeouts or other shenanigans.
No they’re not.
Tabs are tabs, they’re not windows. Next thing you tell me is that they should implement virtual desktops and loading tabs remotely.
They are already tiny window managers, and may as well lean into it.
Tabs are tabs, they’re not windows. Next thing you tell me is that they should implement virtual desktops and loading tabs remotely.
They are already tiny window managers, and may as well lean into it.
I do this all the time by just dragging a tab off so it's a second window (and hitting a key in my wm to make them side-by-side). The only problem is that the address bar turns so tiny it's impossible to read it among all the pointless icons that should've been in the overflow menu, I wish there were a way to make it prioritise showing the url instead of icons for "bookmark this page" and "certified by digicert" etc.
yeah, this with a tiling window manager is my go to.
You can support feature requests on Mozilla Connect: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/split-screen-tab-in-tab...
Arc browser does this, you should check that out
And it also as vertical tabs!
Just checked out Arc. Very innovative design. I guess it's inspired by mobile browsers.
You can also group tabs in the vertical view but also create separate „workspaces“ (to distinquish between different projects or even private <> work).
Though the most innovative feauture is their deep integration of services like Notion, GitHub, telegram etc.
Quite astonishing actually and definitely one of my favourite pieces of software.
Though the most innovative feauture is their deep integration of services like Notion, GitHub, telegram etc.
Quite astonishing actually and definitely one of my favourite pieces of software.
Seems to me that Arc is inspired by Operating Systems in general.
- Workspaces/Desktops with mouse gestures - Spotlight like Quick Launch - Alt Tab like Tab switch - Window management within the browser - Dedicated area for Media control - Widgets on mouse hover
- Workspaces/Desktops with mouse gestures - Spotlight like Quick Launch - Alt Tab like Tab switch - Window management within the browser - Dedicated area for Media control - Widgets on mouse hover
Might as well go all the way, the browser is basically an OS anyway on top of your OS anyway
Haha, Arc requires an account to use, wtf?
This is better accomplished by adding keyboard shortcuts to the browser for popping out a tab into a separate window, and then you can use the window manager’s shortcuts to arrange side-by-side, or however you want.
It’s preferable to have such building blocks of functionality, which one can then combine in many ways.
It’s preferable to have such building blocks of functionality, which one can then combine in many ways.
Use a tiling window manager and you can put anything side by side.
I find the tab paradigm very deficient, though. I used to think tabs were great (like everyone), until I learnt Emacs. Emacs doesn't have tabs. You can just open anything in any window at any time and split windows arbitrarily, even in text mode over SSH. It's so much better. Having each tab limited to some viewport is so unnecessarily limiting.
I find the tab paradigm very deficient, though. I used to think tabs were great (like everyone), until I learnt Emacs. Emacs doesn't have tabs. You can just open anything in any window at any time and split windows arbitrarily, even in text mode over SSH. It's so much better. Having each tab limited to some viewport is so unnecessarily limiting.
The Arc browser (macOS and Windows) has exactly that feature
Vivaldi has that . Helpful for comparison, charts etc
I regularly use 'split-view' with Firefox with the aid of a window manager, PaperWM (which is a horizontal scrolling WM for GNOME) to be exact. Just drag the tab out of the tab bar and the newly created window is automatically tiled to a sort of 'split-view' right next to the original one.
Yeah was about to say - i3 solves this as well, and does so in a general way rather than each app having its own split pane implementation.
Sometimes I want two browser session side by side. Sometimes I want a browser session next to Gimp or my IDE. Sometimes I want a 3-row terminal with that thing I’m keeping an eye on just below the browser.
i3 to the rescue!
Sometimes I want two browser session side by side. Sometimes I want a browser session next to Gimp or my IDE. Sometimes I want a 3-row terminal with that thing I’m keeping an eye on just below the browser.
i3 to the rescue!
Vivaldi has split pane. I use that if I need it.
Very simple in Firefox (tested in Firefox 60.4.0.esr - any later check toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets etc.):
- use userChrome.css to display ALL tabs side by side:
profile/chrome/userChrome.css :
- with extension like last_selected_tab AFAIR, or your own, to have content-secondary, handled - then hide any browser of other type with styles as well (as by default you have only: tabpanels > notificationbox > browser[type=content-primary] - being the active tab). :)
- use userChrome.css to display ALL tabs side by side:
profile/chrome/userChrome.css :
tabpanels {
display: -moz-box !important;
}
tabpanels > notificationbox {
-moz-box-flex: 1;
border-width: 2px !important;
border:solid #888;
}- with extension like last_selected_tab AFAIR, or your own, to have content-secondary, handled - then hide any browser of other type with styles as well (as by default you have only: tabpanels > notificationbox > browser[type=content-primary] - being the active tab). :)
Opera had a very mature & expressive implementation of this feature back before version 15 (when they adopted Chromium). Since then, Vivaldi (created by Opera founder) is trying to rebuild all of the OG Opera features - they have this feature now; not as powerful as it once was but they're working on it.
Vivaldi does this also.
I'm a little confused why your current solution of letting your window manager handle this is insufficient? I'll often have two or more windows of a browser open to have "paned" browsing.
Back in the XUL days there was an addon that did this. And it wasn't just two, I'm pretty sure you could split arbitrarily deep, both horizontal and vertical.
We lost a lot when they abandoned that.
We lost a lot when they abandoned that.
I'd like to be able to open a link in a new pane, split with the current tab, just as I'm able to open a link in a new tab or a new window.
On a Mac I use Rectangle Pro for something similar, snapping my windows next to each other. It's not perfect but it does allow multiple sets of tabs at once.
I use yabai on Mac, coming from AwesomeWM on Linux. Never tried Rectangle, any idea how it compares?
It's not a window manager, but a tool for doing various things to windows triggered by hotkeys.
Why not just do that with your window manager??
Floorp, a Firefox fork, has this feature.
You can try Arc, it does that.
Edge does that
Yeah, widescreen monitors lend themselves nicely to a split pane view and I wish more applications used it.
A screenshot of how it looks would have been helpful. I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/
> I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/
It's funny how we've gone full cycle. Early versions of Firefox get vertical tabs because the plugin system is very rich and you could do whatever you wanted with XUL. Firefox quantum comes around and kills XUL based extensions, vertical tabs are dead. Arc revives an ancient idea as something new and hip, firefox "responds" by reviving the very thing they killed.
It's funny how we've gone full cycle. Early versions of Firefox get vertical tabs because the plugin system is very rich and you could do whatever you wanted with XUL. Firefox quantum comes around and kills XUL based extensions, vertical tabs are dead. Arc revives an ancient idea as something new and hip, firefox "responds" by reviving the very thing they killed.
AFAIK, Tree Style Tab still exists?
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
The original XUL-based vertical tabs actually moved and restyled Firefox's native tabs, instead of creating a lookalike (which is all that's possible now). This meant that unrelated addons that did things like grey-out unloaded tabs, or alter the favicons to have some sort of indicator, still worked on the vertical tabs. The current vertical tabs addons all have to do it themselves or add some sort of API for the other addons to interact with to get the same effect.
It does, but you have to have some custom CSS to turn off the normal horizontal tabs, and you have to go and enable some options in about:config to even have custom CSS.
I've got something that works reasonably well, but it's really hard to have CSS that always works correctly.
I've got something that works reasonably well, but it's really hard to have CSS that always works correctly.
Arc is much more than that, though.
1st. Tabs are both tabs and bookmarks. They exist to be more or less persistent (as long as you add them to folders - I get it, it's not everyone's workflow, but for people like me, it's a blessing).
2nd. It has a brilliant tab sync between devices. Something Firefox doesn't do - in fact, only Edge does that.
3rd. Is much lighter on resources on macOS. Some months ago I decided to give a - yet another - try at Firefox on my MacBook and I started not being able to do my full work day job on battery. At first, I didn't understand what was going on and thought it was docker that was killing the battery. Then I went to investigate, and yup, it was Firefox, again, after all these years of telling that now they are good on macOS. No, they aren't, they still use 4x more battery than Edge, or Arc, or Brave...
TLDR: Give Arc a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
1st. Tabs are both tabs and bookmarks. They exist to be more or less persistent (as long as you add them to folders - I get it, it's not everyone's workflow, but for people like me, it's a blessing).
2nd. It has a brilliant tab sync between devices. Something Firefox doesn't do - in fact, only Edge does that.
3rd. Is much lighter on resources on macOS. Some months ago I decided to give a - yet another - try at Firefox on my MacBook and I started not being able to do my full work day job on battery. At first, I didn't understand what was going on and thought it was docker that was killing the battery. Then I went to investigate, and yup, it was Firefox, again, after all these years of telling that now they are good on macOS. No, they aren't, they still use 4x more battery than Edge, or Arc, or Brave...
TLDR: Give Arc a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
You can open tabs from other devices in Firefox. They don't open automatically though, presumably because some people (i.e. myself) would find that horrible.
Well, I find that seamless. I get to my desktop, and can continue working exactly in what I was doing in my laptop.
That, together with clearly defined workspaces, is fantastic for me.
That, together with clearly defined workspaces, is fantastic for me.
> the plugin system is very rich
- like mplayer or vlc plugins to play every video format independently of browsers licence - right ?
> you could do whatever you wanted with XUL
- except undoing it (restartless extensions) - but you could do better without it anyway.. (XBL was to powerfull idea ;)
.. except since you couldn't hook in early enough to replace some XPCOM pieces before they are cached.. anymore.. RIP Firefox.
- like mplayer or vlc plugins to play every video format independently of browsers licence - right ?
> you could do whatever you wanted with XUL
- except undoing it (restartless extensions) - but you could do better without it anyway.. (XBL was to powerfull idea ;)
.. except since you couldn't hook in early enough to replace some XPCOM pieces before they are cached.. anymore.. RIP Firefox.
Maybe (probably?), but back when I worked at Mozilla in ~2010 "Tree Style Tabs" was one of the most popular add-ons.
Here's a screenshot of what the feature looks like:
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-...
Here's a screenshot of what the feature looks like:
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-...
They unfortunately ruined TST with the switch to WebExtensions because it could no longer replace the top tab bar. There were hacks you could do by modifying something in your Firefox profile directory.
Bizarre to me that they didn't take TST's popularity as a hint of supporting vertical tabs as a native feature until almost 7 years later.
Bizarre to me that they didn't take TST's popularity as a hint of supporting vertical tabs as a native feature until almost 7 years later.
I want to say they actually put some work in to allow TST to still work when they transitioned to quantum as it was a popular extension.
I got the impression they were eventually going to add back in the horizontal tab bar disable as well but if that was even true they clearly forgot about it. I've been using the userChrome hacks for close to 7 years now.
I got the impression they were eventually going to add back in the horizontal tab bar disable as well but if that was even true they clearly forgot about it. I've been using the userChrome hacks for close to 7 years now.
Compared to pushing and implementing CSS, JS and HTML standards, cryptography, APIs, mobile OS release cycles etc, I've always wondered whether vertical tabs would've been an easy win.
Yeah, I remember it being a huge internal argument against WebExtensions at the time. (But, security + easy of building + compatibility + speed of developing Firefox + a bunch of other things made the switch off XUL the right choice)
>I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/
What age are you?
How long have you been using computers?
Sorry to be this blunt, but I am asking as Firefox has had addons for vertical tabs for a long time.
Vivaldi, Edge, Brave all have vertical tabs.
Opera Presto was first.
Why even mention this Arc? I feel like you just jumped on some hype train and you have been using Google Chrome and just recently found out about vertical tabs. Good for you but it is not a new development.
What age are you?
How long have you been using computers?
Sorry to be this blunt, but I am asking as Firefox has had addons for vertical tabs for a long time.
Vivaldi, Edge, Brave all have vertical tabs.
Opera Presto was first.
Why even mention this Arc? I feel like you just jumped on some hype train and you have been using Google Chrome and just recently found out about vertical tabs. Good for you but it is not a new development.
Edge and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Arc even existed.
Firefox also had it via an extension.
Firefox also had it via an extension.
...and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Edge even existed (and about six years before Edge implemented it).
The only other browser (to my knowledge) that had native tabs earlier than Vivaldi was the original Opera browser, which was eventually killed, which in turn led to people leaving the company and creating Vivaldi.
The only other browser (to my knowledge) that had native tabs earlier than Vivaldi was the original Opera browser, which was eventually killed, which in turn led to people leaving the company and creating Vivaldi.
I still miss the flexibility of the originals Opera's UI. As well as the built-in email client.
https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P (from 2009)
https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P (from 2009)
It seems they took a cue from Arc for the pinned tabs icons. Now they only need to add tab groups a la Tab Stash, Sideberry or Tree Style Tab, and combine that with Sync. Still a lot of work ahead, but this looks very promising.
Kudos to the Firefox team.
Kudos to the Firefox team.
Firefox for Android already has "Collections" of tabs. Maybe a starting point?
I use Edge for work and the vertical tabs with grouping works really nicely. On the other hand Arc's website made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Unfortunately it does indeed seem like that's what Firefox wants to ape.
I would imagine a minor browser would be less of an influence than the fact that most browsers have vertical tabs as an option at this point, or even just the slew of add-ons for Firefox itself.
Hadn't heard of Arc, went to download it just now, and...it requires an account to use? Really?
Browser UIs have barely evolved in the past decade so I guess I'm excited that Firefox is trying something new.
Browser UIs have barely evolved in the past decade so I guess I'm excited that Firefox is trying something new.
I wish all browsers has first class vertical tabs support and split view. I am really tired of resource hog, unstable arc. Want to return back to traditional browsers but they are not supporting vertical tabs like arc did. And arc turn its face to AI instead of stability (I guess) because of investors.
So we are lonely in the dark :)
So we are lonely in the dark :)
Most browsers except Chrome have some sort of vertical tabs support.
- Safari (Mac) has a vertical tabs, but a very confusing UI, mixing Profiles, Windows and Tab Groups (only 1 level).
- Edge has Workspaces and Vertical Tabs, along with Groups (only 1 level).
- Chrome does not have vertical tabs and has 1 level groups
- Vivaldi has vertical tabs and groups, not sure how many levels of grouping.
- Firefox has Containers and Vertical Tabs (today), but for best results you still need something like Tab Stash, Sideberry or TST.
- Orion Browser (Mac) has the best UI imho and allows for grouping tabs at as many levels as you want, but you cannot have proper "folders", only nested tabs.
- Arc gets everything right, in my opinion, but I do not specially care much for the candy UI.
- Safari (Mac) has a vertical tabs, but a very confusing UI, mixing Profiles, Windows and Tab Groups (only 1 level).
- Edge has Workspaces and Vertical Tabs, along with Groups (only 1 level).
- Chrome does not have vertical tabs and has 1 level groups
- Vivaldi has vertical tabs and groups, not sure how many levels of grouping.
- Firefox has Containers and Vertical Tabs (today), but for best results you still need something like Tab Stash, Sideberry or TST.
- Orion Browser (Mac) has the best UI imho and allows for grouping tabs at as many levels as you want, but you cannot have proper "folders", only nested tabs.
- Arc gets everything right, in my opinion, but I do not specially care much for the candy UI.
I'm surprised that none of them support tree hierarchies (like tree style tabs / sideberry), which IMO is the reason to use 'vertical tabs' in the first place.
I believe it’s likely due to usability issues on increasingly common small laptop screens. On a 12/13” screen for example hierarchal sidebars become a truncated mess after only 1-2 levels of nesting unless the sidebar is expanded and eating up valuable main content space.
Personally even 1-level vertical tabs are valuable because labels don’t get truncated or hidden nearly as badly as they do with traditional tabs, plus vertical scrolling is more natural and effortless than horizontal is. Additionally, most screens these days have tons of width while height is at a premium, and vertical tabs takes advantage of that.
Personally even 1-level vertical tabs are valuable because labels don’t get truncated or hidden nearly as badly as they do with traditional tabs, plus vertical scrolling is more natural and effortless than horizontal is. Additionally, most screens these days have tons of width while height is at a premium, and vertical tabs takes advantage of that.
Orion browser does, all natively.
Actually somehow Safari has fastest load times, it just feel faster than anything. But man, I think it has ugliest UI :( I want to use Safari inside arc UI
> Actually somehow Safari has fastest load times, it just feel faster than anything
I guess that's easier when you only care about one platform, and everything that comes with it.
I wonder how fast you could make a browser if you don't make it cross-platform and only support usage on Linux for example. What things could you do if you don't care about cross-platform support?
I guess that's easier when you only care about one platform, and everything that comes with it.
I wonder how fast you could make a browser if you don't make it cross-platform and only support usage on Linux for example. What things could you do if you don't care about cross-platform support?
Linux WebKit browsers are pretty snappy too. I think it just boils down to what each browser/engine team prioritizes.
IIRC very early versions of Chrome actually had native vertical tabs and then they removed the feature at some point.
Edge even has vertical tabs now. There are always add-ons, but I agree this should he a first class feature in all browsers.
The annoying thing about the vertical tabs in Edge is that Microsoft eliminated the vertical taskbar option in Windows 11. One step forward and two steps back.
The annoying thing about the vertical tabs in Edge is that Microsoft eliminated the vertical taskbar option in Windows 11. One step forward and two steps back.
Being forced to use Edge on my work laptop is how I found out about vertical tabs, they're so much easier to use for me.
Why is having a vertical option for the taskbar not on Win11? That sounds like one of the easiest features to port over.
Why is having a vertical option for the taskbar not on Win11? That sounds like one of the easiest features to port over.
> And arc turn its face to AI instead of stability (I guess) because of investors.
I really, really don't understand the hype around Arc. I tried it for a while and just wasn't at all impressed. I've heard, though, that a lot of people praise how it help them deal with hundreds of tabs, and I don't keep my tabs open, so maybe I'm the wrong audience?
(This is ignoring the fact that I tried it again a month ago and it wouldn't load a single page. I emailed their help and never heard from them, so I guess that's my last try for a while.)
I really, really don't understand the hype around Arc. I tried it for a while and just wasn't at all impressed. I've heard, though, that a lot of people praise how it help them deal with hundreds of tabs, and I don't keep my tabs open, so maybe I'm the wrong audience?
(This is ignoring the fact that I tried it again a month ago and it wouldn't load a single page. I emailed their help and never heard from them, so I guess that's my last try for a while.)
I heard similar things from different people, so looks like it's not everyones taste. But you are right about arc's help is basically not working anymore.
You could check out Vivaldi. The split view is pretty robust. The Vertical tabs can be on left or right, and allow one level of tab grouping.
I think I only didn't try Vivaldi :) thanks, I will definitely look
I really, really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so slow for me on Windows. It has a similar problem on Linux, though a restart a few times a day solves it.
Brave has vertical tabs, and a helpful grouping feature. Highly recommend.
Workplace had me move from Brave to Chrome and I was surprised that Chrome didn't have this feature. Brave's implementation felt like it was already a native part of Chromium, I guess they took existing parts and re-oriented it as I was surprised to learn there wasn't some experimental flag to enable it in Chrome either.
???
Edge, Brave, Vivaldi have native vertical tabs built in.
Firefox now too.
Opera Presto was first way before them all.
Why are you and another comment mention some no-name flashy browser?
Edge, Brave, Vivaldi have native vertical tabs built in.
Firefox now too.
Opera Presto was first way before them all.
Why are you and another comment mention some no-name flashy browser?
Edge is stable and has vertical tabs and split view support.
Dude, I cannot use a Microsoft product even if it has the functionality I prefer.
Well, that's your problem, dude. :)
> I wish all browsers has first class vertical tabs support and split view.
I wish UI toolkits just came fully loaded and let me spin views and panels and anything in any which way I liked.
I wish UI toolkits just came fully loaded and let me spin views and panels and anything in any which way I liked.
[deleted]
Screenshot:
https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy
Happy that this will finally be a feature of FF. Still pretty useless for me, though, for these reasons:
- There's an empty tab bar shown at the top of the window.
- Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.
https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy
Happy that this will finally be a feature of FF. Still pretty useless for me, though, for these reasons:
- There's an empty tab bar shown at the top of the window.
- Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.
> Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.
I think this is a bug, I had the same issue but then went to "Customize Sidebar" and toggled "Sidebar settings" to "Always show" and now I see titles, regardless of which sidebar show setting I have
I think this is a bug, I had the same issue but then went to "Customize Sidebar" and toggled "Sidebar settings" to "Always show" and now I see titles, regardless of which sidebar show setting I have
That did the trick, thank you!
Cool.
But dammit why aren't tabs more modifiable.
I want to rename them. I want to assign an icon. I am okay if a tab takes up two vertical lines to make it entirely readable. There was an element of something really useful in MS 'Metro' UI -- just the fact that there could be variations in size of target/icon/links.
I currently 'pin' my mail and notes tab. These exist as specific functional tabs -- let me style them a bit differently or something.
Why don't you use bookmarks?
I tried it out and it seems clear that vertical tabs without titles create too much friction for daily driving a browser where you have many tabs open, hover thumbnails or not.
For a few years I have thought that Firefox could gain market share by doing more with the browser UI, steal a few ideas from Arc Browser for instance. There's a lot of value to be added in the UI for sure.
Asking users what they want and then building it ends up with solutions like these. I really hope this gets a lot more iteration before landing in stable.
I currently use SlidePad on Mac which allows touching the left side of the screen to pop out a vertically tabbed browser, for IMs and most used AI chat but would rather keep everything in Firefox with some kind of panel system. I think most of us have pinned tabs for communication channels, email, socials, etc.
Vertical tabs on left with titles works if you can also configure a useful slide out panel on right, mixing the two feels odd to me.
But really good to see something happening finally, so good news overall.
For a few years I have thought that Firefox could gain market share by doing more with the browser UI, steal a few ideas from Arc Browser for instance. There's a lot of value to be added in the UI for sure.
Asking users what they want and then building it ends up with solutions like these. I really hope this gets a lot more iteration before landing in stable.
I currently use SlidePad on Mac which allows touching the left side of the screen to pop out a vertically tabbed browser, for IMs and most used AI chat but would rather keep everything in Firefox with some kind of panel system. I think most of us have pinned tabs for communication channels, email, socials, etc.
Vertical tabs on left with titles works if you can also configure a useful slide out panel on right, mixing the two feels odd to me.
But really good to see something happening finally, so good news overall.
I had the same issue but it turns out you can expand them to show the titles by clicking the "side bar" button that, for me, was left of my address bar. Odd default but this is in a nightly release and others have already provided feedback to them on this.
Naive question, why are vertical tabs in the sidebar desirable?
I tried TST once but didn’t get why they were bettter than horizontal tabs. I might be missing something.
I tried TST once but didn’t get why they were bettter than horizontal tabs. I might be missing something.
1. Screens are usually wider than most web pages usefully support. This uses up space that would normally be wasted.
2. Most screens are wider than they're high. This is especially true of laptops. So using vertical space for a horizontal strip really eats into the vertical real estate.
3. Most written scripts are horizontal. As a result, lists are usually arranged vertically. This aligns with how lists in nearly every other context are arranged (how many times have you found a list where the second item is to the right of the first, the third to the right of the second, as opposed to them being on new vertically arranged lines?)
4. Since the text in most languages flow horizontally, it's trivially easy to adjust the width of a vertical tab container to customize how much of the text you want visible. This could range from really wide tab containers so you can see the entire title (which the larger width of monitors makes almost cost free) or you can make it really narrow to only include the icon, or somewhere in between. Arranging tabs horizontally provides no such easy and obvious UI to do such a thing, so you're reduced to either seeing fixed size tabs or icons only, controlled largely by the browser.
5. Again, because of horizontal text, tabs are shorter than they are wide. You can fit a lot more tabs in a vertical tabbar while still displaying their text than you could in a horizontal one.
2. Most screens are wider than they're high. This is especially true of laptops. So using vertical space for a horizontal strip really eats into the vertical real estate.
3. Most written scripts are horizontal. As a result, lists are usually arranged vertically. This aligns with how lists in nearly every other context are arranged (how many times have you found a list where the second item is to the right of the first, the third to the right of the second, as opposed to them being on new vertically arranged lines?)
4. Since the text in most languages flow horizontally, it's trivially easy to adjust the width of a vertical tab container to customize how much of the text you want visible. This could range from really wide tab containers so you can see the entire title (which the larger width of monitors makes almost cost free) or you can make it really narrow to only include the icon, or somewhere in between. Arranging tabs horizontally provides no such easy and obvious UI to do such a thing, so you're reduced to either seeing fixed size tabs or icons only, controlled largely by the browser.
5. Again, because of horizontal text, tabs are shorter than they are wide. You can fit a lot more tabs in a vertical tabbar while still displaying their text than you could in a horizontal one.
6. It's the only alternative if you want to keep UI elements out of your title bar.
7. Vertical tabs can easily have nesting (subtrees), just like those file manager left hand side windows. So you can structure your tabs better.
I've got an ultra wide display and more horizontal than vertical space.
Also most websites scroll vertically and it feels better to have more in view at the same time. After 600px horizontally, most sites just render white space.
Also most websites scroll vertically and it feels better to have more in view at the same time. After 600px horizontally, most sites just render white space.
Because you can fit more information and vertical scrolling is easier (you also have a bigger area to scroll in), so navigation is also more convenient
Screens typically have much more horizontal space but ideal page text width has a limit so the sides end up as unused space. Also tab nesting can be very useful for organization.
Horizontal tabs become a pain with more than a handful of tabs open, particularly on small screens. Vertical handles any number of tabs gracefully regardless of screen size.
You'll find it's usefulness relative to the width/resolution of your screen and the amount of tabs you tend to have open at once.
I don't care much about vertical tabs but what I want from tabs is automatic grouping by site. I'm surprised nobody made this.
I know there are extension supporting grouping but i have never seen any that automatically groups by website.
It's probably not helpful to you since it's a different browser, but Safari has this. Right click on any tab in its vertical tabs list and choose Arrange Tabs By -> Website.
I wish it supported using the mouse wheel to move between tabs, like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
I recently fixed a Firefox bug to allow easier tab management in FF extensions.
My hope is that extensions like Tree Style Tab or Sidebery benefit from my improvements. I love them!
Title: Updated openerTabId is not notified via tabs.onUpdated if it is changed by tabs.update()
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262
https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767
Title: Updated openerTabId is not notified via tabs.onUpdated if it is changed by tabs.update()
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262
https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767
Just my personal 2c.
I've long been a big fan of Sidebery for vertical tab management, so I was expecting something closer to that than what I got. The vertical tab view does work, although it seems pretty basic. E.g. there's no way to group any of the tabs or modify the display style. By default the tabs come in quite "chunky" as well.
Also, on another note, the toggles at the top of the sidebar keep restarting for me in nightly. I keep unchecking most of them since I don't need any Chatbot integrations or anything like that, but the selection doesn't stick.
I've long been a big fan of Sidebery for vertical tab management, so I was expecting something closer to that than what I got. The vertical tab view does work, although it seems pretty basic. E.g. there's no way to group any of the tabs or modify the display style. By default the tabs come in quite "chunky" as well.
Also, on another note, the toggles at the top of the sidebar keep restarting for me in nightly. I keep unchecking most of them since I don't need any Chatbot integrations or anything like that, but the selection doesn't stick.
Tab Groups is another feature that FF recently prioritized in their roadmap. I would expect it to be integrated with this feature.
Even if this is catch-up with respect with the other browser, I think that this mean that there would finally be a non-hacky way to disable the tab bar (i.e. a toggle rather than something that on userChrome.css).
I'm perfectly happy to have only basic vertical tab functionality on vanilla Firefox and Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry for power users. Presumably there would also be API that makes the life of piro (main dev of TST) and mbnuqw (main dev of Sideberry) easier ?
I'm perfectly happy to have only basic vertical tab functionality on vanilla Firefox and Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry for power users. Presumably there would also be API that makes the life of piro (main dev of TST) and mbnuqw (main dev of Sideberry) easier ?
They've already added a toggle to disable horizontal tabs.
I wish that blog post showed a screenshot of these features so that I didn't have to go download the nightly just to see what they look like.
Another user pointed to this screenshot on reddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
That's modified with a userChrome.css
I remember old Opera had a sidebar and vertical tabs (same as current Vivaldi). Opera was always way ahead of UX of all browsers.
I still miss Opera Presto. It was so ahead of everyone and after 10 years no other browser can compete with it (UI-wise).
On version 129 I've been playing with the CSS to make the tabs wider and thinner. Because of some code in tabbrowser.js I couldn't work around with css, it needs user_pref("ui.prefersReducedMotion", 1) for changing max width to not break tab closing.
https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a...
screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a...
screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
Firefox already has a sidebar and a selection of extensions which put tabs in it, also adding many extra conveniences. For example on the computer I am now using to write this I use Tab Center Reborn which also adds a tab filter field which is very handy.
How about an option to disable tabs altogether and use a "one-tab-window" instead? Like we used to have before. I already have a WM able to handle this. I don't need another level of window management with its own logic and shortcuts.
There's a setting "Open links in tabs instead of new windows" which should help your use case
You'd think so. I did, too. But it doesn't work well enough.
Even Firefox's own UI doesn't honor it: for example, the settings open in a tab even though that box is unticked.
Even Firefox's own UI doesn't honor it: for example, the settings open in a tab even though that box is unticked.
I tried this but unfortunately you do not gain any vertical space as the tab bar is still in use as window title bar (or whatever the proper names are for this). The vertical tab bar is also fixed width (!) and to top it off, after testing nightly for an hour, I closed and reopened the browser and my pinned tabs were gone.
I will wait until they figured this out properly. I know it's "nightly" and "labs" so not a complaint per se, but an observation.
I will wait until they figured this out properly. I know it's "nightly" and "labs" so not a complaint per se, but an observation.
I just tried it, and it is not worth it, it just shows flat column of favicons without titles, it is better to install TreeStyleTab and disable OS window titlebar like this https://i.imgur.com/jnEXiPU.png so address bar in custom titlebar height is only 34px. I hate material design that still echoes useless whitespace everywhere.
https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...
https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...
On Chrome, I solve my too-many-tab issues with an extension [0] that closes the LRU tab once a threshold is reached (10 for me). I find the tabs I need are open and wide enough, and the tabs that autoclose were not useful anymore. About once a month I'm doing a research task where I actually want many tabs and I turn it off temporarily.
[0] - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghj...
[0] - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghj...
Really glad to see native support for this being worked on, however in its current state it's unusable for me and I'll continue using Sideberry. I constantly use tab grouping and I want to see at a glance what the tab is about, so having text title be visible is a must - having just favicons won't cut it when I have 20 GitHub and 10 StackOverflow links open.
UPD: I saw that there's a way to enable text titles - that's much better. Still, without grouping it would be too painful to use for me.
UPD: I saw that there's a way to enable text titles - that's much better. Still, without grouping it would be too painful to use for me.
As a happy Tree Style Tabs user, this is wonderful. I'm using it together with containers for 8 different accounts I have registered for different Google accs, keeping them open all the time. Firefox is a great "co-pilot" browser in this regard.
For some reason, I just remembered that OS/2 put window tabs on the side. Though looking at a screenshot now [1], I didn't remember it was done in a skeuomorphic, 3D way, which definitely takes away from their usefulness. Still, what's old is new again.
1. https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/ima...
1. https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/ima...
Vertical tabs are fine, but this seems like catching up up with the other browsers.
I wished Firefox had natively supported tabs like in "Tree Style Tab" extensions. The extension is great, but out of the box it breaks some assumptions where the tabs appear and how they behave. I alway have to figure out which option to change after I install it. Having something native and polished would be a huge selling point for Firefox.
I wished Firefox had natively supported tabs like in "Tree Style Tab" extensions. The extension is great, but out of the box it breaks some assumptions where the tabs appear and how they behave. I alway have to figure out which option to change after I install it. Having something native and polished would be a huge selling point for Firefox.
I never cared about vertical tabs, but I know that this is something that many people have wanted for a very long time. How long has this been actively in the works? Is it just a coincidence that this finally got done only after all the negative press Firefox got following their pivot to becoming an AdTech company which generates revenue through the constant surveillance of its users?
The meta bug was created 3 months ago: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894060
A mandatory comment of the single most important tabs related feature, called "Simple tab groups" extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...
The rest IMO is just nice to have.
The rest IMO is just nice to have.
What I find interesting, and hoping it will be integrated in future releases - easy feature toggling from Settings page. Firefox, please, allow me to turn off all the features that I do not use or do not want to clutter my toolbars with. I'll be happy with "opt-out" variant here, but my selected preference must stick and not be reset on next update.
If you have the Container Tabs add-on, you can also pull up a basic tab sidebar with F2 until this is released in the main version.
Nice to see this finally come up, but it's going to take a while until it catches up with Sidebery or even TST
I'd love to use Firefox, but I've been missing three (subjectively, for me) important features:
1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!)
2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style)
3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices
Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?
1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!)
2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style)
3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices
Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?
#3
There is an extension that lets you save and sync either all tabs or a certain window and restore wherever. Not exactly what you are looking for I think, but its very useful for me.
I believe that Google had something similar back in the day as an extension to Chrome but removed it.
Great when I am troubleshooting something at work and when done still want the 20+ pages saved for later reference but not open. Or when I am planning for the weekend or researching a product at work during lunch and want to open a bunch of tabs at home later.
https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager
There is an extension that lets you save and sync either all tabs or a certain window and restore wherever. Not exactly what you are looking for I think, but its very useful for me.
I believe that Google had something similar back in the day as an extension to Chrome but removed it.
Great when I am troubleshooting something at work and when done still want the 20+ pages saved for later reference but not open. Or when I am planning for the weekend or researching a product at work during lunch and want to open a bunch of tabs at home later.
https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager
Thanks! Does this sync across FF instances on different machines? It's a bit unclear from the description
Sorry for the late answer. Yes is uses Google Drive to sync the information. It is separate from Firefox account and syncs based on the Google account you are logged in with in the extension.
1. Sideberry.
2. Sideberry.
3. Firefox Sync.
Firefox has had these features since at least 5 years ago (#3) and probably 15 years ago (#1, #2 through Tree Style Tabs).
2. Sideberry.
3. Firefox Sync.
Firefox has had these features since at least 5 years ago (#3) and probably 15 years ago (#1, #2 through Tree Style Tabs).
Thanks, but FF sync is not a solution here. That syncs individual tabs, with no concept of workspaces or groups. I don't want to hand-restore those all the time.
aren't workspaces the same as containers? when I right click the new tab icon in firefox it gives me an option to open them in work, personal, banking, etc or to create a new container
3 is also built in, called firefox sync. You can open any tab from any device on another one and send tab(s) to other devices
3 is also built in, called firefox sync. You can open any tab from any device on another one and send tab(s) to other devices
For the containers vs. workspaces - I was sloppy with the term, what I meant is different "views" which include sets of tabs. One slight difference is that containers give you a clean slate for each (as in, if you're logged in to a site in container one, you need to re-login in container 2). In any case, it's a good enough solution for me, thanks for the heads up!
"opening any tab on another device" is not what I'm looking for, though - I want to restore entire wokspaces/tab groups/containers across instances, not one by one, then arrange them again into containers.
"opening any tab on another device" is not what I'm looking for, though - I want to restore entire wokspaces/tab groups/containers across instances, not one by one, then arrange them again into containers.
Sometimes I really wish that firefox sync was a bit smarter. The sorting seems so random sometimes and there is no grouping per window or anything. So when looking to open a tab when the computer has 5 windows with ~5-20 tabs per window open and they appear in a random order it can get very frustrating.
Also sometimes when sending specific tabs to my tablet or phone on android there is no notification, even if the app is open. Then I have to open the sync settings and manually press "Sync now" to trigger the notifications.
Also sometimes when sending specific tabs to my tablet or phone on android there is no notification, even if the app is open. Then I have to open the sync settings and manually press "Sync now" to trigger the notifications.
Yay, finally! It's not there yet in terms of functionality, but it's a step in the right direction.
Do I understand this correctly that there is no new second sidebar, just the old sidebar, looking slightly different? And the new vertical tabs are just an inferior version of the already existing addons? Are there at least new APIs or bugfixes, so other addons get some benefit from this?
I like minimalism and use ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) to have an uncluttered Firefox interface with optional tabs sidebar. But it still needs many configuration to heavily modify the UI.
Hope this new functionality is only the first step making Firefox more flexible !
Pretty terrible compared to edge, with edge you can hide the top bar if you're using vertical tabs, which actually make it fit a purpose, you have more horizontal space, but you can't with firefox, they also don't show labels
Microsoft Edge has had this for some time. I was surprised, but Edge is pretty modern.
Someone who had once reached maybe regular 3 digit number of tabs to barely 10 often I now understand that browser and tab power-use is having as few tabs possible. It's like Inbox Zero thing for me, minus the fad angle.
I wish Firefox was like Vivaldi so I can switch from the Chrome based browser.
Why don’t they lay out browser tabs the full width of the window in a vertical accordion so long webpage titles (usually containing more than 100's of characters) can be completely visible at glance?
I really really want this to be a part of firefox, but they should have waited to blog about it until it spent a litle more time in the oven. First impressions were not great, on a number of fronts:
- i could not for the life of me get the tabs to be anything other than the favicons. i tried the suggestion to show sidebar, but that option was not available.
- toggling the setting resulted in duplicate menu bar entries that didn't make sense (macos)
I know how these things go. It's always gritty when things start, and it's nightly, but the post about it got my hopes up and what I played around with was not that usable at all. Will definitely wait patiently for this to come together, and I'm really grateful that it seems to be happening.
- i could not for the life of me get the tabs to be anything other than the favicons. i tried the suggestion to show sidebar, but that option was not available.
- toggling the setting resulted in duplicate menu bar entries that didn't make sense (macos)
I know how these things go. It's always gritty when things start, and it's nightly, but the post about it got my hopes up and what I played around with was not that usable at all. Will definitely wait patiently for this to come together, and I'm really grateful that it seems to be happening.
The button next to the refresh button is what makes the side bar show wider tabs (Icon, title, close button). It took me way too long to figure that out.
sitting right in front of me the whole time. thanks.
For me, the killer feature in vertical tab extensions (STG, Sidebery) is the ability to distribute tabs in groups by URLs automatically. I wonder if FF is going to support this natively.
Their integration looks sloppy compared to Tree Style Tabs but I hope that I can separately disable top side tabs without enabling this because there are already plugins that are superior.
I wish they'd gone with [Compact Tabs] a-la Safari instead of Vertical Tabs a-la Edge.
A unified tab and address bar is just so much more elegant and versatile.
After switching back from MacOS to Windows, it's only thing I truly miss.
Vertical tabs just seem like a transitional step.
[Compact Tabs]: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Scree...
[Compact Tabs]: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Scree...
I was going to praise Firefox for doing something good for once, but I checked it out to be sure. Good thing I did.
- The tabs aren’t tree-style (this is the main reason to use vertical tabs in the first place)
- The space on the top isn’t reclaimed (this would be the USP over just using Sidebery)
- It’s nice (or, not really) to see that Sidebery sometimes not opening isn’t actually a Sidebery bug, but a Firefox bug that affects every sidebar user. I experienced it within the first minute and needed to restart the browser. Knowing the project there’s probably been a bug on it that hasn’t been worked on for a decade. They badly need to fix so much before thinking about new features.
- The tabs aren’t tree-style (this is the main reason to use vertical tabs in the first place)
- The space on the top isn’t reclaimed (this would be the USP over just using Sidebery)
- It’s nice (or, not really) to see that Sidebery sometimes not opening isn’t actually a Sidebery bug, but a Firefox bug that affects every sidebar user. I experienced it within the first minute and needed to restart the browser. Knowing the project there’s probably been a bug on it that hasn’t been worked on for a decade. They badly need to fix so much before thinking about new features.
Not in the developer/beta edition yet.
I'm concerned it will conflict with Tree Style Tabs, and/or my custom UI CSS.
But it will be very nice to bring more folks into the Vertical Tabs Cult ;)
I'm concerned it will conflict with Tree Style Tabs, and/or my custom UI CSS.
But it will be very nice to bring more folks into the Vertical Tabs Cult ;)
Just tried it. Using it as I type. Works and looks very well already! Can be both expanded or no text and with the Nightly preview feature it is very usable.
[deleted]
One thing I like from Tree Tabs that others usually don’t is folders. I find it useful to group and collapse them as needed. Hopefully they’ll add that.
I've just updated my Firefox and I got the options in about:config to enable vertical tabs.
sidebar.revamp and sidebar.verticalTabs need to be set to true.
sidebar.revamp and sidebar.verticalTabs need to be set to true.
I can't imagine a proper keybinding subsystem coming any time soon, but it's hard not to wish. Patching omni.ja sucks
I like minimalism so I made ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) and it uses vertical tabs. Maybe time to rework it to use this instead !
Might have to try this. I've been waiting for browser vendors to realize that users don't get joy from browsers themselves, they want the web-apps that browsers provide access to. If I notice my browser it's probably because the browser messed up.
Mobile browsers in particular seem to think it's critical that they take up at least 15% of screen space at all times.
Mobile browsers in particular seem to think it's critical that they take up at least 15% of screen space at all times.
Vertical tab: this is the 1st in my wishlist. I switched to Vivaldi before because of this. Can't wait to try it out.
I don't understand this. Sideberry is literally 1:1 feature parity and had existed for 5 years. Whereas this is not the 'tab grouping' that they promised and have been talking about for 3 years. This is a massive disappointment.
Good step, but still far away from vivaldi in terms of customization without installation of different plugins
I just really want Tab Groups.
This is a nice step forward.
This is a nice step forward.
I know that FF says that Tab Groups are on their roadmap but I hope that get to it soon. I'm tired of relying on third-party plugins for that function.
I've been using TreeStyleTab for a long time. Interested to see if this will make it obsolete.
I love the mozilla UI for restoring all tabs after a crash. I wish I could see that regularly.
[deleted]
Sigh... No, Mozilla, this is not what we wanted. We already have 500 sidebar tab extensions. We wanted horizontal tab groupings. It's not that unreasonable. I've been following this issue for 3 years now and this is what they cough out? I'm over it. I'm moving on. So frustrating.
Counterpoint - I wanted a native implementation of vertical tabs. Sidebery's fine, but it feels like an extension rather than something properly built in.
Great. All I need a native split screen just like in Edge in FF.
How about a screenshot.
Looks cool, enter key in GPT prompt box not working...
It's so bad compared to Sideberry. But hey, yet another way to view bookmarks and synced tabs that don't expose actually important functionality. Do they at least have the courage to excise Firefox View or whatever that useless pile was called?
And not a single screenshot was provided.
Some pictures of it might be nice! :)
Tab Mix Plus remains unsurpassed.
I’d rather have tab groups.
no tree mode, but good start
Native vim integration
The future has arrived. Firefox delivered another feature nobody asked for. Great, keep going, the future is bright.
I'm glad they released it, I like vertical tabs.
I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particularly in terms of focus.
Now when I'm working on a project, I keep a list of relevant URLs in a text file (i.e. bookmarks but checked into source control).
I also use two browser windows, a regular one for "stateful" browsing, and a private-mode one for "stateless" browsing. Quick queries and exploratory research happens in the "stateless" session, with the understanding that I can close any of these tabs (or nuke the whole session) at any time without losing anything important. If I do come across something important, it gets noted down elsewhere.