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Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

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Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#171
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early versions of Opera (maybe 20 years ago or so, I don't remember when exactly) had real MDI, where the tabs were subwindows rather than actual tabs. You could arrange them however you wanted, tile, cascade, etc. For me, it was the pinnacle of browser UI. Everything that came after that (including of course later iterations of Opera, which removed the MDI) has been considerably worse.

I really, really liked a lot of Opera's ideas. I think someone on that team really understood good UI design principles, at least at the feature level. If memory serves it included an IRC client at least, and maybe even an FTP client? Can't remember about the latter, but definitely the former. Perhaps a bit "bloated" for its time, but it was always pretty sleek to use. In fact I don't exactly remember why it never be…

Opera had a mail client that just hit the right spot of simplicity and functionality. I miss it to this very day.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#172
post #83

The more I think about this, the more convinced I am that I want a browser that functions like an IDE. Multiple panes with tabs, that can be resized either to custom sizes or automatically (binary space partitioning). It’s too much for a general purpose browser, which is how we’ve got the Chrome, Safari, Firefox we have. But I think the appeal of a more information-dense browser is broader than we think, anyone doing…

isn't this a failing of the operating systems more than anything?

like you can have multiple windows side by side, so what's the benefit of panes?

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#173

This basically adresses my biggest gripe with tabs in an elegant way: The primary input mechanism for dealing with a large amount of "list entries" in any GUI software, nowadays is scrolling. While scrolling can be implemented in horizontal tabs, browsers prevented it from being used efficiently. Tabs all have to fit on that bar, and if they don't, for some reason you couldn't scroll but had to click little buttons,…

>Vertical tabs. Nice. From now on, any browser not offering this feature, shouldn't even bother applying. Nicely done Brave!

Been a thing for years in old Opera first

Firefox has extensions for it

Edge and Vivaldi has it native

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#174
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early versions of Opera (maybe 20 years ago or so, I don't remember when exactly) had real MDI, where the tabs were subwindows rather than actual tabs. You could arrange them however you wanted, tile, cascade, etc. For me, it was the pinnacle of browser UI. Everything that came after that (including of course later iterations of Opera, which removed the MDI) has been considerably worse.

I really, really liked a lot of Opera's ideas. I think someone on that team really understood good UI design principles, at least at the feature level. If memory serves it included an IRC client at least, and maybe even an FTP client? Can't remember about the latter, but definitely the former. Perhaps a bit "bloated" for its time, but it was always pretty sleek to use. In fact I don't exactly remember why it never be…

Indeed, it did include IRC client, FTP client, email client and download manager with torrent support (not 100% sure if all at the same time, because it has been many years and versions blur in my mind).

The funny thing is that even though it included a lot of features I didn't use (for example, I never used the email client, not because it was bad, but I didn't use POP3/IMAP in general during that period), it was still much more efficient than all competitors in terms of speed, memory usage and even download size (at some point it boasted to be the only browser that fit in a floppy disk, although of course not for long).

I think the reason why it never became mainstream is that it was a paid product for a long time, while all other browsers were free. It eventually became free, but by then, competitors were too entrenched.

I also dislike Whatsapp but depending on country, it might be a necessary evil. In Spain for example, not having Whatsapp practically means forgoing any socialization with non-nerds. It's so ingrained in daily life that being without it is almost unthinkable for most people. Anyway, the current Opera doesn't have almost anything in common with the original one. Different engine, company, team, vision and even continent (owned by a Chinese company), only the brand and a thin sliver of identity remains.

(The sad thing is that I use it, because I still find it to be the least bad option for my needs...).

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#176
post #29

It's strange to me how a key selling point of these vertical tabs is "save on vertical space", but they almost always still include a header bar. You can see in the video they posted that it saves almost no vertical space, while now taking up a massive amount of horizontal space.

Perhaps we should just make monitors in 4:3 like we used to instead of 16:9 which is ridiculous since we typically don't watch movies in the office.

FWIW, I'm using a single ultra wide screen and never have any full screen windows, always two side by side. Most Linux DEs and even Windows support this out of the box, for macOS there's spectacle.

That said, working on a web project right now, we _are_ ensuring it looks good when maximised on ultra wide monitors, because we figure people might actually do that. But I'm with you there, for most web content it's ridiculous.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#177
post #29

It's strange to me how a key selling point of these vertical tabs is "save on vertical space", but they almost always still include a header bar. You can see in the video they posted that it saves almost no vertical space, while now taking up a massive amount of horizontal space.

Perhaps we should just make monitors in 4:3 like we used to instead of 16:9 which is ridiculous since we typically don't watch movies in the office.

I found that 21:9 works very well for me for work (gaming too, mind you). Sheets can show many rows, I can compare things side by side, I can maximize a console with ridiculously long lines, and I can dock the dev tools in the browser to the side. It's a like two 5:4s, side by side, without the bezels.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#178

I've had vertical tabs in Vivaldi for a little while now. I hope you guys enjoy it over on Brave as well, they change how you use tabs. Strongly recommended.

Vivaldi is great, but I've hidden the tab bar, and use the window panel instead. Then you get a nice tree view of tabs (nested, grouped by domain etc) and windows. Kind of treating my tabs as bookmarks, which is probably why it consumes a lot of memory :-)

I guess the last part is fixed in later chromium by hibernating tabs now?

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/108264#issuecomme...

that’s visual studio not vsc.

The thread has both. And it backs up the factually one claim as it is an ask for vertical tabs in vscode.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#180
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why people like single tab browsers. Then you leverage a tiling manager like i3 or sway to manage the windows

This! Everything in the OS should follow that workflow. Even better if every text entry can be made modal like vim.

> every text entry can be made modal like vim.

That's such a wasted design opportunity - give the users freedom in using a proper text editing tool instead of whatever awfulness the OS designers got stuck in decade(s) ago

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