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…
Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
171–180 of 270 posts
Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#172The 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…
like you can have multiple windows side by side, so what's the benefit of panes?
Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#173This 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,…
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
#174Earlier 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…
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
#175Tabs are entirely useless and wrong abstraction. Look at VSCode, you just use Command Palette to search for anything. That's good
Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#176It'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.
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
#177It'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.
Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#178I'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.
I guess the last part is fixed in later chromium by hibernating tabs now?
Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#179Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
#180Earlier 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.
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