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Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

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Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#221
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…

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.

it had irc client, rss feed reader, mail client all builtin. Its local caches were portable. Had shortcuts to hide images in current page, disable js (imagine early 2000s web ui with gifs everywhere) etc. Early opera truly was the best browser that ever.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#222
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…

And not an IDE like VSCode, but a fully customizable IDE. It's so frustrating to yearn for basic features in VSCode only to be ignored for years. For example, on macOS, a good amount of space is wasted because we can't hide the menu/title bar. We can't customize tabs either. No vertical tabs like Edge. No tabs height customization. It's either their way or the highway. A gripe with Brave: Why doesn't the mouse-over f…

> No vertical tabs like Edge

VS Code has a vertical documentlist, and if you want different styling, you can build an extension for this. No reason to have a duplicate feature out-of-the-box.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#223

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,…

I would more describe it the following way.

Vertical tabs solve a core issue in horizontal tabs. Tabs are inherently 2D: the number of tabs vs the length of their titles. Horizontal tabs can scale only to one dimension. You can choose to either see many of your tabs at once, but not be able to read any of the titles, or be able to read the titles but have to scroll absurd distances just to view what tabs are open.

Vertical tabs give you a 2-dimensional view of your tabs. You can see many of your tabs and be able to read as much of the titles you want by scaling the horizontal size of the area independently.

I think it's brilliant. I also don't see how browsers could "fix" horizontal tabs without resorting to taking away valuable vertical space from the content that is the primary purpose of browsers.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's not the case. I just checked. The GitHub issues that you linked also are closed. I followed the duplicates and they're all closed with comments mentioning that it's been fixed.

I checked to. On my computer, with a fresh install, i have to kill Utility: Bat Ledger Service from the brave task manager every time the browser is started. Thankfully it stays closed. The ads and crypto stuff are also not exactly as simple to opt out as "literally disable it in the welcome screen when you first install" as one commenter enthusiastically mentioned.

Do you still have an old profile from a previous install?

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#226
post #7

Looks like there’s no tree functionality. I’ll be sticking with Orion for the time being.

Or Vivaldi, which even lets you rename the group of tabs!

When I need to collect multiple tabs for a specific topic/task I've found workspaces to be much more practical than tab groups.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#227
What I've learned trying to analyse my preference for vertical tabs is that it's not so much about saving horizontal space vs vertical space. It's more just about showing more information on screen before needing to scroll.

With regular horizontal tabs you either squeeze all tabs to fit the window width, in which case you stop being able to read page titles at some point. Or you have a horizontal scroll on the tab bar which also means you can only read so many titles on screen (probably fewer) before needing to scroll.

The vertical tabs switch this up by being able to show a larger number of tab titles before you have to scroll down. Of course this depends on the width of your vertical tab sidebar but having word wrap or configurable height on horizontal tab bars isn't ever presented as an option so can't compare.

Another clue to understanding my preference was when I realised I actually really like being able to have multiple rows of horizontal tabs vs a horizontally scrolling tab bar. So I think it just came down to the density of information visually available before having to do any scrolling.

I do think it all just comes down to personal preferences and muscle memory and individual use cases (for example, some people like having 50+ tabs open, others don't). So I am very hesitant to call one approach better. I just don't understand why we can't have both options more available everywhere.

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#228
post #155

Vertical tabs without nesting (trees) is such a wasted opportunity. Nesting lets you close/minimise/etc a group of a related tabs, eg. all the search results you opened from a single query. I hope Brave's implementation at least lets you switch tabs using the mouse wheel, which is probably my favorite feature of the Firefox vertical tabs addons. BTW, I was a TST user for many years, and recently switched to Sidebery,…

Just installed and configured Sidebery and after a few minutes I already feel like it completely outclasses TST for Firefox. Thanks for the recommendation!

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#229
post #155

Vertical tabs without nesting (trees) is such a wasted opportunity. Nesting lets you close/minimise/etc a group of a related tabs, eg. all the search results you opened from a single query. I hope Brave's implementation at least lets you switch tabs using the mouse wheel, which is probably my favorite feature of the Firefox vertical tabs addons. BTW, I was a TST user for many years, and recently switched to Sidebery,…

> BTW, I was a TST user for many years, and recently switched to Sidebery, which seems to do the same and more, but is a bit more polished.

Doesn't really match my experience. In which ways is it more polished?

Re: Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs

#230
post #155

Vertical tabs without nesting (trees) is such a wasted opportunity. Nesting lets you close/minimise/etc a group of a related tabs, eg. all the search results you opened from a single query. I hope Brave's implementation at least lets you switch tabs using the mouse wheel, which is probably my favorite feature of the Firefox vertical tabs addons. BTW, I was a TST user for many years, and recently switched to Sidebery,…

> BTW, I was a TST user for many years, and recently switched to Sidebery, which seems to do the same and more, but is a bit more polished. Doesn't really match my experience. In which ways is it more polished?

I think the preferences are a bit easier to understand, and I didn't have to install an add-on for an add-on to have mouse wheel support. I'm sure there's more, but it's been a few months and I don't quite remember.

TST remains great, though, very versatile and extensible.

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