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Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

blog.nightly.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#41

Post by jwells89 »

generalizations wrote: post #25
pantulis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Contain…

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#42

Post by FuturisticGoo »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #20

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…

> ... 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

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#44

Post by burkaman »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #20

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…

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#47

Post by sigio »

buo wrote: post #34
KaiMagnus wrote: post #20

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…

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

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#48

Post by diggan »

osbulbul wrote: post #29
pantulis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Contain…

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?

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#49

Post by Groxx »

buo wrote: post #34
KaiMagnus wrote: post #20

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…

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

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#50

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #20

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…

> Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated

How can a UI stagnante? If it ain't broke don't fix it.

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