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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

#51
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 !

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#52
post #26

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.

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#53
post #26

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.

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#54

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

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

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#55

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…

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.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#57
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Linux WebKit browsers are pretty snappy too. I think it just boils down to what each browser/engine team prioritizes.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#58

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…

They have tab containers though.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#59

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.

Orion browser does, all natively.
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