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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

#181

Post by II2II »

nine_k wrote: post #159
Retr0id wrote: post #86

I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particula…

I actively use tree style tabs, and have dozens to hundreds. With auto tab discard, it's not taxing. This is because I basically use tabs as bookmarks relevant to a project or subject area. Bookmarks are also tree-structured, but are much more high-ceremony to create. To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until need…

> To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one.

Different people have different needs, so it is useful to distinguish between the two. For example: I have groups of bookmarks that I like to open as tabs in a separate window. If I only need them once a week, I want to close the window when I am done and pull them up again when they are needed. Fishing them out of a history of all of my browsing is something that I don't want to endure (even if they are stored in the history as a group).

Other people have other needs. Some only want an extremely limited number of tabs open at one time (presumably to help them focus).

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#182

Post by rimunroe »

__david__ wrote: post #165
Retr0id wrote: post #86

I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particula…

You must not had ADD :-). I currently have 2630 tabs in my main window (I admit I may need to prune that down _just a bit_). But that many tabs can only happen with a vertical tab-bar. I started with tree-style tabs but I'm now using "Sideberry" which seems to be a little nicer.

> You must not had ADD :-). I currently have 2630 tabs in my main window (I admit I may need to prune that down _just a bit_).

People with ADHD ("ADD" is a very outdated term) aren't always disorganized. In fact, they're often organized to an unusually high degree (sometimes to a fault). I've been diagnosed since 1996 and I rarely have more than 10 or 12 tabs open across all windows at a time. Paying close attention to organization and establishing routines to cut down on distractions and reduce the possibility of variation in daily activities are very common coping strategies.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#183

Post by eviks »

Retr0id wrote: post #86

I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particula…

This is a failure of the browser setup if you have to resort to a text file for tabs

Also don't get the benefit of the stateless session as a private window - you can just as well close a regular second browser window and not look back at history?

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#184

Post by nine_k »

waveBidder wrote: post #172
nine_k wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actively use tree style tabs, and have dozens to hundreds. With auto tab discard, it's not taxing. This is because I basically use tabs as bookmarks relevant to a project or subject area. Bookmarks are also tree-structured, but are much more high-ceremony to create. To my mind, tabs and bookmarks should meld into one. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until need…

I do this too; have you found effective ways to tell firefox to maybe chill on eating all memory? I find if I don't restart ~1/week, it will end up reserving ~32GB of RAM for itself, which is just absurd.

Of course, else it would be unmanageable.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

I tell it to never discard certain tabs, like gmail or snack or calendar. Also in some situations it's very convenient to ask it to discard tabs in all other windows, or all tabs but the current one. Otherwise it just discards tabs after some time of inactivity.

It integrates with TST and can operate in terms of subtrees.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#185

Post by eviks »

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…

Vivaldi is very far ahead, and it has vertical tabs, not sure how Chrome is the only comparator for a niche browser

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#186

Post by Retr0id »

eviks wrote: post #183
Retr0id wrote: post #86

I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particula…

This is a failure of the browser setup if you have to resort to a text file for tabs Also don't get the benefit of the stateless session as a private window - you can just as well close a regular second browser window and not look back at history?

I don't use a text file for tabs, I use a text file for taking notes.

The fact that the second window is private isn't hugely relevant, it just helps to stop me from accidentally doing stateful things in it (and reduces cross-site tracking in the process). The point is that I never have to ask "is this tab important?", the decision was already made up-front, based on where I opened the tab in the first place.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#187

Post by dsp_person »

On version 129 I've been playing with the CSS to make the tabs wider and thinner. Because of some code in tabbrowser.js I couldn't work around with css, it needs user_pref("ui.prefersReducedMotion", 1) for changing max width to not break tab closing.

https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a...

screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#188

Post by eviks »

worble wrote: post #69
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…

> They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more I'm just as excited as you are for side tabs, but I don't think browsers need to be constantly innovating their UI. In fact, the last time Firefox did that it took a week of tinkering to get it back to a usable state, and I now have the constant "Compact (Unsupported)" layout hovering over me, reminding me that one day I'll probably have t…

Maintaining your UI and being able to tweak it to your liking is exactly the part of "UI innovation" where Firefox is severely lacking

And there is nothing dependable about you failure to do something for many years because the UI is stable in not supporting it

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#189

Post by supriyo-biswas »

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…

The current implementation still leaves in the tab bar at the top at least on Macs. I hope they iron these bugs out before their stable release.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#190

Post by sunaookami »

codazoda wrote: post #105
codazoda wrote: post #93

I wish that blog post showed a screenshot of these features so that I didn't have to go download the nightly just to see what they look like.

Another user pointed to this screenshot on reddit. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...

That's modified with a userChrome.css
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