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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

#261

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

filcuk wrote: post #126
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 love using Sidebery, because I can define a container profile for each group of tabs, which is then applied automatically for new tabs.

I switched to Sidebery from TreeStyleTabs and I much prefer it. Tab groups are great as I can separate different styles of browsing such as news browsing or work etc.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#262

Post by solarkraft »

I was going to praise Firefox for doing something good for once, but I checked it out to be sure. Good thing I did.

- The tabs aren’t tree-style (this is the main reason to use vertical tabs in the first place)

- The space on the top isn’t reclaimed (this would be the USP over just using Sidebery)

- It’s nice (or, not really) to see that Sidebery sometimes not opening isn’t actually a Sidebery bug, but a Firefox bug that affects every sidebar user. I experienced it within the first minute and needed to restart the browser. Knowing the project there’s probably been a bug on it that hasn’t been worked on for a decade. They badly need to fix so much before thinking about new features.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#267

Post by collinvandyck76 »

I really really want this to be a part of firefox, but they should have waited to blog about it until it spent a litle more time in the oven. First impressions were not great, on a number of fronts:

- i could not for the life of me get the tabs to be anything other than the favicons. i tried the suggestion to show sidebar, but that option was not available.

- toggling the setting resulted in duplicate menu bar entries that didn't make sense (macos)

I know how these things go. It's always gritty when things start, and it's nightly, but the post about it got my hopes up and what I played around with was not that usable at all. Will definitely wait patiently for this to come together, and I'm really grateful that it seems to be happening.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#268

Post by kevincox »

rpncreator wrote: post #112
kbrosnan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS window managers do a better job of that. Split view inside the browser has some thorny issues around making sure the user knows what resource they are interacting with. There is a lot of complexity when it comes to focus/blur in HTML, CSS, JS, etc.

Unpopular opinion: Tab management in browsers originally addressed the shortcomings of OS window management (see Windows XP and IE6, and the original Google Chrome tiling capability replicated into Windows 10/11 OS window management.

I also share this opinion. I think we are in a local maximum with tabs. But getting out of it request a lot of coordination between browsers and each desktop environment so it is unlikely to ever happen. Maybe less portable browsers like GNOME Web or Safari that only "need" to deal with one desktop environment can manage it at some point.

https://kevincox.ca/2021/01/11/tabs-were-a-mistake/

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#269

Post by infensus »

godelski wrote: post #200
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Simple Tab Groups? It's a similar concept but instead of keeping all the tabs organised as a tree (and generally keeping them all open), you can create groups of tabs that are kept unloaded/hidden and you can load them up on a given window with a click of a button or a hotkey. I personally use them so I can context switch between projects. I can keep one group for project a, one for project b, one for…

I use this and love it. One of the most useful adons. Really helps me to differentiate work mode form non work mode. I do wish it was built in because it appears to do it a hacky way by using bookmarks. Which is fine, because you can think of these tabs like temporary bookmarks. Usually how I do it is at my office desk I have a second monitor I hook my laptop up to. So I open a new window, let that be the group, and…

It's using tab hiding, one of Firefox's non-standard extensions to the WebExtensions API. I believe this is also how Panorama used to work

By the way, built-in tab grouping is also on the list of features in development. Hopefully they don't go the Chrome way

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#270

Post by godelski »

infensus wrote: post #269
godelski wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use this and love it. One of the most useful adons. Really helps me to differentiate work mode form non work mode. I do wish it was built in because it appears to do it a hacky way by using bookmarks. Which is fine, because you can think of these tabs like temporary bookmarks. Usually how I do it is at my office desk I have a second monitor I hook my laptop up to. So I open a new window, let that be the group, and…

It's using tab hiding, one of Firefox's non-standard extensions to the WebExtensions API. I believe this is also how Panorama used to work By the way, built-in tab grouping is also on the list of features in development. Hopefully they don't go the Chrome way

That's good to know. I've found that it is helpful to add Auto Discard Tabs, if you're a real tab hoarder.

What is "the Chrome way"? What I'd like to see is that the addresses are not cached to ram, but either disk or swap (or a combination). I figure these tools are more used by tab hoarders as well, and if they're working as pseudo bookmarks (at least conceptually) I am very willing to trade some loading time and have non-active tabs have high niceness.

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