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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

#281

Post by bigstrat2003 »

JohnFen wrote: post #206
babypuncher wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a catch-22 because if you stop innovating your UI for 20 years and alternatives come up with something people actually like then you will lose users to them and slowly fade into irrelevancy. Firefox succeeded because it was a fresh take on the entire browser UX at a time when Internet Explorer had been stagnant for half a decade.

As I remember it, Firefox succeeded because it fundamentally worked well and was very configurable, not because of the UX. The others at the time were bad at both of those things. The UX of Firefox was (and, I'd argue, still is) not great, but it made up for that by being configurable enough that you could fix it for yourself.

In my opinion, Firefox has never been particularly good. I tried it when it first came out - it was slow and a memory hog. Using IE6 was a much better experience, so I stayed there. It was only once Chrome came out that we had an actual good alternative to IE, and I switched immediately once I tried it.

I would love for Firefox to be awesome, but ultimately (in my subjective opinion of course) it just kind of sucks and always has.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#282

Post by ochronus »

I'd love to use Firefox, but I've been missing three (subjectively, for me) important features:

1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!)

2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style)

3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices

Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#283

Post by sham1 »

jorvi wrote: post #194
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. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either Brave has had vertical tabs for.. more than half a year now. Maybe a year? On top of that it has a sidebar, it has a built-in adblocker, the rest of the settings are more hardened than default Firefox, they do tonnes of research ( https://brave.com/research/ ), including really cool one's like Suga…

[flagged]

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#284

Post by phito »

__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.

Don't think it has much to do with ADHD. I have it too and rarely keep more than 5 tabs open. Can't attribute every little quirk to it.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#285

Post by infotainment »

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. If you don't close a tab actively, it stays deactivated, its tree likely gets collapsed until needed, so it's not an eyesore. When you need it again, it's there, in the proper context.

Have you tried Arc? It's essentially completely designed around the concept you describe. I believe someone is actively working on an "ArcFox" clone of its behavior for Firefox, but I'm not sure what the current state of the project is.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#286

Post by chupasaurus »

sigio wrote: post #54
FuturisticGoo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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

Container tabs are much less powerful alternative because they don't have separate history, extensions and settings.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#287

Post by deafpolygon »

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 use Edge currently because of the vertical tabs and I switch between the two modes to suit my needs. 90% of the time, I only use horizontal tabs. For the other 10%, it suits my needs when doing research, keeping all my tabs available and so on.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#288

Post by globular-toast »

nullhole wrote: post #84

This made me think of one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time with browsers: split-pane view. In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group". I frequently…

Use a tiling window manager and you can put anything side by side.

I find the tab paradigm very deficient, though. I used to think tabs were great (like everyone), until I learnt Emacs. Emacs doesn't have tabs. You can just open anything in any window at any time and split windows arbitrarily, even in text mode over SSH. It's so much better. Having each tab limited to some viewport is so unnecessarily limiting.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#289

Post by Todays10k »

emaro wrote: post #151
elchangri wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "Tab Containers" and Firefox was the first browser to have the feature

Containers separate context for the websites, e.g. you can log in to the same site with different account at the same time. Simple Tab Groups separates context for the user, i.e. hides the tabs of inactive groups (while also supporting containers). It's not the same thing.

I don't quite see them that way either, but, I further see tab grouping, tab hiding and profile groups as three separate parts of the same overall feature. And Simple Tab Groups directly supported Containers since day 1, so I personally always really found this distinction a bit more lexical than practical.

I absolutely love the hiding feature and find Containers incomplete without them. What's the point of switching context if the context is still visible there at all times? At that point, let me just use a different User. And I'd find Simple Tab Groups weirdly incomplete as well if they insisted on hiding tabs but not providing Container functionality. Because tab groups with hiding don't feel "ephemeral" enough. Takes too long to make a group, and the interface changes too much when jumping around. That dissuades me from going on tangents online and then grouping that tangent and keeping it on the side temporarily. Chrome's approach is better for that latter thing.

I want something in between. Something that let's you see all groups on a single bar or on a tree bar, and then further groups that can be containers and switch the bar. Chrome was close with their group save+hide feature, but they eat into the bookmarks bar with no options about where.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#290

Post by schmorptron »

ochronus wrote: post #282

I'd love to use Firefox, but I've been missing three (subjectively, for me) important features: 1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!) 2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style) 3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?

aren't workspaces the same as containers? when I right click the new tab icon in firefox it gives me an option to open them in work, personal, banking, etc or to create a new container

3 is also built in, called firefox sync. You can open any tab from any device on another one and send tab(s) to other devices

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