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Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

blog.nightly.mozilla.org

351–360 of 364 posts

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey fellow tab hoarder! I "only" have 744 tabs open right now (in Edge). Though chrome, firefox, brave, arc, and supermium have a few hundred each... (they've been force closed by task manager so my laptop still technically runs haha). It's funny finding fellow tab hoarders online, people rarely hit the thousands - you're pretty much the first person I've encountered who's got more tabs open than me. Btw what's your…

I've got a recent macbook. I use Firefox which lazily load tabs which makes it fairly efficient. I also use "Auto Tab Discard" so tabs unload quickly to keep memory down long term. My Firefox is currently using 6GB of RAM. For comparison I also have Chrome open with about 15 tabs and it's taking 4GB.

It's not really a meaningful comparison because the browser uses more memory for active tabs than inactive tabs.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#352
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ADHD is about how many tabs get opened. Making an effort to close them is a related aspect.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#353
post #159
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…

Why not use actual bookmarks at that point? They also are able to be nested into a tree structure via folders. I never had tabs open after a session but I keep bookmarks (it turns out I never actually look at the bookmarks, but let's not talk about that).

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#354
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…

> 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, bu…

Arc is Chromium which I wouldn't want to support. If the clone works for Firefox, I'd be more interested, when it's done in the future.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#355

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…

Changing things just for the sake of changing them is the great bane of modern software. Consistency is a valuable feature! Don't throw it away without a VERY good reason! Meaning improving things is fine, changing them just for the sake of what some SV arsehole things is "modern" and "fresh" is not.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#356

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…

I'd like to be able to open a link in a new pane, split with the current tab, just as I'm able to open a link in a new tab or a new window.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#357
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.

I used to be like that until I installed a plugin that autocloses all non-pinned tabs. Now I couldn't even imagine having so many. Why don't you just close the window? Is there something in there that you can somehow more easily obtain than just searching the history?

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#358
I tried this but unfortunately you do not gain any vertical space as the tab bar is still in use as window title bar (or whatever the proper names are for this). The vertical tab bar is also fixed width (!) and to top it off, after testing nightly for an hour, I closed and reopened the browser and my pinned tabs were gone.

I will wait until they figured this out properly. I know it's "nightly" and "labs" so not a complaint per se, but an observation.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#359
post #305

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?

1. Sideberry. 2. Sideberry. 3. Firefox Sync. Firefox has had these features since at least 5 years ago (#3) and probably 15 years ago (#1, #2 through Tree Style Tabs).

Thanks, but FF sync is not a solution here. That syncs individual tabs, with no concept of workspaces or groups. I don't want to hand-restore those all the time.

Re: Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

#360
post #34

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 use Sidebery, and I added some custom userChrome.css to have the sidebar collapse to only take up 36px, and expand on hover, absolutely love using it
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