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Firefox tab groups are here

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#241

Post by seba_dos1 »

chupasaurus wrote: post #177
ksec wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, because out of all the three browser Firefox should be the best at memory management, unloading tabs along with Sessions recovery. But I have only ever used it on Windows and Mac. So no idea about Linux. You can do About:memory to check out which tabs are using more memory as well as manual memory compact. Firefox also allows unlimited History, unlike Chrome which I believe you cant even have history for…

FF memory management on Linux is usually outpaced by oom_killer.

Not my experience at all with 16 GB RAM. Perhaps a configuration issue? zswap and mglru do their job well here and the only issue with reaching tens of thousands open tabs in Firefox is that it tends to become noticeably slower at that point.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#243

Post by lupusreal »

throwaway743950 wrote: post #242

We get tab groups, but can't get a working gradient without banding. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=627771

Not that one actually has anything to do with the other, but I'd rather have useful functionality than meaningless aesthetic crap that I'd never notice if I wasn't examining the pixels with a magnifying glass.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#244

Post by seba_dos1 »

pawelduda wrote: post #53
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have almost 2000 tabs open. I use sideberry for tab management. > Are people using tabs as a soft bookmark of basically anything interesting? Yep, that's as good a description as any. I have a lot of tabs that I'm not "finished with" in any finite amount of time. Case in point: currently shopping for a steam generator for a steam shower. I have about 30-40 tabs open to different models, stores, reviews, data pages…

And here I was, thinking 200-300 tabs is a lot. Turns out these are rookie numbers.

2000 is still in the same category :)

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#245

Post by bobajeff »

bityard wrote: post #213

It's worth remembering that Firefox HAD tab groups before, just under a different name and then killed it because "nobody used it": https://medium.com/@twidi/how-i-survived-the-removal-of-pano... The implementation here is a bit different, I'm sure, but the core idea is the same: Group your tabs however you like and switch between the groups at will. I use Vivaldi these days (thanks to it's excellent UI customization…

I'm nobody. I loved panorama. It was basically Exposé but in a browser which allowed me to keep not just tabs but 'Windows' organized visually without taking up separate tasks in my actual task manager.

This new feature (which I've already gotten to test), I can almost use the same way, though I'm wary of Mozilla yanking it away from me if I rely on it.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#246

Post by godelski »

lazycouchpotato wrote: post #186
godelski wrote: post #170

Is this feature failing for anyone else? I drag one tab onto another and it just tries moving the tabs, not grouping. Yes, I updated. After doing so it told me about this feature. No, I also cannot see the tab group creation when right clicking. FF 138.0, Sequoia

Appears to still be rolling out progressively - something that the release notes left out. I'm on 138.0 and I don't have it either. > All users should expect to see the feature by May 6, 2025. [1] [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups

Seems weird to announce it as part of a version and then also as a rolling release. Seems like the message could be much clearer by saying it is part of the browser but may be disabled by default.

FWIW, I checked about:config. There's some options in here that seem highly relevant

  browser.tabs.groups.enabled              false 
  browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled        false 
  browser.tabs.groups.smart.optin          false 
  browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled    true
These are the settings I have by default that are not allowing grouping.

Changing `browser.tabs.groups.enabled` to `true` enables the feature. Though note that it can still be difficult to align them right such that they group. Presumably `browser.tabs.groups.smart.enabled` is the AI feature mentioned in the article. But I have no idea what `browser.tabs.groups.smart.optin` and `browser.tabs.groups.smart.userEnabled` are.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#247

Post by werdnapk »

bityard wrote: post #213

It's worth remembering that Firefox HAD tab groups before, just under a different name and then killed it because "nobody used it": https://medium.com/@twidi/how-i-survived-the-removal-of-pano... The implementation here is a bit different, I'm sure, but the core idea is the same: Group your tabs however you like and switch between the groups at will. I use Vivaldi these days (thanks to it's excellent UI customization…

This looks to be a bit more integrated into the UI than the old version. The old tab groups always seemed like a bit of a separate "app" and I tried to use them, but never really used them much because I had to manually switch to the tab group view and it just didn't seem very cohesive.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#248

Post by new_user_final »

canadianwriter wrote: post #3

I never have more than like 10 tabs open at a time, so likely wont be helpful to me, but I find this super interesting! Can someone explain what normal people use so many tabs for? It seems to be super common to have tons and tons open. Are people using tabs as a soft bookmark of basically anything interesting? Afraid to close the page because they wont find it in their history or bookmarks? Is this more an issue wit…

I had a meeting, so I opened 5/6 relevant pages to quickly show something. I thought the meeting was postponed, so I created a chrome tab group and close the group and continue working with 1 or 2 tab in my browser.

Suddenly, meeting was scheduled again, I simply clicked on the group, and got all the tabs open again.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#249

Post by deredede »

canadianwriter wrote: post #3

I never have more than like 10 tabs open at a time, so likely wont be helpful to me, but I find this super interesting! Can someone explain what normal people use so many tabs for? It seems to be super common to have tons and tons open. Are people using tabs as a soft bookmark of basically anything interesting? Afraid to close the page because they wont find it in their history or bookmarks? Is this more an issue wit…

> Afraid to close the page because they wont find it in their history or bookmarks? Is this more an issue with bookmarks and history not being as useful as they could be?

I think tabs are just the better user interface.

It's not that I'm afraid I won't find the page in my history and bookmarks, it's that I don't want to have to do that because it's painful. History is full of irrelevant pages. Bookmarks make me lose my flow constantly wondering if I should bookmark a page or it's not needed (and in which directory!).

Tabs have a very simple workflow with low cognitive overhead. Everything is preserved by default (middle click/ctrl click is my default click in a browser), unless I'm clearly in a linear workflow where I don't want to keep the page (left click). Self-organizing due to the way they open, but very easy to manually reorder (or close) if needed. Kept in memory so going back to a (recent) tab is instantaneous.

They just... get out of the way and let me work. Tabs make browsing feel like one continuous task, where history/bookmarks feel like constant interruptions.

Re: Firefox tab groups are here

#250

Post by gitroom »

Kinda wild watching every browser finally get around to this after all these years - feels like the stuff people actually want is what keeps slipping through the cracks most. You ever wonder why the basics take forever to get built while every company chases the next shiny thing?
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