Why should the tabs be at the top. side looks better.
Because it is easier read than the top.
Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
81–90 of 104 posts
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#82I've been using Tree Style Tabs[0] with Firefox for a long time. Being able to nest tabs and then collapse them is awesome. It is hard to live without it when using Chrome (I know there is a similar addon for Chrome[1], but it doesn't have the same feel since it just adds a new window off to the side and still has the tabs across the top). [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... [1] https:…
As an aside, for those that aren't aware, try pressing Ctrl-Shift-E in Firefox for another way of organising tabs...
Wow, apparently this has been a thing since Firefox 20. This is absolutely wonderful. You can also add the Tab Groups button anywhere from the customize menu.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#83Where I really want side tabs is on my Android Nexus 7 tablet. On it in Chrome I normally browse the web in portrait mode and I can see the titles of about three tabs, but only a few words of each. With a slide out side panel on the left (activated by dragging left to right from off the screen onto the screen) I would be able to see the titles for 15 or so tabs, with larger press areas and close buttons. I realize fo…
You just described Firefox's tab switcher on Android.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an aside, for those that aren't aware, try pressing Ctrl-Shift-E in Firefox for another way of organising tabs...
Wow, apparently this has been a thing since Firefox 20. This is absolutely wonderful. You can also add the Tab Groups button anywhere from the customize menu.
20? Panorama has been around since Firefox 4.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#85This post attempts to walk a fine line between hyping up the work the author has done and recognizing the contributions of... largely the wrong people.
- There is a pretty popular Firefox extension called Tree Style Tabs, by "Piro". It is awesome, it is actively maintained, it works great. It has around 100k active users.
- Some time later, "philiKON" (Philipp von Weitershausen) made a smaller extension that just shows tabs vertically. "It is heavily inspired by and borrows ideas from the excellent Tree Style Tab add-on", its page says. I used it for a while, but it fell into disrepair and I switched back to TST. Vertical Tabs has around 5k users.
- Finally, "Vlad" made a fork of Vertical Tabs to fix it up a little, since philiKON had abandoned it.
So who does Mr. Henein credit? Mainly himself and his colleague Vlad. Vlad is credited as the author of Vertical Tabs at the beginning of the post, although what he was not "something [Henein]’d be willing to trial" (ouch). It needed Henein's touch to "bring this add-on to a level where users would find it delightful and usable enough to at least give it a fair shot."
But still, he does credit his pal Vlad for doing most of the work, and even throws in a mention of von Weitershausen in the middle of the post, without explaining what he has to do with Vertical Tabs.
No mention at all of Piro or Tree Style Tabs, even though it was the inspiration of Vertical Tabs, and to this day is used by orders of magnitude more people. In fact, its existence seems to be intentionally removed. "The hypothesis I was hoping to validate was that there was a subset of the Firefox user base that would find value in the layout that Side Tabs enabled. I wanted to bring this add-on to a level where users would find it delightful and usable enough to at least give it a fair shot." I would say that TST, its over 2 million downloads over at least 7 years, and its 100k active users validate that hypothesis pretty well.
I think this is a pretty shoddy way for Mozilla to treat a member of its community. There is an add-on that introduced all of these ideas to Firefox, is well-known and appreciated by Firefox power-users, and has been tirelessly maintained for seven years, yet they go and act as if "side tabs" (he even slipped his own new name for it in there) were some amazing new area of cutting-edge experimentation, while giving a hat tip to a derivative of a derivative of the original extension.
And then all the flowery rhetoric: "This is how great things are built; rarely from scratch, but more commonly on the shoulders and brilliance of those who came before you." "I’ve had great response on Twitter from developers and users who love the add-on and who can’t wait to share their ideas and thoughts. It’s awesome to see ideas take shape and grow so organically like this. This is collaboration."
Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole thing just rubs me the wrong way.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#86This post attempts to walk a fine line between hyping up the work the author has done and recognizing the contributions of... largely the wrong people. - There is a pretty popular Firefox extension called Tree Style Tabs, by "Piro". It is awesome, it is actively maintained, it works great. It has around 100k active users. - Some time later, "philiKON" (Philipp von Weitershausen) made a smaller extension that just sho…
Presumably he wasn't necessarily aware of TST? I wasn't.
I don't see anything wrong with crediting where he found his inspiration. There's always a chain to these things, presumably TST wouldn't exist without Firefox, which wouldn't exist without IE or Netscape, which... which wouldn't exist without the wheel... fire...
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#87OmniWeb did this over a decade ago: http://i.imgur.com/U4Q5siY.jpg I'm glad it's getting more popular but surprised it's taken this long. It makes more sense to use horizontal space on a widescreen monitor.
Something Omniweb did(/does?) was remove common prefixes from the titles of multiple open tabs from the same web site. This further served to maximize usage of limited screen real estate (something that vertical tabs already helps with greatly, of course). I wonder if there's an addon for any modern browsers to do this. I'll need to check once I get home.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#88I've been using Tree Style Tabs[0] with Firefox for a long time. Being able to nest tabs and then collapse them is awesome. It is hard to live without it when using Chrome (I know there is a similar addon for Chrome[1], but it doesn't have the same feel since it just adds a new window off to the side and still has the tabs across the top). [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... [1] https:…
+1 for Tree Style Tabs. This seems in the right direction, but it's not nearly as feature packed as TST. One thing with TST though, pinned tabs is broken :(
I just installed TST and it lost all my 4 pinned tabs but could pin them again with no issues.
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#89OmniWeb did this over a decade ago: http://i.imgur.com/U4Q5siY.jpg I'm glad it's getting more popular but surprised it's taken this long. It makes more sense to use horizontal space on a widescreen monitor.
Something Omniweb did(/does?) was remove common prefixes from the titles of multiple open tabs from the same web site. This further served to maximize usage of limited screen real estate (something that vertical tabs already helps with greatly, of course). I wonder if there's an addon for any modern browsers to do this. I'll need to check once I get home.
Safari does something very similar on 10.9. I think it looks at the titles of all the tabs and tries to find the sections that have least commonality between them (not just common prefix).
Re: Side Tabs: Prototyping An Unexpected Productivity Hack
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
For developers and other tech guys maybe. But the average, non tech savy users have a very hard time understanding hierarchies and therefore tree controls. It's to such a degree that UX specialists like Alan Cooper strongly suggests never using tree views unless the data is naturally thought of as a hierarchy, such as a family tree etc.
>But the average, non tech savy users have a very hard time understanding hierarchies and therefore tree controls Oh, that sounds very much like BS. "non tech saavy" users have been using hierarchies in computers since before Windows 95 (considering people that used MS-DOS as 'tech saavy' users). DOS/Windows folders were presented in a structure; File Explorer presented stuff in a structure manner. Hell, the "my docu…
Because a UI control exists before Windows 95 doesn't mean it's understood by the majority of users. Also, there is a larger amount of users with minimal software exposure now than ever before, due to tablets and smartphones.
If your computing experience is limited to iOS for example, chances are you'll never even have seen a nested tree view control, much less understand the hierarchy behind it.
At least just read a minimum on usability and UX, before being so rude as to "call bullshit" based on your own personal opinion.