Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.
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Firefox Test Pilot
11–20 of 152 posts
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#12Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.
The side-tabs don't have any hierarchy, but already you can fit many more tabs and have them visible at once than the tabs-on-top.
I think the main thing that keeps tree tabs from happening is that it's an advanced concept for the everyday internet surfer, which is what Firefox has been trying to appeal to more and more lately.
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#13Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually:
Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/
Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect)
Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#14Mozilla, please implement HTML5 input types. Thanks, frontend web developers.
You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320
If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#15Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...
They work for now. But these and future experiments are going to start talking more to the main Test Pilot site, and will possibly break / disable themselves without that connection. Going out-of-band to install these will likely lead to sadness eventually.
Also, I think you're pointing to older demo versions of some of those add-on and not the current Test Pilot releases. We're trying to work more in the open on this stuff, so you'll likely find things like this here and there.
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#16Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...
Looks like the wrapper add-on will:
- Sync your experimental add-ons across browser instances
- Provide useful metrics for the TestPilot add-on
- Cleanly remove all add-ons and metrics when you uninstall it
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#17Not entirely sure why this requires a Firefox account. It appears possible to install the mentioned add-ons manually: Tab Center appears to be available from http://people.mozilla.org/~bwinton/TabCenter/ Universal search: (edit: link here was incorrect) Activity streams: https://moz-activity-streams.s3.amazonaws.com/dist/latest.ht...
Looks like the wrapper add-on will: - Sync your experimental add-ons across browser instances - Provide useful metrics for the TestPilot add-on - Cleanly remove all add-ons and metrics when you uninstall it
Yes, all of that. Also, there are legal disclaimers and privacy notices and all kinds of thing beyond my IANAL ken that are wrapped up in agreeing to participate in Test Pilot. Nothing sneaky, just mainly we want to get lots of feedback while you're in, be totally up front about that, and clean up after ourselves when you leave.
Although, actually, the experiment installs are per-browser-profile and not necessarily sync'd if you haven't turned that on in your sync prefs. So if you wanted, you can try experiments in one release channel / profile, but not in another.
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#18Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.
Potentially! The simple story is that the current tabbing model in was designed to save you from needing half a dozen browser window open. It just doesn't scale well past a dozen tabs or so, and we know that some users have dozens or even hundreds open at the same time. Tab Center is taking a fresh look at the problem with that in mind.
The whole problem of a tab UI for power users with hundreds or even thousands of open tabs (like me) is mindblowingly daunting. I don't know that tabs on the side is the solution. For a long time I'd been using Tab Groups but I've been frustrated with its limitations.
Ideally, I think I'd like something similar to the spatial system of the Classic Mac OS Finder, which I coincidentally expounded upon recently in another thread[0]. Tab Groups goes part of the way there with its spatial organizational system but it lacks the hierarchy and persistence of those Classic folders and desktop.
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#19Is the "Tab Center" feature a prototype for an official version of tree-style tabs, perhaps? I've seen that Servo/browser.html was experimenting with tabs-on-the-side, I'd love to see this graduate to more than just an experiment.
I seem to recall various addons for Firefox over the years that would put tabs on the side. No idea on the current state of such things.
There's been a lot of them, but none of them other than Tree-Style Tabs have been consistently maintained, so as someone that likes tabs on the side but doesn't like everything else TST does, I'd be happy to get off the treadmill of constantly switching to different side-tab plugins every time one breaks.
Re: Firefox Test Pilot
#20Mozilla, please implement HTML5 input types. Thanks, frontend web developers.
You'll be happy to know that somebody recently started working on the date/time input types bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=888320 If you have a bugzilla account, you can CC yourself on the bug to catch future updates :-)
Great! So now in like 2 years, hopefully I can simply use type="time" instead of implementing a half baked JS time picker or time validator.
It's frustrating seeing them spend so much time on Firefox OS, Hello, etc. and not on making Firefox a really good, standards compliant browser.