Testing the Firefox Alternatives

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I'd be fine with letting an extension take over that niche ... if they made an API that let it replace the horizontal tabs instead of only being able to duplicate the tabs in the sidebar. Or even a way to configure that as a user.

That is how tree style tabs worked before Firefox switched to webextensions. And when Firefox switched to the we extensions API, a ticket was immediately opened requesting an API allowing hiding the horizontal tab bar. But despite some initial interest, nothing really ever happened with that.

I have been using vertical tabs since the mid 90s - OmniWeb on NeXT then OSX. Unfortunately that stopped being usable in the late 200s then I used Firefox extension TreeStyleTabs - I did not know that Mozilla did vertical tabs. Chrome also had vertical tabs then but the bug tracker is hilarious in that the authors really did not understand its use and eventually removed it.

After 2016 then Vivaldi and in the last couple of years Safari (there was a horrible admin 10 years ago)

Native vertical tabs are already in nightly and it's about as neutered as its Edge and Vivaldi counterparts. What Edge and Vivaldi does not have is APIs for implementing something as impressive as the nested style Sidebery or Tree Style Tabs.

Making it sound like Edge and Vivaldi has the upper hand, when it comes to vertical tabs, is not fair.

Given that this whole "AI" integration shtick is minimal effort thing with negligibly small value (if any), I suspect it was either an attempt to just ride on "AI" hype (certainly didn't work, feedback comments are virtually univocally "AI" hate), or attempt to find new monetization source (e.g. for a default provider).

My own thoughts on the AI feature: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedba... - LLM integrations can be useful and actually supporting end-users, but it must be based on entirely different paradigm (all about user agent automation, not a website in a sidebar) and it's probably best left out of the core application itself and rather be a external co-program.

As for the alternatives - to be honest, I don't really see much difference beyond various cosmetics. Both Zen and Floorp are basically the same Firefox for me, containing all the things I hate about Firefox ("sponsored" stuff everywhere, Firefox Account and Sync overengineering abomination, all the "safety" features that "protect" browser from its users, hardcoded built-in things that should be pluggable rather than fixed), while bringing nothing I actually care about and want to see (such as decluttering websites aggressively minimizing all the noise I don't care about - kinda like improved reader mode for everything by default, flexible automatic workflows for personal routine things, advanced history with optional content indexing for finding back things I vaguely remember seeing somewhere, automatic tab management to solve 100 open tabs problem, removal of tightly integrated bits like password or download management in favor of replaceable classic UNIX-way style external programs so I can use any tool I want while feeling those tools are properly truly and fully integrated and aren't some hacks like those password manager extensions messing with HTML).

Honestly, I'm sad that niche stuff like surf and Uzbl had essentially died, instead of evolving towards a pre-packaged "batteries included out of the box, but you can replace everything with your own" suites. I wished for a non-monolithic browser for technical/power users, with replaceable components for about a decade now - don't think I'll ever see it happening.