It’s better to integrate Tree Style Tab addon instead. It’s not a good idea to re-implement a function which already has a great implementation…
If we’re talking about a great implementation of the feature, it would be ‘Sidebery’.
I don’t think Sidebery is a great implementation unless the developers fix this bug. It can be reproduced stably and is important for users who opened many tabs and keep them between session.
Shit just got real
I migrated from Edge for the last time to avoid Manifest v4, I’ve been missing vertical tabs a lot. Sidebery just didn’t work for me. I really like how this is looking.
Edge mentioned on this sub? Brave.
No, Edge.
Oh I don’t even use Linux lol, this is the first post I found on this news
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.UX is a very subjective matter.
Yo fuck it. This comment saved my life.
What you are doing does not at all, besides not having to do anything with the topic at hand.
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I just spent 3 days learning a basic level of css and messing around in my userchrome and NOW they decide to add it…
Your CSS knowledge is still useful to customise other areas of Firefox UI.
anyone else feel like a lot of these firefox updates recently are just them implementing the most popular extensions from firefox 3.6?
It’s always been like this. Aside from Gecko and/or security updates that’s how all browser development has functioned since add-ons became a thing.
Bad news is that it is not clear at this point whether Mozilla is going to go forward with the implementation. A post on Reddit by one of the project members suggests that the build is a “rough proof-of-concept”. Some features tested in the build “did not survive”. It is unclear which did not, as they are not mentioned. Mozilla is, however, implementing those that survived the cut into Firefox. Again, the poster does not mention which those are. It is also not verified that the poster is actually a member of the project team, so take this with a grain of salt as well.
Isn’t Firefox open source? So isn’t it possible that anyone could see the changes being made even in the nightly versions? I’m not a programmer so forgive my ignorance.
FINALLY
Literally the only thing I wanted!! 💚
This feels like something that should be a extension
I don’t think extensions as they are now will be able to do everything this can do. Specifically modifying the userChrome.css. Yes, there are existing vertical tab extensions, but they just reuse the existing sidebar used for the bookmarks and history. Nothing quite up to the quality that Edge or Vivaldi have.
Do you use vertical tabs? If so, why?
I’m not the parent commenter, and I don’t use it, but if you have a lot of tabs, it’s easier to navigate between them in a vertical list if you are used to looking at the tab titles to decide which one you need.
This is partly because the tab items get very narrow when there is a lot, but also because in a vertical list there’s just a lot more room for them. The top bar is ok when you know the tab you need by it’s shortened title or position, but a vertical list is better when you don’t and you need to search for it by it’s full title or when it’s further away.Maybe I should use it too.
I agree that userChrome.css must be modified, but once it is, Firefox is way better for vertical tabs. When you mix in the tree style that is common in the extensions and containers, there is nothing that competes, especially if you work involves managing a large number of accounts for the same few websites, as mine does. It is not uncommon for me to have 10-20 active tabs, and 80+ inactive tabs at any given time. Horizontal tabs can’t compete, and the flat nature of the tabs in Edge certainly turn into a mess quickly.
So what you’re saying is vertical tabs and tab groups are the perfect combination.
I used to use Chrome at work. When Edge added vertical tabs I jumped to that immediately.
Now that IT is allowing FireFox I switched to that with Tree Style Tabs. I am missing the tab groups from Edge, but the tree is worth it.
Yes tree tabs with groups would indeed be perfect.
congratulats to the people liking them i guess. i personally dont get it, since most languages are written horizontally and i like ux to reflect this structure. such things are subjective though
since most languages are written horizontally and i like ux to reflect this structure. such things are subjective though
You might be misunderstanding what we mean by vertical tabs - we aren’t literally turning the tabs sideways and putting them on the side of the browser. We’re placing the tabs, still horizontal, into a stacked, scrollable list on the side of the browser. The superiority of this display method for tabs on widescreen displays is not subjective, and here’s why:
- Tab titles are not typically very long, but there tend to be a lot of them. This data is far more readable and accessible as a bulleted list than a long paragraph.
- Beyond about ten to fifteen tabs, tabs displayed at the top, side by side, must either shrink and obscure the title, go off-screen and be invisible without scrolling, or stack in multiple rows across the top. A vertical tab setup can easily display 30-40 of them in a vertical list, all with the maximum visible amount of their titles which helps distinguish them from one another.
- Modern desktop screens are wider than they are high, but webpage content scrolls vertically, often leaving a lot of empty space on the sides.
- Eyestrain is reduced and readability improves when the width of the reading area is reduced. This is why text on the web almost never fills the full width of a widescreen display, why most books are taller than they are wide, and why newsprint articles have many narrow columns rather than filling the entire page.
- Given points 3 and 4, tabs at the top of the browser window on a widescreen display leave slightly less room for the actual page contents, while tabs displayed in a vertical list on one side only cut into the white space that exists on the sides of the content, while keeping the titles readable and causing less eyestrain.
- With one change, a list can become an outline with sections and headers, following your own train of thought as you branch out and expand on each idea. In the same way, tabs displayed as a list can be very easily displayed with a tree structure, allowing tabs to be grouped, collapsed, and generally organized in ways that are impossible for traditional-style top-tabs.
This is why Tree Style Tabs exists, though I prefer Sidebery these days, being more customizable and performant than TST. There’s no way I can ever go back to top-tabs.
In a real life scenario that I can ad hoc reproduce here on my PC, only point 6 makes sense. With the others I can not agree when looking at my open tabs here.
The counterpoint is since 16:9 became the de facto standard for monitors, vertical resolution is at much more of a premium than horizontal resolution is.
Not to mention that most sites will put their main content into a container with a limited width anyway, since overly long lines are awful to read. So unless you’re using the browser side-by-side with other content on a low-res monitor it’s a net benefit. And even if it’s not I usually find the extra vertical space to be worth more, as you said.
i get where youre coming from, but imho the eye tends to parse information more effectively if delivered vertically, since it knows it that way from other media. just my personal opinion though.
Then why I struggle a lot to navigate through Discord compared with any other messaging app, such as Telegram, don’t answer, probably because Discord UI is trash.
I think you’re missing what’s going on. The text is still written left-to-right. You don’t need to read the tabs vertically. The tabs are stacked on top of each other in the sidebar instead of lined up along the top of the window.
I believe their point is that their language is left to right, so it just makes sense to them to have the tabs structure left to right as well.
I happen to share this sentiment, but can understand why some people may like it different.
Try out Tree Style Tabs for an hour. I’m curious how you’ll feel about it.
I’ve been using TST for years and while it can be a bit buggy at times I couldn’t imagine going back to the default tab system.
And to round out this story, here’s a photo that we think evokes the concept of “vertical”.
Which, ironically, is probably a better representation of horizontal. No one talks about finding a shelf in a bookshelf. They talk about finding a book, which are laid out horizontally.
As usual, Mozilla doesn’t come up with new things. Only when Floorp and Waterfox start doing stuff do they think “Oh wait, people actually like that? Well, let’s kill an extension or fork!”.
Tree Style Tabs have existed for years. I guess it took them a while to wake up.
Christ. If they don’t do vertical tabs people act like it’s the end of the world, and when they do they aren’t being original enough!
They can’t win
The very first version of Tree Style Tabs was published in… hmm…
2007
The shameful part is the fact that Edge-Chromium added a native tree style tabs feature over three years ago, and has been eating Firefox’s lunch. Vivaldi has had native vertical tabs for eight years! Mozilla’s leadership is asleep at the wheel.
Why does everyone like vertical tabs? Today my tab icons are so small because I have so many. Monitors are wider than they are taller. What am I missing?
Monitors are wider than they are taller.
Personally, exactly for this reason.
What you’re missing is that “vertical tabs” in this context isn’t talking about tabs literally turned on their side. We’re talking about tabs that are still horizontal, but instead of arranging the tabs along the top of the screen, and shrinking their width when there’s no room left, they’re given a fixed width and arranged in a vertical list on one side of the screen. The best implementations of this (such as Sidebery, which the previous screenshot is from) also allow tabs to be nested in a collapsible tree structure.
You sound like you’d really like the tree-style tabs offered by Sidebery on Firefox, or that’s built into Edge. Give it a try!
Just occurred to me, now I get it. That makes a lot of sense. I think I used to use some tree tab extension ages ago.
I won’t touch edge with a 10 foot pole. Data collecting, nagging, pos browser.
I’ve never heard of Sidebery before! I’ve been using Tree-Syle Tabs for ages now though. Why did you choose Sidebery for it?
It has better customization, better performance, and tab groups. I used TST for many years, switched to Sidebery only a few months ago. You can do stuff like set it to where tabs only activate on releasing the mouse, so you can rearrange unloaded tabs without activating them, or make it so middle clicking the tab close button unloads it instead. You can also rename tabs!
Finally got around to trying it, and yeah - this is much better! Thanks for the recommendation!
Yesss come on! I moved to Edge at my place of work because I can no longer see what I’m doing with horizontal tabs. And we can’t use addons in Firefox.
This will land in ESR in three years time and then we’ll be rolling…
