• 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.

  •  Flaky   ( @Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi ) 
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    3 months ago

    Those screenshots look really nice, ngl, hoping this goes through. Edge and Vivaldi have had their own vertical tab implementations for a while now, and there are Firefox forks that show it can be done. No reason for base Firefox not to have it at this point.

    While I’m here, Mozilla bring back compact spacing, plz k thx.

    Edit: Just tried it, it’s got that nightly jank but it’s promising. I hope Mozilla continues with this. It looks and feels great.

    • 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:

      1. 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.
      2. 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.
      3. Modern desktop screens are wider than they are high, but webpage content scrolls vertically, often leaving a lot of empty space on the sides.
      4. 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.
      5. 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.
      6. 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.

  • My dream would for this to at least have an option for collapsable tree-style tabs. That’s what I’m missing the most from the Edge implementation. Even “normal” vertical tabs struggle when you have over a hundred open tabs.

    •  Cethin   ( @Cethin@lemmy.zip ) 
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      33 months ago

      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.

  •  Jo Miran   ( @JoMiran@lemmy.ml ) 
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    3 months ago

    I would love the option of keeping containers in vertical tabs with “page tabs” horizontal. For example; Facebook, Personal, Banking, Work, Incognito, etc containers along the left as vertical tabs, and each one has all the pages in tabs across the top. Vertical tabs only appear after you open more than one type of container.

    • 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.

  • 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…

    • 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.

        • 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!

    • They are awesome. To me at least, but only if you save space by hiding the regular tab bar and it is easier to manage tabs since they are now closer together. Also, if you make the right --or left, it is up to you, I pick right-- sidebar auto hide and letting just the icons show. You do gain a lot of extra space. Mind you, you need to enable CSS via About:Config. On too of, before, using say, Sideberry. I like you thought I did not like it but now that I have tried it. I simply will not go back. I have a userChrome.css file that place on all my machines on a fresh install, now.