11 ms·

Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out

634 points by ReadCarlBarks 2y ago

xwall 2y ago
Looks cool, enter key in GPT prompt box not working...
phartenfeller 2y ago
A screenshot of how it looks would have been helpful. I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/
- gkoberger 2y ago
  Maybe (probably?), but back when I worked at Mozilla in ~2010 "Tree Style Tabs" was one of the most popular add-ons. Here's a screenshot of what the feature looks like: https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-in-firefox-now/ https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-...
  - tapoxi 2y ago
    They unfortunately ruined TST with the switch to WebExtensions because it could no longer replace the top tab bar. There were hacks you could do by modifying something in your Firefox profile directory. Bizarre to me that they didn't take TST's popularity as a hint of supporting vertical tabs as a native feature until almost 7 years later.
    - knallfrosch 2y ago
      Compared to pushing and implementing CSS, JS and HTML standards, cryptography, APIs, mobile OS release cycles etc, I've always wondered whether vertical tabs would've been an easy win.
    - gkoberger 2y ago
      Yeah, I remember it being a huge internal argument against WebExtensions at the time. (But, security + easy of building + compatibility + speed of developing Firefox + a bunch of other things made the switch off XUL the right choice)
    - reginald78 2y ago
      I want to say they actually put some work in to allow TST to still work when they transitioned to quantum as it was a popular extension. I got the impression they were eventually going to add back in the horizontal tab bar disable as well but if that was even true they clearly forgot about it. I've been using the userChrome hacks for close to 7 years now.
- pantulis 2y ago
  It seems they took a cue from Arc for the pinned tabs icons. Now they only need to add tab groups a la Tab Stash, Sideberry or Tree Style Tab, and combine that with Sync. Still a lot of work ahead, but this looks very promising. Kudos to the Firefox team.
  - mintplant 2y ago
    Firefox for Android already has "Collections" of tabs. Maybe a starting point?
- doix 2y ago
  > I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ It's funny how we've gone full cycle. Early versions of Firefox get vertical tabs because the plugin system is very rich and you could do whatever you wanted with XUL. Firefox quantum comes around and kills XUL based extensions, vertical tabs are dead. Arc revives an ancient idea as something new and hip, firefox "responds" by reviving the very thing they killed.
  - radlad 2y ago
    AFAIK, Tree Style Tab still exists? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
    - rkangel 2y ago
      It does, but you have to have some custom CSS to turn off the normal horizontal tabs, and you have to go and enable some options in about:config to even have custom CSS. I've got something that works reasonably well, but it's really hard to have CSS that always works correctly.
    - Izkata 2y ago
      The original XUL-based vertical tabs actually moved and restyled Firefox's native tabs, instead of creating a lookalike (which is all that's possible now). This meant that unrelated addons that did things like grey-out unloaded tabs, or alter the favicons to have some sort of indicator, still worked on the vertical tabs. The current vertical tabs addons all have to do it themselves or add some sort of API for the other addons to interact with to get the same effect.
  - thro1 2y ago
    > the plugin system is very rich - like mplayer or vlc plugins to play every video format independently of browsers licence - right ? > you could do whatever you wanted with XUL - except undoing it (restartless extensions) - but you could do better without it anyway.. (XBL was to powerfull idea ;) .. except since you couldn't hook in early enough to replace some XPCOM pieces before they are cached.. anymore.. RIP Firefox.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  I use Edge for work and the vertical tabs with grouping works really nicely. On the other hand Arc's website made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Unfortunately it does indeed seem like that's what Firefox wants to ape.
- causal 2y ago
  Hadn't heard of Arc, went to download it just now, and...it requires an account to use? Really? Browser UIs have barely evolved in the past decade so I guess I'm excited that Firefox is trying something new.
- thisisabore 2y ago
  I would imagine a minor browser would be less of an influence than the fact that most browsers have vertical tabs as an option at this point, or even just the slew of add-ons for Firefox itself.
- abhinavk 2y ago
  Edge and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Arc even existed. Firefox also had it via an extension.
  - cywick 2y ago
    ...and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Edge even existed (and about six years before Edge implemented it). The only other browser (to my knowledge) that had native tabs earlier than Vivaldi was the original Opera browser, which was eventually killed, which in turn led to people leaving the company and creating Vivaldi.
    - effdee 2y ago
      I still miss the flexibility of the originals Opera's UI. As well as the built-in email client. https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P (from 2009)
- heraldgeezer 2y ago
  >I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ What age are you? How long have you been using computers? Sorry to be this blunt, but I am asking as Firefox has had addons for vertical tabs for a long time. Vivaldi, Edge, Brave all have vertical tabs. Opera Presto was first. Why even mention this Arc? I feel like you just jumped on some hype train and you have been using Google Chrome and just recently found out about vertical tabs. Good for you but it is not a new development.
osbulbul 2y ago
I wish all browsers has first class vertical tabs support and split view. I am really tired of resource hog, unstable arc. Want to return back to traditional browsers but they are not supporting vertical tabs like arc did. And arc turn its face to AI instead of stability (I guess) because of investors. So we are lonely in the dark :)
- ss48 2y ago
  You could check out Vivaldi. The split view is pretty robust. The Vertical tabs can be on left or right, and allow one level of tab grouping.
  - osbulbul 2y ago
    I think I only didn't try Vivaldi :) thanks, I will definitely look
  - dustincoates 2y ago
    I really, really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so slow for me on Windows. It has a similar problem on Linux, though a restart a few times a day solves it.
    - eviks 2y ago
      Yeah, performance is its biggest downside. Is it slow with a fresh profile? It can become suprisingly slow as session files grow, but cleaning it can revert some of that
      - ss48 2y ago
        Yeah. I found out that a Tabs > Memory Saver setting was disabled. Once I enabled that, the performance improved somewhat.
- deleted 2y ago
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- sccxy 2y ago
bloopernova 2y ago
Not in the developer/beta edition yet. I'm concerned it will conflict with Tree Style Tabs, and/or my custom UI CSS. But it will be very nice to bring more folks into the Vertical Tabs Cult ;)
quibono 2y ago
Just my personal 2c. I've long been a big fan of Sidebery for vertical tab management, so I was expecting something closer to that than what I got. The vertical tab view does work, although it seems pretty basic. E.g. there's no way to group any of the tabs or modify the display style. By default the tabs come in quite "chunky" as well. Also, on another note, the toggles at the top of the sidebar keep restarting for me in nightly. I keep unchecking most of them since I don't need any Chatbot integrations or anything like that, but the selection doesn't stick.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  Tab Groups is another feature that FF recently prioritized in their roadmap. I would expect it to be integrated with this feature.
philipov 2y ago
How do you nest one tab under another? If you can't, I'll keep using the Tree Style Tab extension instead.
- pantulis 2y ago
  It does not seem to be currently possible. I guess they are working on it, this is just a first step.
mpawelski 2y ago
Vertical tabs are fine, but this seems like catching up up with the other browsers. I wished Firefox had natively supported tabs like in "Tree Style Tab" extensions. The extension is great, but out of the box it breaks some assumptions where the tabs appear and how they behave. I alway have to figure out which option to change after I install it. Having something native and polished would be a huge selling point for Firefox.
BadHumans 2y ago
Their integration looks sloppy compared to Tree Style Tabs but I hope that I can separately disable top side tabs without enabling this because there are already plugins that are superior.
KaiMagnus 2y ago
Found a recent screenshot of it on Reddit. Looks good, I hope it has similar nesting like Tree Style Tab though. In my opinion that is still the best implementation of this idea across all browsers. Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either – but it does have groups and profiles. They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more, so I'm glad they finally found some time to do this. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_found_that_vertical_tabs_are_available/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  The current implementation still leaves in the tab bar at the top at least on Macs. I hope they iron these bugs out before their stable release.
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    The bottom button in the sidebar ("Customize sidebar") allows you to turn off the tab bar at the top.
- jwells89 2y ago
  The unfortunate thing is that Firefox could be the perfect platform for browser UI experimentation if more care were put into making the project easier to fork and reasonable to keep up to date with mainline. A few months ago I played with forking it for my own tinkering but bailed because it seemed likely to turn into a rolling mass of merge conflicts if I were to make anything but minor changes.
  - lofenfew 2y ago
    The truly unfortunate thing is that it was the perfect such platform, then they took it away in the name of security.
  - fabrice_d 2y ago
    Some forks are using a nice patch based system: see how the Zen browser is built for instance (https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/ https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/). I think that's a better model than merging upstream updates into your own branch.
wenc 2y ago
Naive question, why are vertical tabs in the sidebar desirable? I tried TST once but didn’t get why they were bettter than horizontal tabs. I might be missing something.
- knallfrosch 2y ago
  I've got an ultra wide display and more horizontal than vertical space. Also most websites scroll vertically and it feels better to have more in view at the same time. After 600px horizontally, most sites just render white space.
- jwells89 2y ago
  Horizontal tabs become a pain with more than a handful of tabs open, particularly on small screens. Vertical handles any number of tabs gracefully regardless of screen size.
- McScrooge 2y ago
  Screens typically have much more horizontal space but ideal page text width has a limit so the sides end up as unused space. Also tab nesting can be very useful for organization.
- psygn89 2y ago
  You'll find it's usefulness relative to the width/resolution of your screen and the amount of tabs you tend to have open at once.
- asdajksah2123 2y ago
  1. Screens are usually wider than most web pages usefully support. This uses up space that would normally be wasted. 2. Most screens are wider than they're high. This is especially true of laptops. So using vertical space for a horizontal strip really eats into the vertical real estate. 3. Most written scripts are horizontal. As a result, lists are usually arranged vertically. This aligns with how lists in nearly every other context are arranged (how many times have you found a list where the second item is to the right of the first, the third to the right of the second, as opposed to them being on new vertically arranged lines?) 4. Since the text in most languages flow horizontally, it's trivially easy to adjust the width of a vertical tab container to customize how much of the text you want visible. This could range from really wide tab containers so you can see the entire title (which the larger width of monitors makes almost cost free) or you can make it really narrow to only include the icon, or somewhere in between. Arranging tabs horizontally provides no such easy and obvious UI to do such a thing, so you're reduced to either seeing fixed size tabs or icons only, controlled largely by the browser. 5. Again, because of horizontal text, tabs are shorter than they are wide. You can fit a lot more tabs in a vertical tabbar while still displaying their text than you could in a horizontal one.
nixosbestos 2y ago
It's so bad compared to Sideberry. But hey, yet another way to view bookmarks and synced tabs that don't expose actually important functionality. Do they at least have the courage to excise Firefox View or whatever that useless pile was called?
PetitPrince 2y ago
Even if this is catch-up with respect with the other browser, I think that this mean that there would finally be a non-hacky way to disable the tab bar (i.e. a toggle rather than something that on userChrome.css). I'm perfectly happy to have only basic vertical tab functionality on vanilla Firefox and Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry for power users. Presumably there would also be API that makes the life of piro (main dev of TST) and mbnuqw (main dev of Sideberry) easier ?
- ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
  They've already added a toggle to disable horizontal tabs.
deleted 2y ago
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slightwinder 2y ago
Do I understand this correctly that there is no new second sidebar, just the old sidebar, looking slightly different? And the new vertical tabs are just an inferior version of the already existing addons? Are there at least new APIs or bugfixes, so other addons get some benefit from this?
metalliqaz 2y ago
I've been using TreeStyleTab for a long time. Interested to see if this will make it obsolete.
zzzbra 2y ago
And not a single screenshot was provided.
hamdouni 2y ago
I like minimalism so I made ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) and it uses vertical tabs. Maybe time to rework it to use this instead !
- causal 2y ago
  Might have to try this. I've been waiting for browser vendors to realize that users don't get joy from browsers themselves, they want the web-apps that browsers provide access to. If I notice my browser it's probably because the browser messed up. Mobile browsers in particular seem to think it's critical that they take up at least 15% of screen space at all times.
born-jre 2y ago
no tree mode, but good start
TechPlasma 2y ago
I just really want Tab Groups. This is a nice step forward.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  I know that FF says that Tab Groups are on their roadmap but I hope that get to it soon. I'm tired of relying on third-party plugins for that function.
petabit 2y ago
Native vim integration
hamdouni 2y ago
I like minimalism and use ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) to have an uncluttered Firefox interface with optional tabs sidebar. But it still needs many configuration to heavily modify the UI. Hope this new functionality is only the first step making Firefox more flexible !
ochronus 2y ago
Yay, finally! It's not there yet in terms of functionality, but it's a step in the right direction.
kmfrk 2y ago
If you have the Container Tabs add-on, you can also pull up a basic tab sidebar with F2 until this is released in the main version.
deleted 2y ago
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qwerty456127 2y ago
Firefox already has a sidebar and a selection of extensions which put tabs in it, also adding many extra conveniences. For example on the computer I am now using to write this I use Tab Center Reborn which also adds a tab filter field which is very handy.
nullhole 2y ago
This made me think of one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time with browsers: split-pane view. In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group". I frequently arrive at situations where I want to compare the contents of one webpage against the contents of another webpage. So far, the most usable option I've found is to split the 2nd tab off into a new window, then arrange the two windows side-by-side. There is "Side View"[1], but that shows a bare viewport, which makes browsing in the 2nd viewport much more restricted than regular browsing. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firefox-multi-tasking-extension-side-view/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firef...
- Izkata 2y ago
  Back in the XUL days there was an addon that did this. And it wasn't just two, I'm pretty sure you could split arbitrarily deep, both horizontal and vertical. We lost a lot when they abandoned that.
- codazoda 2y ago
  On a Mac I use Rectangle Pro for something similar, snapping my windows next to each other. It's not perfect but it does allow multiple sets of tabs at once.
  - semi-extrinsic 2y ago
    I use yabai on Mac, coming from AwesomeWM on Linux. Never tried Rectangle, any idea how it compares?
    - TylerE 2y ago
      It's not a window manager, but a tool for doing various things to windows triggered by hotkeys.
- jermeh 2y ago
qainsights 2y ago
Great. All I need a native split screen just like in Edge in FF.
- ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
  https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/split-screen-tab-in-tab-feature-view-more-than-one-tab-at-once/idi-p/3989 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/split-screen-tab-in-tab...
Retr0id 2y ago
I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particularly in terms of focus. Now when I'm working on a project, I keep a list of relevant URLs in a text file (i.e. bookmarks but checked into source control). I also use two browser windows, a regular one for "stateful" browsing, and a private-mode one for "stateless" browsing. Quick queries and exploratory research happens in the "stateless" session, with the understanding that I can close any of these tabs (or nuke the whole session) at any time without losing anything important. If I do come across something important, it gets noted down elsewhere.
- hbn 2y ago
  Yeah, I gave an honest shot at using vertical tabs for a few months because it frankly does seem like a more logical use of screen real estate. Web pages don't tend to take up much horizontal space, so you might as well put a bigger list of tabs there where they can all show more text. For one thing I could just never get used to my normal tab-switching shortcuts moving me up and down compared to left and right. And all my other apps with tabs still use horizontal tabs, so I couldn't fully switch over to that model in my head. Additionally the URL is still at the top so it was more work to glance back and forth between the left of my browser for the tab and the URL at the top which in my mind are more "closely linked" for that to make sense. But you also highlighted a good point, the limited space of traditional tabs does keep my organization in check. Once I get around the 20-tab mark and I'm unable to see any text beyond the website's favicon, I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up.
  - PcChip 2y ago
    >I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up. I wish I had your discipline, I just open new browser windows and start more tabs there
dymk 2y ago
Why does an announcement like this not have a screenshot of the feature?
- whycome 2y ago
  Such a glaring oversight that I'm actually wondering if it was intentional. Causes engagement/sharing/spreading of other associated commentary/links on the release?
codazoda 2y ago
I wish that blog post showed a screenshot of these features so that I didn't have to go download the nightly just to see what they look like.
- codazoda 2y ago
  Another user pointed to this screenshot on reddit. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_found_that_vertical_tabs_are_available/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
  - sunaookami 2y ago
    That's modified with a userChrome.css
dietr1ch 2y ago
Nice to see this finally come up, but it's going to take a while until it catches up with Sidebery or even TST
mixmastamyk 2y ago
One thing I like from Tree Tabs that others usually don’t is folders. I find it useful to group and collapse them as needed. Hopefully they’ll add that.
rpozarickij 2y ago
I've just updated my Firefox and I got the options in about:config to enable vertical tabs. sidebar.revamp and sidebar.verticalTabs need to be set to true.
ant6n 2y ago
How about a screenshot.
butz 2y ago
What I find interesting, and hoping it will be integrated in future releases - easy feature toggling from Settings page. Firefox, please, allow me to turn off all the features that I do not use or do not want to clutter my toolbars with. I'll be happy with "opt-out" variant here, but my selected preference must stick and not be reset on next update.
autoexec 2y ago
I never cared about vertical tabs, but I know that this is something that many people have wanted for a very long time. How long has this been actively in the works? Is it just a coincidence that this finally got done only after all the negative press Firefox got following their pivot to becoming an AdTech company which generates revenue through the constant surveillance of its users?
- ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
  The meta bug was created 3 months ago: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894060 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894060
emsign 2y ago
I wish Firefox was like Vivaldi so I can switch from the Chrome based browser.
edallme 2y ago
I wish it supported using the mouse wheel to move between tabs, like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab-mouse-wheel/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
stiltzkin 2y ago
I remember old Opera had a sidebar and vertical tabs (same as current Vivaldi). Opera was always way ahead of UX of all browsers.
- sunaookami 2y ago
  I still miss Opera Presto. It was so ahead of everyone and after 10 years no other browser can compete with it (UI-wise).
vladvasiliu 2y ago
How about an option to disable tabs altogether and use a "one-tab-window" instead? Like we used to have before. I already have a WM able to handle this. I don't need another level of window management with its own logic and shortcuts.
- dmichulke 2y ago
  There's a setting "Open links in tabs instead of new windows" which should help your use case
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    You'd think so. I did, too. But it doesn't work well enough. Even Firefox's own UI doesn't honor it: for example, the settings open in a tab even though that box is unticked.
nattaylor 2y ago
On Chrome, I solve my too-many-tab issues with an extension [0] that closes the LRU tab once a threshold is reached (10 for me). I find the tabs I need are open and wide enough, and the tabs that autoclose were not useful anymore. About once a month I'm doing a research task where I actually want many tabs and I turn it off temporarily. [0] - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghjbdjmnknknlnbobcblfcnma?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghj...
- ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
  Firefox equivalents: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/auto-close-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/auto-close-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/limit-active-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/limit-active-tabs/
whycome 2y ago
Cool. But dammit why aren't tabs more modifiable. I want to rename them. I want to assign an icon. I am okay if a tab takes up two vertical lines to make it entirely readable. There was an element of something really useful in MS 'Metro' UI -- just the fact that there could be variations in size of target/icon/links. I currently 'pin' my mail and notes tab. These exist as specific functional tabs -- let me style them a bit differently or something.
- ssernikk 2y ago
  Why don't you use bookmarks?
crossroadsguy 2y ago
Someone who had once reached maybe regular 3 digit number of tabs to barely 10 often I now understand that browser and tab power-use is having as few tabs possible. It's like Inbox Zero thing for me, minus the fad angle.
FeepingCreature 2y ago
Tab Mix Plus remains unsurpassed.
dsp_person 2y ago
On version 129 I've been playing with the CSS to make the tabs wider and thinner. Because of some code in tabbrowser.js I couldn't work around with css, it needs user_pref("ui.prefersReducedMotion", 1) for changing max width to not break tab closing. https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a2c11f5753b7920d7 https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a... screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fnative-vertical-tabs-increase-max-width-v0-lq43mlpf5fhd1.png%3Fwidth%3D365%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Def03c5a6bdcf2e482e4be83bab3f0383457061ef https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
lepetitchef 2y ago
Vertical tab: this is the 1st in my wishlist. I switched to Vivaldi before because of this. Can't wait to try it out.
- sweeter 2y ago
  I don't understand this. Sideberry is literally 1:1 feature parity and had existed for 5 years. Whereas this is not the 'tab grouping' that they promised and have been talking about for 3 years. This is a massive disappointment.
sweeter 2y ago
Sigh... No, Mozilla, this is not what we wanted. We already have 500 sidebar tab extensions. We wanted horizontal tab groupings. It's not that unreasonable. I've been following this issue for 3 years now and this is what they cough out? I'm over it. I'm moving on. So frustrating.
- speff 2y ago
  Counterpoint - I wanted a native implementation of vertical tabs. Sidebery's fine, but it feels like an extension rather than something properly built in.
sealor 2y ago
I recently fixed a Firefox bug to allow easier tab management in FF extensions. My hope is that extensions like Tree Style Tab or Sidebery benefit from my improvements. I love them! Title: Updated openerTabId is not notified via tabs.onUpdated if it is changed by tabs.update() https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767
diimdeep 2y ago
I just tried it, and it is not worth it, it just shows flat column of favicons without titles, it is better to install TreeStyleTab and disable OS window titlebar like this https://i.imgur.com/jnEXiPU.png https://i.imgur.com/jnEXiPU.png so address bar in custom titlebar height is only 34px. I hate material design that still echoes useless whitespace everywhere. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...
paddy_m 2y ago
I love the mozilla UI for restoring all tabs after a crash. I wish I could see that regularly.
td540 2y ago
Why don’t they lay out browser tabs the full width of the window in a vertical accordion so long webpage titles (usually containing more than 100's of characters) can be completely visible at glance?
russellbeattie 2y ago
For some reason, I just remembered that OS/2 put window tabs on the side. Though looking at a screenshot now [1], I didn't remember it was done in a skeuomorphic, 3D way, which definitely takes away from their usefulness. Still, what's old is new again. 1. https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/images/os_2.gif https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/ima...
Night_Thastus 2y ago
Some pictures of it might be nice! :)
dev1ycan 2y ago
Pretty terrible compared to edge, with edge you can hide the top bar if you're using vertical tabs, which actually make it fit a purpose, you have more horizontal space, but you can't with firefox, they also don't show labels
rubytubido 2y ago
Good step, but still far away from vivaldi in terms of customization without installation of different plugins
Croftengea 2y ago
For me, the killer feature in vertical tab extensions (STG, Sidebery) is the ability to distribute tabs in groups by URLs automatically. I wonder if FF is going to support this natively.
Slix 2y ago
Microsoft Edge has had this for some time. I was surprised, but Edge is pretty modern.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
Just tried it. Using it as I type. Works and looks very well already! Can be both expanded or no text and with the Nightly preview feature it is very usable.
solarkraft 2y ago
I was going to praise Firefox for doing something good for once, but I checked it out to be sure. Good thing I did. - The tabs aren’t tree-style (this is the main reason to use vertical tabs in the first place) - The space on the top isn’t reclaimed (this would be the USP over just using Sidebery) - It’s nice (or, not really) to see that Sidebery sometimes not opening isn’t actually a Sidebery bug, but a Firefox bug that affects every sidebar user. I experienced it within the first minute and needed to restart the browser. Knowing the project there’s probably been a bug on it that hasn’t been worked on for a decade. They badly need to fix so much before thinking about new features.
lofaszvanitt 2y ago
The future has arrived. Firefox delivered another feature nobody asked for. Great, keep going, the future is bright.
- frosting1337 2y ago
  I'm glad they released it, I like vertical tabs.
- striking 2y ago
  https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ is pretty popular, but alright.
  - lofaszvanitt 2y ago
    An even better future. Truly.
Shadowed_ 2y ago
I don't care much about vertical tabs but what I want from tabs is automatic grouping by site. I'm surprised nobody made this. I know there are extension supporting grouping but i have never seen any that automatically groups by website.
- nozzlegear 2y ago
  It's probably not helpful to you since it's a different browser, but Safari has this. Right click on any tab in its vertical tabs list and choose Arrange Tabs By -> Website.
collinvandyck76 2y ago
I really really want this to be a part of firefox, but they should have waited to blog about it until it spent a litle more time in the oven. First impressions were not great, on a number of fronts: - i could not for the life of me get the tabs to be anything other than the favicons. i tried the suggestion to show sidebar, but that option was not available. - toggling the setting resulted in duplicate menu bar entries that didn't make sense (macos) I know how these things go. It's always gritty when things start, and it's nightly, but the post about it got my hopes up and what I played around with was not that usable at all. Will definitely wait patiently for this to come together, and I'm really grateful that it seems to be happening.
- grounder 2y ago
  The button next to the refresh button is what makes the side bar show wider tabs (Icon, title, close button). It took me way too long to figure that out.
  - collinvandyck76 2y ago
    sitting right in front of me the whole time. thanks.
ochronus 2y ago
I'd love to use Firefox, but I've been missing three (subjectively, for me) important features: 1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!) 2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style) 3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?
- schmorptron 2y ago
  aren't workspaces the same as containers? when I right click the new tab icon in firefox it gives me an option to open them in work, personal, banking, etc or to create a new container 3 is also built in, called firefox sync. You can open any tab from any device on another one and send tab(s) to other devices
  - ap-andersson 2y ago
    Sometimes I really wish that firefox sync was a bit smarter. The sorting seems so random sometimes and there is no grouping per window or anything. So when looking to open a tab when the computer has 5 windows with ~5-20 tabs per window open and they appear in a random order it can get very frustrating. Also sometimes when sending specific tabs to my tablet or phone on android there is no notification, even if the app is open. Then I have to open the sync settings and manually press "Sync now" to trigger the notifications.
  - ochronus 2y ago
    For the containers vs. workspaces - I was sloppy with the term, what I meant is different "views" which include sets of tabs. One slight difference is that containers give you a clean slate for each (as in, if you're logged in to a site in container one, you need to re-login in container 2). In any case, it's a good enough solution for me, thanks for the heads up! "opening any tab on another device" is not what I'm looking for, though - I want to restore entire wokspaces/tab groups/containers across instances, not one by one, then arrange them again into containers.
- ap-andersson 2y ago
  #3 There is an extension that lets you save and sync either all tabs or a certain window and restore wherever. Not exactly what you are looking for I think, but its very useful for me. I believe that Google had something similar back in the day as an extension to Chrome but removed it. Great when I am troubleshooting something at work and when done still want the 20+ pages saved for later reference but not open. Or when I am planning for the weekend or researching a product at work during lunch and want to open a bunch of tabs at home later. https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager
da_rob 2y ago
Screenshot: https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy Happy that this will finally be a feature of FF. Still pretty useless for me, though, for these reasons: - There's an empty tab bar shown at the top of the window. - Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.
- tomduncalf 2y ago
  > Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too. I think this is a bug, I had the same issue but then went to "Customize Sidebar" and toggled "Sidebar settings" to "Always show" and now I see titles, regardless of which sidebar show setting I have
  - da_rob 2y ago
    That did the trick, thank you!
Arech 2y ago
A mandatory comment of the single most important tabs related feature, called "Simple tab groups" extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr... The rest IMO is just nice to have.
replete 2y ago
I tried it out and it seems clear that vertical tabs without titles create too much friction for daily driving a browser where you have many tabs open, hover thumbnails or not. For a few years I have thought that Firefox could gain market share by doing more with the browser UI, steal a few ideas from Arc Browser for instance. There's a lot of value to be added in the UI for sure. Asking users what they want and then building it ends up with solutions like these. I really hope this gets a lot more iteration before landing in stable. I currently use SlidePad on Mac which allows touching the left side of the screen to pop out a vertically tabbed browser, for IMs and most used AI chat but would rather keep everything in Firefox with some kind of panel system. I think most of us have pinned tabs for communication channels, email, socials, etc. Vertical tabs on left with titles works if you can also configure a useful slide out panel on right, mixing the two feels odd to me. But really good to see something happening finally, so good news overall.
- ehaughee 2y ago
  I had the same issue but it turns out you can expand them to show the titles by clicking the "side bar" button that, for me, was left of my address bar. Odd default but this is in a nightly release and others have already provided feedback to them on this.
graynk 2y ago
Really glad to see native support for this being worked on, however in its current state it's unusable for me and I'll continue using Sideberry. I constantly use tab grouping and I want to see at a glance what the tab is about, so having text title be visible is a must - having just favicons won't cut it when I have 20 GitHub and 10 StackOverflow links open. UPD: I saw that there's a way to enable text titles - that's much better. Still, without grouping it would be too painful to use for me.
lillecarl 2y ago
I can't imagine a proper keybinding subsystem coming any time soon, but it's hard not to wish. Patching omni.ja sucks
ycombinator_acc 2y ago
I wish they'd gone with [Compact Tabs] a-la Safari instead of Vertical Tabs a-la Edge. A unified tab and address bar is just so much more elegant and versatile. After switching back from MacOS to Windows, it's only thing I truly miss. Vertical tabs just seem like a transitional step. [Compact Tabs]: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Screen-Shot-2021-06-07-at-2.33.05-PM.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Scree...
beretguy 2y ago
I’d rather have tab groups.
mvdwoord 2y ago
I tried this but unfortunately you do not gain any vertical space as the tab bar is still in use as window title bar (or whatever the proper names are for this). The vertical tab bar is also fixed width (!) and to top it off, after testing nightly for an hour, I closed and reopened the browser and my pinned tabs were gone. I will wait until they figured this out properly. I know it's "nightly" and "labs" so not a complaint per se, but an observation.
k_bx 2y ago
As a happy Tree Style Tabs user, this is wonderful. I'm using it together with containers for 8 different accounts I have registered for different Google accs, keeping them open all the time. Firefox is a great "co-pilot" browser in this regard.

634 points by ReadCarlBarks 2y ago

Looks cool, enter key in GPT prompt box not working...

A screenshot of how it looks would have been helpful. I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/

gkoberger 2y ago
Maybe (probably?), but back when I worked at Mozilla in ~2010 "Tree Style Tabs" was one of the most popular add-ons. Here's a screenshot of what the feature looks like: https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-in-firefox-now/ https://www.ghacks.net/2024/06/25/you-can-try-vertical-tabs-...
- tapoxi 2y ago
  They unfortunately ruined TST with the switch to WebExtensions because it could no longer replace the top tab bar. There were hacks you could do by modifying something in your Firefox profile directory. Bizarre to me that they didn't take TST's popularity as a hint of supporting vertical tabs as a native feature until almost 7 years later.
  - knallfrosch 2y ago
    Compared to pushing and implementing CSS, JS and HTML standards, cryptography, APIs, mobile OS release cycles etc, I've always wondered whether vertical tabs would've been an easy win.
  - gkoberger 2y ago
    Yeah, I remember it being a huge internal argument against WebExtensions at the time. (But, security + easy of building + compatibility + speed of developing Firefox + a bunch of other things made the switch off XUL the right choice)
  - reginald78 2y ago
    I want to say they actually put some work in to allow TST to still work when they transitioned to quantum as it was a popular extension. I got the impression they were eventually going to add back in the horizontal tab bar disable as well but if that was even true they clearly forgot about it. I've been using the userChrome hacks for close to 7 years now.
pantulis 2y ago
It seems they took a cue from Arc for the pinned tabs icons. Now they only need to add tab groups a la Tab Stash, Sideberry or Tree Style Tab, and combine that with Sync. Still a lot of work ahead, but this looks very promising. Kudos to the Firefox team.
- mintplant 2y ago
  Firefox for Android already has "Collections" of tabs. Maybe a starting point?
doix 2y ago
> I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ It's funny how we've gone full cycle. Early versions of Firefox get vertical tabs because the plugin system is very rich and you could do whatever you wanted with XUL. Firefox quantum comes around and kills XUL based extensions, vertical tabs are dead. Arc revives an ancient idea as something new and hip, firefox "responds" by reviving the very thing they killed.
- radlad 2y ago
  AFAIK, Tree Style Tab still exists? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
  - rkangel 2y ago
    It does, but you have to have some custom CSS to turn off the normal horizontal tabs, and you have to go and enable some options in about:config to even have custom CSS. I've got something that works reasonably well, but it's really hard to have CSS that always works correctly.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    The original XUL-based vertical tabs actually moved and restyled Firefox's native tabs, instead of creating a lookalike (which is all that's possible now). This meant that unrelated addons that did things like grey-out unloaded tabs, or alter the favicons to have some sort of indicator, still worked on the vertical tabs. The current vertical tabs addons all have to do it themselves or add some sort of API for the other addons to interact with to get the same effect.
- thro1 2y ago
  > the plugin system is very rich - like mplayer or vlc plugins to play every video format independently of browsers licence - right ? > you could do whatever you wanted with XUL - except undoing it (restartless extensions) - but you could do better without it anyway.. (XBL was to powerfull idea ;) .. except since you couldn't hook in early enough to replace some XPCOM pieces before they are cached.. anymore.. RIP Firefox.
Y_Y 2y ago
I use Edge for work and the vertical tabs with grouping works really nicely. On the other hand Arc's website made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Unfortunately it does indeed seem like that's what Firefox wants to ape.
causal 2y ago
Hadn't heard of Arc, went to download it just now, and...it requires an account to use? Really? Browser UIs have barely evolved in the past decade so I guess I'm excited that Firefox is trying something new.
thisisabore 2y ago
I would imagine a minor browser would be less of an influence than the fact that most browsers have vertical tabs as an option at this point, or even just the slew of add-ons for Firefox itself.
abhinavk 2y ago
Edge and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Arc even existed. Firefox also had it via an extension.
- cywick 2y ago
  ...and Vivaldi had vertical tabs as native functionality before Edge even existed (and about six years before Edge implemented it). The only other browser (to my knowledge) that had native tabs earlier than Vivaldi was the original Opera browser, which was eventually killed, which in turn led to people leaving the company and creating Vivaldi.
  - effdee 2y ago
    I still miss the flexibility of the originals Opera's UI. As well as the built-in email client. https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P https://imgur.com/a/HWaxm0P (from 2009)
heraldgeezer 2y ago
>I guess this is in response to Arc browsers design. https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ What age are you? How long have you been using computers? Sorry to be this blunt, but I am asking as Firefox has had addons for vertical tabs for a long time. Vivaldi, Edge, Brave all have vertical tabs. Opera Presto was first. Why even mention this Arc? I feel like you just jumped on some hype train and you have been using Google Chrome and just recently found out about vertical tabs. Good for you but it is not a new development.

osbulbul 2y ago

I wish all browsers has first class vertical tabs support and split view. I am really tired of resource hog, unstable arc. Want to return back to traditional browsers but they are not supporting vertical tabs like arc did. And arc turn its face to AI instead of stability (I guess) because of investors. So we are lonely in the dark :)

ss48 2y ago
You could check out Vivaldi. The split view is pretty robust. The Vertical tabs can be on left or right, and allow one level of tab grouping.
- osbulbul 2y ago
  I think I only didn't try Vivaldi :) thanks, I will definitely look
- dustincoates 2y ago
  I really, really want to like Vivaldi, but it's just so slow for me on Windows. It has a similar problem on Linux, though a restart a few times a day solves it.
  - eviks 2y ago
    Yeah, performance is its biggest downside. Is it slow with a fresh profile? It can become suprisingly slow as session files grow, but cleaning it can revert some of that
    - ss48 2y ago
      Yeah. I found out that a Tabs > Memory Saver setting was disabled. Once I enabled that, the performance improved somewhat.
deleted 2y ago
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sccxy 2y ago

bloopernova 2y ago

Not in the developer/beta edition yet. I'm concerned it will conflict with Tree Style Tabs, and/or my custom UI CSS. But it will be very nice to bring more folks into the Vertical Tabs Cult ;)

quibono 2y ago

Just my personal 2c. I've long been a big fan of Sidebery for vertical tab management, so I was expecting something closer to that than what I got. The vertical tab view does work, although it seems pretty basic. E.g. there's no way to group any of the tabs or modify the display style. By default the tabs come in quite "chunky" as well. Also, on another note, the toggles at the top of the sidebar keep restarting for me in nightly. I keep unchecking most of them since I don't need any Chatbot integrations or anything like that, but the selection doesn't stick.

Tagbert 2y ago
Tab Groups is another feature that FF recently prioritized in their roadmap. I would expect it to be integrated with this feature.

philipov 2y ago

How do you nest one tab under another? If you can't, I'll keep using the Tree Style Tab extension instead.

pantulis 2y ago
It does not seem to be currently possible. I guess they are working on it, this is just a first step.

mpawelski 2y ago

Vertical tabs are fine, but this seems like catching up up with the other browsers. I wished Firefox had natively supported tabs like in "Tree Style Tab" extensions. The extension is great, but out of the box it breaks some assumptions where the tabs appear and how they behave. I alway have to figure out which option to change after I install it. Having something native and polished would be a huge selling point for Firefox.

BadHumans 2y ago

Their integration looks sloppy compared to Tree Style Tabs but I hope that I can separately disable top side tabs without enabling this because there are already plugins that are superior.

KaiMagnus 2y ago

Found a recent screenshot of it on Reddit. Looks good, I hope it has similar nesting like Tree Style Tab though. In my opinion that is still the best implementation of this idea across all browsers. Firefox' UI has kinda stagnated. It's not like other browsers are far ahead – Chrome doesn't have vertical tabs either – but it does have groups and profiles. They really need to get out of this stale and boring state and innovate more, so I'm glad they finally found some time to do this. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_found_that_vertical_tabs_are_available/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
The current implementation still leaves in the tab bar at the top at least on Macs. I hope they iron these bugs out before their stable release.
- Vinnl 2y ago
  The bottom button in the sidebar ("Customize sidebar") allows you to turn off the tab bar at the top.
jwells89 2y ago
The unfortunate thing is that Firefox could be the perfect platform for browser UI experimentation if more care were put into making the project easier to fork and reasonable to keep up to date with mainline. A few months ago I played with forking it for my own tinkering but bailed because it seemed likely to turn into a rolling mass of merge conflicts if I were to make anything but minor changes.
- lofenfew 2y ago
  The truly unfortunate thing is that it was the perfect such platform, then they took it away in the name of security.
- fabrice_d 2y ago
  Some forks are using a nice patch based system: see how the Zen browser is built for instance (https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/ https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/). I think that's a better model than merging upstream updates into your own branch.

wenc 2y ago

Naive question, why are vertical tabs in the sidebar desirable? I tried TST once but didn’t get why they were bettter than horizontal tabs. I might be missing something.

knallfrosch 2y ago
I've got an ultra wide display and more horizontal than vertical space. Also most websites scroll vertically and it feels better to have more in view at the same time. After 600px horizontally, most sites just render white space.
jwells89 2y ago
Horizontal tabs become a pain with more than a handful of tabs open, particularly on small screens. Vertical handles any number of tabs gracefully regardless of screen size.
McScrooge 2y ago
Screens typically have much more horizontal space but ideal page text width has a limit so the sides end up as unused space. Also tab nesting can be very useful for organization.
psygn89 2y ago
You'll find it's usefulness relative to the width/resolution of your screen and the amount of tabs you tend to have open at once.
asdajksah2123 2y ago
1. Screens are usually wider than most web pages usefully support. This uses up space that would normally be wasted. 2. Most screens are wider than they're high. This is especially true of laptops. So using vertical space for a horizontal strip really eats into the vertical real estate. 3. Most written scripts are horizontal. As a result, lists are usually arranged vertically. This aligns with how lists in nearly every other context are arranged (how many times have you found a list where the second item is to the right of the first, the third to the right of the second, as opposed to them being on new vertically arranged lines?) 4. Since the text in most languages flow horizontally, it's trivially easy to adjust the width of a vertical tab container to customize how much of the text you want visible. This could range from really wide tab containers so you can see the entire title (which the larger width of monitors makes almost cost free) or you can make it really narrow to only include the icon, or somewhere in between. Arranging tabs horizontally provides no such easy and obvious UI to do such a thing, so you're reduced to either seeing fixed size tabs or icons only, controlled largely by the browser. 5. Again, because of horizontal text, tabs are shorter than they are wide. You can fit a lot more tabs in a vertical tabbar while still displaying their text than you could in a horizontal one.

nixosbestos 2y ago

It's so bad compared to Sideberry. But hey, yet another way to view bookmarks and synced tabs that don't expose actually important functionality. Do they at least have the courage to excise Firefox View or whatever that useless pile was called?

PetitPrince 2y ago

Even if this is catch-up with respect with the other browser, I think that this mean that there would finally be a non-hacky way to disable the tab bar (i.e. a toggle rather than something that on userChrome.css). I'm perfectly happy to have only basic vertical tab functionality on vanilla Firefox and Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry for power users. Presumably there would also be API that makes the life of piro (main dev of TST) and mbnuqw (main dev of Sideberry) easier ?

ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
They've already added a toggle to disable horizontal tabs.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

slightwinder 2y ago

Do I understand this correctly that there is no new second sidebar, just the old sidebar, looking slightly different? And the new vertical tabs are just an inferior version of the already existing addons? Are there at least new APIs or bugfixes, so other addons get some benefit from this?

metalliqaz 2y ago

I've been using TreeStyleTab for a long time. Interested to see if this will make it obsolete.

zzzbra 2y ago

And not a single screenshot was provided.

hamdouni 2y ago

I like minimalism so I made ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) and it uses vertical tabs. Maybe time to rework it to use this instead !

causal 2y ago
Might have to try this. I've been waiting for browser vendors to realize that users don't get joy from browsers themselves, they want the web-apps that browsers provide access to. If I notice my browser it's probably because the browser messed up. Mobile browsers in particular seem to think it's critical that they take up at least 15% of screen space at all times.

born-jre 2y ago

no tree mode, but good start

TechPlasma 2y ago

I just really want Tab Groups. This is a nice step forward.

Tagbert 2y ago
I know that FF says that Tab Groups are on their roadmap but I hope that get to it soon. I'm tired of relying on third-party plugins for that function.

petabit 2y ago

Native vim integration

hamdouni 2y ago

I like minimalism and use ZenFox (an ArcFox extension fork) to have an uncluttered Firefox interface with optional tabs sidebar. But it still needs many configuration to heavily modify the UI. Hope this new functionality is only the first step making Firefox more flexible !

ochronus 2y ago

Yay, finally! It's not there yet in terms of functionality, but it's a step in the right direction.

kmfrk 2y ago

If you have the Container Tabs add-on, you can also pull up a basic tab sidebar with F2 until this is released in the main version.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

qwerty456127 2y ago

Firefox already has a sidebar and a selection of extensions which put tabs in it, also adding many extra conveniences. For example on the computer I am now using to write this I use Tab Center Reborn which also adds a tab filter field which is very handy.

nullhole 2y ago

This made me think of one thing that I've wanted to see for a long time with browsers: split-pane view. In other words, the ability to see two browser sessions, side-by-side, with a vertical split between them. Two viewports, each with their group of tabs. The same type of view you can get in, for example, Notepad++ with its "Tab>Move to Other View", or Visual Studio's "Tab>New Vertical Document Group". I frequently arrive at situations where I want to compare the contents of one webpage against the contents of another webpage. So far, the most usable option I've found is to split the 2nd tab off into a new window, then arrange the two windows side-by-side. There is "Side View"[1], but that shows a bare viewport, which makes browsing in the 2nd viewport much more restricted than regular browsing. [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firefox-multi-tasking-extension-side-view/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/its-a-new-firef...

Izkata 2y ago
Back in the XUL days there was an addon that did this. And it wasn't just two, I'm pretty sure you could split arbitrarily deep, both horizontal and vertical. We lost a lot when they abandoned that.
codazoda 2y ago
On a Mac I use Rectangle Pro for something similar, snapping my windows next to each other. It's not perfect but it does allow multiple sets of tabs at once.
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago
  I use yabai on Mac, coming from AwesomeWM on Linux. Never tried Rectangle, any idea how it compares?
  - TylerE 2y ago
    It's not a window manager, but a tool for doing various things to windows triggered by hotkeys.
jermeh 2y ago

qainsights 2y ago

Great. All I need a native split screen just like in Edge in FF.

ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/split-screen-tab-in-tab-feature-view-more-than-one-tab-at-once/idi-p/3989 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/split-screen-tab-in-tab...

Retr0id 2y ago

I used to be a tree-style-tabs power user but at some point I went back to regular tabs. I find that the amount of horizontal tab space is pretty close to the actual number of things I can usefully have open at once. Seeing the tabs get "squished" is my reminder to close the ones I no longer need. I was using the tab-state as a sort of short-term working memory and I don't think it was doing me any favours, particularly in terms of focus. Now when I'm working on a project, I keep a list of relevant URLs in a text file (i.e. bookmarks but checked into source control). I also use two browser windows, a regular one for "stateful" browsing, and a private-mode one for "stateless" browsing. Quick queries and exploratory research happens in the "stateless" session, with the understanding that I can close any of these tabs (or nuke the whole session) at any time without losing anything important. If I do come across something important, it gets noted down elsewhere.

hbn 2y ago
Yeah, I gave an honest shot at using vertical tabs for a few months because it frankly does seem like a more logical use of screen real estate. Web pages don't tend to take up much horizontal space, so you might as well put a bigger list of tabs there where they can all show more text. For one thing I could just never get used to my normal tab-switching shortcuts moving me up and down compared to left and right. And all my other apps with tabs still use horizontal tabs, so I couldn't fully switch over to that model in my head. Additionally the URL is still at the top so it was more work to glance back and forth between the left of my browser for the tab and the URL at the top which in my mind are more "closely linked" for that to make sense. But you also highlighted a good point, the limited space of traditional tabs does keep my organization in check. Once I get around the 20-tab mark and I'm unable to see any text beyond the website's favicon, I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up.
- PcChip 2y ago
  >I start feeling dirty and it gives me some incentive to clean up. I wish I had your discipline, I just open new browser windows and start more tabs there

dymk 2y ago

Why does an announcement like this not have a screenshot of the feature?

whycome 2y ago
Such a glaring oversight that I'm actually wondering if it was intentional. Causes engagement/sharing/spreading of other associated commentary/links on the release?

codazoda 2y ago

I wish that blog post showed a screenshot of these features so that I didn't have to go download the nightly just to see what they look like.

codazoda 2y ago
Another user pointed to this screenshot on reddit. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_found_that_vertical_tabs_are_available/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1emmfvb/ive_just_f...
- sunaookami 2y ago
  That's modified with a userChrome.css

dietr1ch 2y ago

Nice to see this finally come up, but it's going to take a while until it catches up with Sidebery or even TST

mixmastamyk 2y ago

One thing I like from Tree Tabs that others usually don’t is folders. I find it useful to group and collapse them as needed. Hopefully they’ll add that.

rpozarickij 2y ago

I've just updated my Firefox and I got the options in about:config to enable vertical tabs. sidebar.revamp and sidebar.verticalTabs need to be set to true.

ant6n 2y ago

How about a screenshot.

butz 2y ago

What I find interesting, and hoping it will be integrated in future releases - easy feature toggling from Settings page. Firefox, please, allow me to turn off all the features that I do not use or do not want to clutter my toolbars with. I'll be happy with "opt-out" variant here, but my selected preference must stick and not be reset on next update.

autoexec 2y ago

I never cared about vertical tabs, but I know that this is something that many people have wanted for a very long time. How long has this been actively in the works? Is it just a coincidence that this finally got done only after all the negative press Firefox got following their pivot to becoming an AdTech company which generates revenue through the constant surveillance of its users?

ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
The meta bug was created 3 months ago: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894060 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1894060

emsign 2y ago

I wish Firefox was like Vivaldi so I can switch from the Chrome based browser.

edallme 2y ago

I wish it supported using the mouse wheel to move between tabs, like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab-mouse-wheel/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

stiltzkin 2y ago

I remember old Opera had a sidebar and vertical tabs (same as current Vivaldi). Opera was always way ahead of UX of all browsers.

sunaookami 2y ago
I still miss Opera Presto. It was so ahead of everyone and after 10 years no other browser can compete with it (UI-wise).

vladvasiliu 2y ago

How about an option to disable tabs altogether and use a "one-tab-window" instead? Like we used to have before. I already have a WM able to handle this. I don't need another level of window management with its own logic and shortcuts.

dmichulke 2y ago
There's a setting "Open links in tabs instead of new windows" which should help your use case
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  You'd think so. I did, too. But it doesn't work well enough. Even Firefox's own UI doesn't honor it: for example, the settings open in a tab even though that box is unticked.

nattaylor 2y ago

On Chrome, I solve my too-many-tab issues with an extension [0] that closes the LRU tab once a threshold is reached (10 for me). I find the tabs I need are open and wide enough, and the tabs that autoclose were not useful anymore. About once a month I'm doing a research task where I actually want many tabs and I turn it off temporarily. [0] - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghjbdjmnknknlnbobcblfcnma?hl=en https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/max-tabs/ghhcibaghj...

ReadCarlBarks 2y ago
Firefox equivalents: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/auto-close-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/auto-close-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/limit-active-tabs/ https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/limit-active-tabs/

whycome 2y ago

Cool. But dammit why aren't tabs more modifiable. I want to rename them. I want to assign an icon. I am okay if a tab takes up two vertical lines to make it entirely readable. There was an element of something really useful in MS 'Metro' UI -- just the fact that there could be variations in size of target/icon/links. I currently 'pin' my mail and notes tab. These exist as specific functional tabs -- let me style them a bit differently or something.

ssernikk 2y ago
Why don't you use bookmarks?

crossroadsguy 2y ago

Someone who had once reached maybe regular 3 digit number of tabs to barely 10 often I now understand that browser and tab power-use is having as few tabs possible. It's like Inbox Zero thing for me, minus the fad angle.

FeepingCreature 2y ago

Tab Mix Plus remains unsurpassed.

dsp_person 2y ago

On version 129 I've been playing with the CSS to make the tabs wider and thinner. Because of some code in tabbrowser.js I couldn't work around with css, it needs user_pref("ui.prefersReducedMotion", 1) for changing max width to not break tab closing. https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a2c11f5753b7920d7 https://gist.github.com/digitalsignalperson/7e5d4a44fbd7427a... screenshot: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fnative-vertical-tabs-increase-max-width-v0-lq43mlpf5fhd1.png%3Fwidth%3D365%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Def03c5a6bdcf2e482e4be83bab3f0383457061ef https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....

lepetitchef 2y ago

Vertical tab: this is the 1st in my wishlist. I switched to Vivaldi before because of this. Can't wait to try it out.

sweeter 2y ago
I don't understand this. Sideberry is literally 1:1 feature parity and had existed for 5 years. Whereas this is not the 'tab grouping' that they promised and have been talking about for 3 years. This is a massive disappointment.

sweeter 2y ago

Sigh... No, Mozilla, this is not what we wanted. We already have 500 sidebar tab extensions. We wanted horizontal tab groupings. It's not that unreasonable. I've been following this issue for 3 years now and this is what they cough out? I'm over it. I'm moving on. So frustrating.

speff 2y ago
Counterpoint - I wanted a native implementation of vertical tabs. Sidebery's fine, but it feels like an extension rather than something properly built in.

sealor 2y ago

I recently fixed a Firefox bug to allow easier tab management in FF extensions. My hope is that extensions like Tree Style Tab or Sidebery benefit from my improvements. I love them! Title: Updated openerTabId is not notified via tabs.onUpdated if it is changed by tabs.update() https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1409262 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767 https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D164982#7511767

diimdeep 2y ago

I just tried it, and it is not worth it, it just shows flat column of favicons without titles, it is better to install TreeStyleTab and disable OS window titlebar like this https://i.imgur.com/jnEXiPU.png https://i.imgur.com/jnEXiPU.png so address bar in custom titlebar height is only 34px. I hate material design that still echoes useless whitespace everywhere. https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-for-custom-style-rules https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...

paddy_m 2y ago

I love the mozilla UI for restoring all tabs after a crash. I wish I could see that regularly.

td540 2y ago

Why don’t they lay out browser tabs the full width of the window in a vertical accordion so long webpage titles (usually containing more than 100's of characters) can be completely visible at glance?

russellbeattie 2y ago

For some reason, I just remembered that OS/2 put window tabs on the side. Though looking at a screenshot now [1], I didn't remember it was done in a skeuomorphic, 3D way, which definitely takes away from their usefulness. Still, what's old is new again. 1. https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/images/os_2.gif https://files.support.epson.com/htmldocs/c82422/c82422rf/ima...

Night_Thastus 2y ago

Some pictures of it might be nice! :)

dev1ycan 2y ago

Pretty terrible compared to edge, with edge you can hide the top bar if you're using vertical tabs, which actually make it fit a purpose, you have more horizontal space, but you can't with firefox, they also don't show labels

rubytubido 2y ago

Good step, but still far away from vivaldi in terms of customization without installation of different plugins

Croftengea 2y ago

For me, the killer feature in vertical tab extensions (STG, Sidebery) is the ability to distribute tabs in groups by URLs automatically. I wonder if FF is going to support this natively.

Slix 2y ago

Microsoft Edge has had this for some time. I was surprised, but Edge is pretty modern.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

Just tried it. Using it as I type. Works and looks very well already! Can be both expanded or no text and with the Nightly preview feature it is very usable.

solarkraft 2y ago

I was going to praise Firefox for doing something good for once, but I checked it out to be sure. Good thing I did. - The tabs aren’t tree-style (this is the main reason to use vertical tabs in the first place) - The space on the top isn’t reclaimed (this would be the USP over just using Sidebery) - It’s nice (or, not really) to see that Sidebery sometimes not opening isn’t actually a Sidebery bug, but a Firefox bug that affects every sidebar user. I experienced it within the first minute and needed to restart the browser. Knowing the project there’s probably been a bug on it that hasn’t been worked on for a decade. They badly need to fix so much before thinking about new features.

lofaszvanitt 2y ago

The future has arrived. Firefox delivered another feature nobody asked for. Great, keep going, the future is bright.

frosting1337 2y ago
I'm glad they released it, I like vertical tabs.
striking 2y ago
https://arc.net/ https://arc.net/ is pretty popular, but alright.
- lofaszvanitt 2y ago
  An even better future. Truly.

Shadowed_ 2y ago

I don't care much about vertical tabs but what I want from tabs is automatic grouping by site. I'm surprised nobody made this. I know there are extension supporting grouping but i have never seen any that automatically groups by website.

nozzlegear 2y ago
It's probably not helpful to you since it's a different browser, but Safari has this. Right click on any tab in its vertical tabs list and choose Arrange Tabs By -> Website.

collinvandyck76 2y ago

I really really want this to be a part of firefox, but they should have waited to blog about it until it spent a litle more time in the oven. First impressions were not great, on a number of fronts: - i could not for the life of me get the tabs to be anything other than the favicons. i tried the suggestion to show sidebar, but that option was not available. - toggling the setting resulted in duplicate menu bar entries that didn't make sense (macos) I know how these things go. It's always gritty when things start, and it's nightly, but the post about it got my hopes up and what I played around with was not that usable at all. Will definitely wait patiently for this to come together, and I'm really grateful that it seems to be happening.

grounder 2y ago
The button next to the refresh button is what makes the side bar show wider tabs (Icon, title, close button). It took me way too long to figure that out.
- collinvandyck76 2y ago
  sitting right in front of me the whole time. thanks.

ochronus 2y ago

I'd love to use Firefox, but I've been missing three (subjectively, for me) important features: 1. vertical tabs (now happening, yay!) 2. either tab grouping or workspaces (brave/edge vs. vivaldi style) 3. easy sync-and-restore of tabs/groups/workspaces across my devices Do you know of a good solution for 2 and more importantly, 3?

schmorptron 2y ago
aren't workspaces the same as containers? when I right click the new tab icon in firefox it gives me an option to open them in work, personal, banking, etc or to create a new container 3 is also built in, called firefox sync. You can open any tab from any device on another one and send tab(s) to other devices
- ap-andersson 2y ago
  Sometimes I really wish that firefox sync was a bit smarter. The sorting seems so random sometimes and there is no grouping per window or anything. So when looking to open a tab when the computer has 5 windows with ~5-20 tabs per window open and they appear in a random order it can get very frustrating. Also sometimes when sending specific tabs to my tablet or phone on android there is no notification, even if the app is open. Then I have to open the sync settings and manually press "Sync now" to trigger the notifications.
- ochronus 2y ago
  For the containers vs. workspaces - I was sloppy with the term, what I meant is different "views" which include sets of tabs. One slight difference is that containers give you a clean slate for each (as in, if you're logged in to a site in container one, you need to re-login in container 2). In any case, it's a good enough solution for me, thanks for the heads up! "opening any tab on another device" is not what I'm looking for, though - I want to restore entire wokspaces/tab groups/containers across instances, not one by one, then arrange them again into containers.
ap-andersson 2y ago
#3 There is an extension that lets you save and sync either all tabs or a certain window and restore wherever. Not exactly what you are looking for I think, but its very useful for me. I believe that Google had something similar back in the day as an extension to Chrome but removed it. Great when I am troubleshooting something at work and when done still want the 20+ pages saved for later reference but not open. Or when I am planning for the weekend or researching a product at work during lunch and want to open a bunch of tabs at home later. https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager https://github.com/sienori/Tab-Session-Manager

da_rob 2y ago

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy https://imgur.com/hoOlRDy Happy that this will finally be a feature of FF. Still pretty useless for me, though, for these reasons: - There's an empty tab bar shown at the top of the window. - Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too.

tomduncalf 2y ago
> Currently, there's now way to enable a wider sidebar that shows tab titles, too. I think this is a bug, I had the same issue but then went to "Customize Sidebar" and toggled "Sidebar settings" to "Always show" and now I see titles, regardless of which sidebar show setting I have
- da_rob 2y ago
  That did the trick, thank you!

Arech 2y ago

A mandatory comment of the single most important tabs related feature, called "Simple tab groups" extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr... The rest IMO is just nice to have.

replete 2y ago

I tried it out and it seems clear that vertical tabs without titles create too much friction for daily driving a browser where you have many tabs open, hover thumbnails or not. For a few years I have thought that Firefox could gain market share by doing more with the browser UI, steal a few ideas from Arc Browser for instance. There's a lot of value to be added in the UI for sure. Asking users what they want and then building it ends up with solutions like these. I really hope this gets a lot more iteration before landing in stable. I currently use SlidePad on Mac which allows touching the left side of the screen to pop out a vertically tabbed browser, for IMs and most used AI chat but would rather keep everything in Firefox with some kind of panel system. I think most of us have pinned tabs for communication channels, email, socials, etc. Vertical tabs on left with titles works if you can also configure a useful slide out panel on right, mixing the two feels odd to me. But really good to see something happening finally, so good news overall.

ehaughee 2y ago
I had the same issue but it turns out you can expand them to show the titles by clicking the "side bar" button that, for me, was left of my address bar. Odd default but this is in a nightly release and others have already provided feedback to them on this.

graynk 2y ago

Really glad to see native support for this being worked on, however in its current state it's unusable for me and I'll continue using Sideberry. I constantly use tab grouping and I want to see at a glance what the tab is about, so having text title be visible is a must - having just favicons won't cut it when I have 20 GitHub and 10 StackOverflow links open. UPD: I saw that there's a way to enable text titles - that's much better. Still, without grouping it would be too painful to use for me.

lillecarl 2y ago

I can't imagine a proper keybinding subsystem coming any time soon, but it's hard not to wish. Patching omni.ja sucks

ycombinator_acc 2y ago

I wish they'd gone with [Compact Tabs] a-la Safari instead of Vertical Tabs a-la Edge. A unified tab and address bar is just so much more elegant and versatile. After switching back from MacOS to Windows, it's only thing I truly miss. Vertical tabs just seem like a transitional step. [Compact Tabs]: https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Screen-Shot-2021-06-07-at-2.33.05-PM.jpg?quality=82&strip=all https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/06/Scree...

beretguy 2y ago

I’d rather have tab groups.

mvdwoord 2y ago

I tried this but unfortunately you do not gain any vertical space as the tab bar is still in use as window title bar (or whatever the proper names are for this). The vertical tab bar is also fixed width (!) and to top it off, after testing nightly for an hour, I closed and reopened the browser and my pinned tabs were gone. I will wait until they figured this out properly. I know it's "nightly" and "labs" so not a complaint per se, but an observation.

k_bx 2y ago

As a happy Tree Style Tabs user, this is wonderful. I'm using it together with containers for 8 different accounts I have registered for different Google accs, keeping them open all the time. Firefox is a great "co-pilot" browser in this regard.