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On that note, how come that (almost) no browser vendor is experimenting with better UIs for tabs? It seems that they have remained the exact same for the last d

by Mahn 11y ago

On that note, how come that (almost) no browser vendor is experimenting with better UIs for tabs? It seems that they have remained the exact same for the last decade in both Firefox and Chrome. I get that they are functional for the casual user, but for those of us that live and work in the browser we could use more functionality. I could picture for example grouping/ungrouping tabs in a single window, bundling similar tabs, changing the color of the tab depending on how often it's used, a better way to nagivate between multiple browser windows (or "super tabs"), etc. You could argue that you should rely on extensions if you are power user, but then with the trend that Chrome has set (and now Firefox follows) of extensions being small web apps packaged with an icon, there's not a lot extensions can do to fundamentally change how browser tabs works. Whether tabs become smarter and more functionally rich depends almost exclusively on whether Google, Mozilla or Microsoft decide to experiment it.

thiht 11y ago
Slightly relevant: https://medium.com/project-tofino/designing-a-browser-that-isn-t-a-browser-685b63c4b6f1#.tujcqa91w https://medium.com/project-tofino/designing-a-browser-that-i...
- tedmiston 11y ago
  tl;dr - Mozilla engineers are doing a series of experiments questioning if how we interact with the browser today can be improved vs. the habits and workflows we've developed since the early days.
Nadya 11y ago
>I could picture for example grouping/ungrouping tabs in a single window, bundling similar tabs, changing the color of the tab depending on how often it's used, a better way to nagivate between multiple browser windows (or "super tabs"), etc Grouping/Ungrouping tabs, to my understanding of what you mean, existed in Firefox and was just removed from the browser and pushed into an add-on. It's called "Group Tabs" and I use it extensively. Or I could have this mistaken for 'bundling similar tabs'. I'm not sure on the semantic difference you mean between the two. Multiple browser windows seems redundant with multiple tabs or the Group Tabs mentioned above. I use a Firefox addon called FireGestures. Not for the mouse gestures that it is primarily designed for - but because one of the wheel gestures: "[Popup] List All Tabs" Basically it allows me to hold down right click and use my scroll wheel to switch tabs from anywhere in my browser window. So I hide the tabs up top and get more screen estate! A win-win scenario! It looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/Wz5Jx9p.png http://i.imgur.com/Wz5Jx9p.png
- cytzol 11y ago
  So you can access your list of open tabs from anywhere on the screen? Sounds good. > Multiple browser windows seems redundant with multiple tabs or the Group Tabs mentioned above. Surely it's the complete opposite: if you have multiple windows, then why do you need Group Tabs?
  - Nadya 11y ago
    >So you can access your list of open tabs from anywhere on the screen? Sounds good. Yep! Hold right-click and use my scroll wheel from anywhere in the browser window. So not the userChrome (tab area, bookmarks bar) or off-screen (my OS desktop). I have another program that is "tab aware" bound to a different hotkey: I can press alt+space and begin typing in the Title name of a tab to open that tab from truly anywhere on the screen. It could be nice to be able to have "global hotkeys" for a browser that does the same thing. >Surely it's the complete opposite: if you have multiple windows, then why do you need Group Tabs? One is passing off handling multiple groups to the Operating System (handle multiple instances of your browser) while the other is the browser handling multiple groups of tabs. Different ways of handling the same thing with trivially different workflows (alt-tabbing and hoping you alt-tab to the right instance of your browser or {Ctrl+Shift+E / Rebound Hotkey} for tab groups and selecting the proper group that you can name. Being able to name my tab groups instead of having 19 different instances of "Firefox.exe" helps when trying to find the proper group rather than the proper window. Multiple windows lets you split screen estate though! But IIRC there are add-ons to let you split the browser screen to render 2/3/4 tabs at once for that use case. They have their pros/cons but have a lot of overlap and redundancy.
- patall 11y ago
  I use "Tree Style Tabs" and the tab bar on the left side instead of at the top. It groups tabs on how you link-opened them from each other automatically, but you can regroup them depending on your needs. It's one of the reasons I never even considered switching to Chrome etc.
- Frondo 11y ago
  Vivaldi does it! They call it tab-stacking, and this is the reason I'm switching over. The browser itself is still a bit glitchy, but I loves me some tab-stacking.

by Mahn 11y ago

thiht 11y ago

Slightly relevant: https://medium.com/project-tofino/designing-a-browser-that-isn-t-a-browser-685b63c4b6f1#.tujcqa91w https://medium.com/project-tofino/designing-a-browser-that-i...

tedmiston 11y ago
tl;dr - Mozilla engineers are doing a series of experiments questioning if how we interact with the browser today can be improved vs. the habits and workflows we've developed since the early days.

Nadya 11y ago

>I could picture for example grouping/ungrouping tabs in a single window, bundling similar tabs, changing the color of the tab depending on how often it's used, a better way to nagivate between multiple browser windows (or "super tabs"), etc Grouping/Ungrouping tabs, to my understanding of what you mean, existed in Firefox and was just removed from the browser and pushed into an add-on. It's called "Group Tabs" and I use it extensively. Or I could have this mistaken for 'bundling similar tabs'. I'm not sure on the semantic difference you mean between the two. Multiple browser windows seems redundant with multiple tabs or the Group Tabs mentioned above. I use a Firefox addon called FireGestures. Not for the mouse gestures that it is primarily designed for - but because one of the wheel gestures: "[Popup] List All Tabs" Basically it allows me to hold down right click and use my scroll wheel to switch tabs from anywhere in my browser window. So I hide the tabs up top and get more screen estate! A win-win scenario! It looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/Wz5Jx9p.png http://i.imgur.com/Wz5Jx9p.png

cytzol 11y ago
So you can access your list of open tabs from anywhere on the screen? Sounds good. > Multiple browser windows seems redundant with multiple tabs or the Group Tabs mentioned above. Surely it's the complete opposite: if you have multiple windows, then why do you need Group Tabs?
- Nadya 11y ago
  >So you can access your list of open tabs from anywhere on the screen? Sounds good. Yep! Hold right-click and use my scroll wheel from anywhere in the browser window. So not the userChrome (tab area, bookmarks bar) or off-screen (my OS desktop). I have another program that is "tab aware" bound to a different hotkey: I can press alt+space and begin typing in the Title name of a tab to open that tab from truly anywhere on the screen. It could be nice to be able to have "global hotkeys" for a browser that does the same thing. >Surely it's the complete opposite: if you have multiple windows, then why do you need Group Tabs? One is passing off handling multiple groups to the Operating System (handle multiple instances of your browser) while the other is the browser handling multiple groups of tabs. Different ways of handling the same thing with trivially different workflows (alt-tabbing and hoping you alt-tab to the right instance of your browser or {Ctrl+Shift+E / Rebound Hotkey} for tab groups and selecting the proper group that you can name. Being able to name my tab groups instead of having 19 different instances of "Firefox.exe" helps when trying to find the proper group rather than the proper window. Multiple windows lets you split screen estate though! But IIRC there are add-ons to let you split the browser screen to render 2/3/4 tabs at once for that use case. They have their pros/cons but have a lot of overlap and redundancy.
patall 11y ago
I use "Tree Style Tabs" and the tab bar on the left side instead of at the top. It groups tabs on how you link-opened them from each other automatically, but you can regroup them depending on your needs. It's one of the reasons I never even considered switching to Chrome etc.
Frondo 11y ago
Vivaldi does it! They call it tab-stacking, and this is the reason I'm switching over. The browser itself is still a bit glitchy, but I loves me some tab-stacking.