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> We’ve been listening to your feedback, and we’re prioritizing the features you want most. > Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will he

> We’ve been listening to your feedback, and we’re prioritizing the features you want most. > Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open — whether it’s 7 or 7,500. > Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily accessible. Wow, that ... actually is what users have been asking for, for ages. Nice. > More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker. Oh, there's the other foot dropping. I wonder how SeaMonkey is doing...

tresclow 2y ago
I remember around 2012 Firefox did use to have tab grouping, and they dropped the functionality after. I remember a friend of mine being annoyed for that, although I myself didn't appreciate much the functionality.
- Kye 2y ago
  I could never figure out how it worked.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  Oh, it's better than that: They had tab grouping as a native feature, and it was great, then they factored it out into an extension... and then they changed the way extensions worked, and didn't bother porting it. Kind of an insulting way to kill a feature IMO.
morsch 2y ago
I'll take the "streamlined" menus if it gets me first party vertical tabs and auto segregation of profiles. The latter especially, I'm excited about whatever they come up with. The former, I think it'll take a long time to reach feature parity with existing add-ons, if they ever get there, seeing how they tend to keep novice users in mind.
raffraffraff 2y ago
honestly, container tabs are way more useful to me than profiles every were. I can have 3 different Gmail accounts and a bunch of AWS accounts open in the same browser, with different colours for each so that I can figure out which is which. How about it they continued to iterate on container tabs and make it possible to pattern match urls to containers without a 3rd party addon.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  Oh yes, native matching would be faster and remove plenty of glitching opportunities if done right - you can often see the tab being reloaded into a proper container and taking twice as long to load as it should, and sometimes the tab ends up being duplicated. You also lose the tab's history when it switches between containers at the moment.
  - abdullahkhalids 2y ago
    If you have rule that gmail should open in the red container, then it will always create a new tab if you try to open gmail from a non-container. This the correct behavior. Otherwise, cookies/browser data would have to be invisibly switched as the user goes back and forth in history. Invisible switching is bad design.
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      As it is right now, if you go to a containerized URL using the adddress bar you may end up losing the tab's history completely when it gets switched between containers, without warning. You can't even get the tab back with Ctrl+Shift+T cause it instantly switches to the new container as well. That's much worse design. At least that's the behavior you get with Google Container and (Mozilla's own!) Facebook Container extensions. Twitter Container gets it right. Having it centralized could remove plenty of potential failure points. I just accidentally clicked at a YouTube link from a comment on this very page and couldn't get back!
      - 2y ago
thwarted 2y ago
I've been using multiple profiles in Chrome for years for keeping things separate… right up until my company started using Google's centralized browser/device management which infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is tied to my corporate Google account. Specifically, they forced a homepage setting browser-wide that can not be changed on a per-profile basis. So multiple profiles are seemingly difficult to get right/fully isolated. I hope Firefox doesn't have similar limitations.
- pleb_nz 2y ago
  Firefox does have profiles and has had for as long as I’ve needed them. For some reason they’ve always been hidden away and needed different args on start to change the profile being started, or the use of an extension to allow profile switching. I don’t use them anymore but from what I remember they worked well and were very isolated. Hopefully they’re using the current implementation and just making it more user friendly?
  - worble 2y ago
    You can use the url about:profiles to manage profiles too, which is still hidden away and not a great UI, but at least you don't need to use an extension or the command line.
  - akdor1154 2y ago
    As of a recent update, the Profile Manager is available as a startup option if you right click the ff icon (on gnome at least, i assume this was implemented cross platform)
    - lxgr 2y ago
      It's definitely not an option on macOS, at least. Holding the "option" key is even somewhat of an UI convention on macOS to allow opening an alternative media library (e.g. for Photos, Music aka iTunes etc.), yet Firefox maps it to "startup in safe mode".
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
pessimizer 2y ago
If you had 7,500 tabs open, it would take firefox approximately three and a half weeks to start.
- seba_dos1 2y ago
  I regularly have 10 times as much open in Firefox and it works just fine. Chromium barely works at a fraction of that (or at least used to, haven't felt the need to recheck for a few years now).
  - chgs 2y ago
    You have 75,000 tabs open? I rarely have more than about 300 to be honest, how do you keep track?
    - seba_dos1 2y ago
      > how do you keep track? I don't. I usually work with just the latest subset of a few dozen or so, the rest just sits there until I decide that it's time to close them all (like I did last week, so I'm at just 700 right now). I also use vertical tabs, see my other comment here for how it looks like. Keeping tabs open lets me quickly context-switch, which is super helpful when you get distracted and don't remember what you have worked on an hour ago. No need to clean them up, as they get eventually unloaded, but still remain quickly accessible if needed (which is much less cumbersome than the history view which I never really use unless trying to find something I was on months ago).
      - 1oooqooq 2y ago
        another case of someone refusing to use organized bookmarks. I've been there too
        seba_dos1 2y ago
        Bookmarks are completely irrelevant as they require intentional curation and are mostly useless to me.
jackson1442 2y ago
I really hope the profile management system keeps tab containers working the same. It's incredibly useful to have different containers automatically generated for AWS console sessions.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  current implementation of container is terrible. basically something a google PM thought of so you can shop incognito and not be incognito.
darth_avocado 2y ago
I just use Arc, it already has all of this
- iczero 2y ago
  > I just use [yet another closed-source Chromium fork developed by some strange startup which forces you to sign in before you can do anything and will likely not even bother to continue supporting Manifest v2 APIs], it already has [such a long list of antifeatures that it could practically double as marketing material for the FSF] ok?
yownie 2y ago
Heeyyyy are we actually getting Tab Grouping back? Finally?

tresclow 2y ago

I remember around 2012 Firefox did use to have tab grouping, and they dropped the functionality after. I remember a friend of mine being annoyed for that, although I myself didn't appreciate much the functionality.

Kye 2y ago
I could never figure out how it worked.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
Oh, it's better than that: They had tab grouping as a native feature, and it was great, then they factored it out into an extension... and then they changed the way extensions worked, and didn't bother porting it. Kind of an insulting way to kill a feature IMO.

morsch 2y ago

I'll take the "streamlined" menus if it gets me first party vertical tabs and auto segregation of profiles. The latter especially, I'm excited about whatever they come up with. The former, I think it'll take a long time to reach feature parity with existing add-ons, if they ever get there, seeing how they tend to keep novice users in mind.

raffraffraff 2y ago

honestly, container tabs are way more useful to me than profiles every were. I can have 3 different Gmail accounts and a bunch of AWS accounts open in the same browser, with different colours for each so that I can figure out which is which. How about it they continued to iterate on container tabs and make it possible to pattern match urls to containers without a 3rd party addon.

seba_dos1 2y ago
Oh yes, native matching would be faster and remove plenty of glitching opportunities if done right - you can often see the tab being reloaded into a proper container and taking twice as long to load as it should, and sometimes the tab ends up being duplicated. You also lose the tab's history when it switches between containers at the moment.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  If you have rule that gmail should open in the red container, then it will always create a new tab if you try to open gmail from a non-container. This the correct behavior. Otherwise, cookies/browser data would have to be invisibly switched as the user goes back and forth in history. Invisible switching is bad design.
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    As it is right now, if you go to a containerized URL using the adddress bar you may end up losing the tab's history completely when it gets switched between containers, without warning. You can't even get the tab back with Ctrl+Shift+T cause it instantly switches to the new container as well. That's much worse design. At least that's the behavior you get with Google Container and (Mozilla's own!) Facebook Container extensions. Twitter Container gets it right. Having it centralized could remove plenty of potential failure points. I just accidentally clicked at a YouTube link from a comment on this very page and couldn't get back!
    - 2y ago

thwarted 2y ago

I've been using multiple profiles in Chrome for years for keeping things separate… right up until my company started using Google's centralized browser/device management which infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is tied to my corporate Google account. Specifically, they forced a homepage setting browser-wide that can not be changed on a per-profile basis. So multiple profiles are seemingly difficult to get right/fully isolated. I hope Firefox doesn't have similar limitations.

pleb_nz 2y ago
Firefox does have profiles and has had for as long as I’ve needed them. For some reason they’ve always been hidden away and needed different args on start to change the profile being started, or the use of an extension to allow profile switching. I don’t use them anymore but from what I remember they worked well and were very isolated. Hopefully they’re using the current implementation and just making it more user friendly?
- worble 2y ago
  You can use the url about:profiles to manage profiles too, which is still hidden away and not a great UI, but at least you don't need to use an extension or the command line.
- akdor1154 2y ago
  As of a recent update, the Profile Manager is available as a startup option if you right click the ff icon (on gnome at least, i assume this was implemented cross platform)
  - lxgr 2y ago
    It's definitely not an option on macOS, at least. Holding the "option" key is even somewhat of an UI convention on macOS to allow opening an alternative media library (e.g. for Photos, Music aka iTunes etc.), yet Firefox maps it to "startup in safe mode".
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

pessimizer 2y ago

If you had 7,500 tabs open, it would take firefox approximately three and a half weeks to start.

seba_dos1 2y ago
I regularly have 10 times as much open in Firefox and it works just fine. Chromium barely works at a fraction of that (or at least used to, haven't felt the need to recheck for a few years now).
- chgs 2y ago
  You have 75,000 tabs open? I rarely have more than about 300 to be honest, how do you keep track?
  - seba_dos1 2y ago
    > how do you keep track? I don't. I usually work with just the latest subset of a few dozen or so, the rest just sits there until I decide that it's time to close them all (like I did last week, so I'm at just 700 right now). I also use vertical tabs, see my other comment here for how it looks like. Keeping tabs open lets me quickly context-switch, which is super helpful when you get distracted and don't remember what you have worked on an hour ago. No need to clean them up, as they get eventually unloaded, but still remain quickly accessible if needed (which is much less cumbersome than the history view which I never really use unless trying to find something I was on months ago).
    - 1oooqooq 2y ago
      another case of someone refusing to use organized bookmarks. I've been there too
      - seba_dos1 2y ago
        Bookmarks are completely irrelevant as they require intentional curation and are mostly useless to me.

jackson1442 2y ago

I really hope the profile management system keeps tab containers working the same. It's incredibly useful to have different containers automatically generated for AWS console sessions.

1oooqooq 2y ago
current implementation of container is terrible. basically something a google PM thought of so you can shop incognito and not be incognito.

darth_avocado 2y ago

I just use Arc, it already has all of this

iczero 2y ago
> I just use [yet another closed-source Chromium fork developed by some strange startup which forces you to sign in before you can do anything and will likely not even bother to continue supporting Manifest v2 APIs], it already has [such a long list of antifeatures that it could practically double as marketing material for the FSF] ok?

yownie 2y ago

Heeyyyy are we actually getting Tab Grouping back? Finally?