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> 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 ver

by 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.
wtcactus 2y ago
Arc is much more than that, though. 1st. Tabs are both tabs and bookmarks. They exist to be more or less persistent (as long as you add them to folders - I get it, it's not everyone's workflow, but for people like me, it's a blessing). 2nd. It has a brilliant tab sync between devices. Something Firefox doesn't do - in fact, only Edge does that. 3rd. Is much lighter on resources on macOS. Some months ago I decided to give a - yet another - try at Firefox on my MacBook and I started not being able to do my full work day job on battery. At first, I didn't understand what was going on and thought it was docker that was killing the battery. Then I went to investigate, and yup, it was Firefox, again, after all these years of telling that now they are good on macOS. No, they aren't, they still use 4x more battery than Edge, or Arc, or Brave... TLDR: Give Arc a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
- Vinnl 2y ago
  You can open tabs from other devices in Firefox. They don't open automatically though, presumably because some people (i.e. myself) would find that horrible.
  - wtcactus 2y ago
    Well, I find that seamless. I get to my desktop, and can continue working exactly in what I was doing in my laptop. That, together with clearly defined workspaces, is fantastic for me.

by doix 2y ago

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.

wtcactus 2y ago

Arc is much more than that, though. 1st. Tabs are both tabs and bookmarks. They exist to be more or less persistent (as long as you add them to folders - I get it, it's not everyone's workflow, but for people like me, it's a blessing). 2nd. It has a brilliant tab sync between devices. Something Firefox doesn't do - in fact, only Edge does that. 3rd. Is much lighter on resources on macOS. Some months ago I decided to give a - yet another - try at Firefox on my MacBook and I started not being able to do my full work day job on battery. At first, I didn't understand what was going on and thought it was docker that was killing the battery. Then I went to investigate, and yup, it was Firefox, again, after all these years of telling that now they are good on macOS. No, they aren't, they still use 4x more battery than Edge, or Arc, or Brave... TLDR: Give Arc a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Vinnl 2y ago
You can open tabs from other devices in Firefox. They don't open automatically though, presumably because some people (i.e. myself) would find that horrible.
- wtcactus 2y ago
  Well, I find that seamless. I get to my desktop, and can continue working exactly in what I was doing in my laptop. That, together with clearly defined workspaces, is fantastic for me.