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Comment by rplnt | Hacker News Reader

> private tabs

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that they are tabs. Either way, I really miss private tabs in chrome-ish browsers. They were better for regular use than a separate window I think.

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What is missing in todays browsers is handling multiple profiles/sessions per browser window. I'd like to open my three gmail accounts in three separate tabs without them knowing about each other. That would simplify a lot of scenarios.

If you're using Firefox, you should try out Multifox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multifox/

Sure, but you can have only one profile active at one time.

One profile per tab - I believe that's what you asked for

As far as I'm aware Brendan Eich's new Brave[1] browser is able to do just this.

[1]: https://www.brave.com/

I skipped to the FAQ and wow, this is not a win at all for people who desire privacy (i.e. the people interested in this HN comment thread, in theory).

https://www.brave.com/FAQ.html

Ah, another browser to keep an eye on. In a good way. What else is there that is worth checking out? I.e. not a 1:1 chrome/ff clone with one extension integrated.

https://vivaldi.com/ (they push a few new things, it's closed source.. and rather taxing on performance)

http://otter-browser.org/ (this is more or less a hobby project I'd say)

So when you open a new tab in that window and go to a google site ...

... you are not already logged in?

... is that what you are saying?

Sure it's simplified but hardly convenient!

Definitely not logged in unless you open that page from an already logged in tab. I'd prefer every new tab to have unique session unless it's a child of another tab.

I think I am in the majority when I say I like the fact that my bookmarks for calendar/photos/drive/email work

i.e. open that resource in one click.

Seconded! For example, in the case of running two or more gmail sessions -- contrived, but I've had to do this before -- Firefox's private windows are no longer suitable because for some reason they share state with each other.

If your employer uses Google Apps for work, this is far from contrived but rather an everyday default scenario.

I would also prefer each external link to be opened in a private tab. Ideally with a whitelist that would allow domains to be opened in "public" profile. I somewhat handle this by two separate browsers now.

I think those "tree tabs" extension would be great to separate these groups even visually. So each root node is a separate session for example.

You can't do it in tabs in the same window, but with IE you can have as many sessions that aren't aware of each other in separate windows: File | New Session.

It is one of the few things IE gets better (and has for a long time) than Chrome or Firefox where a single OS-level user can have at most two distinct sessions at any given time: one private and one not. It can be very handy from a development PoV when testing multi-user workflows in your application.

One caveat: if the site/application uses saved cookies rather then those set to expire at the end of the current session they will still interfere with each other when opened this way as saved cookies (those with an explicit expiry date/time) are considered global (with respect to the OS user) rather than local to the browser session.

I've not checked if this feature has carried into Edge. The clients I support are so backward that I'll not need to test against that this decade!

Incorrect.

Chrome has support for profiles and having multiple open at the same time http://imgur.com/GU33K43

Best of all, they're persistent, making them ideal to have distinct 'home' and 'work' profiles in Chrome.

And you can even create one for every client, I've got 5 profiles on the go at the moment.

Fairy nuf. I'll have to have a play with that. "File | New Session" is still probably more convenient for ad-hoc tasks though.

Firefox has been able to do this forever. It's called profiles. Start firefox with --ProfileManager to try it.

Note that if Firefox is already running, you'll need to use --no-remote --ProfileManager. Details in WONTFIXed https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=99828.

Fairy nuf. But that isn't nearly as convenient as "File | New Session" for ad-hoc tasks. And I thought only one profile could be in use at once in FF (though that could be worked around with multiple OS users) - am I completely barking up the wrong tree there or is that something that has changed in recent years?

Agreed. In my case especially with bookmarks; it'd be great to be able to select 1 profile with all my personal stuff, and one with all my work related bookmarks.

Do they have to be in the same window?

Chrome already supports multiple 'users' which fits nicely with what you describe.

I understand where you're coming from, but this is a usability nightmare. Which cookies will other tabs in the same window have? If you open another instance of email, which account will be signed in? How do you indicate which profile is in each tab?

Separating profiles into windows drastically simplifies the situation.

There are two groups. Regular and private. All regular ones share session, so do all private. I never had a problem with that setup. Though I wouldn't mind if private tabs would each had its own session unless they were opened from following a ling from other private tab. But that would be definitely harder to indicate to the user.

The issue isn't defining behavior - it's communicating that behavior to the user. It's much easier to prevent confusion ("wait, I did what in a regular tab??") when private tabs are in separate, very differently styled windows.

AFAIR, Opera had this feature before (I think before they changed the engine), and it worked fairly well. I don't know though if they had similar issues.

Someone pointed it out elsewhere, but Vivaldi is the spiritual successor of the "old" Opera:

https://vivaldi.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivaldi_(web_browser)

"Founded by Opera Software co-founder and former CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner and Tatsuki Tomita.. the browser is aimed at staunch technologists, heavy Internet users, and previous Opera web browser users disgruntled by Opera's transition from the Presto layout engine to the Blink layout engine, which removed many popular features in the process. Vivaldi aims to revive the old, popular features of Opera 12 and introduce new, more innovative ones"

They are supposed to be sandboxed just like in Chrome, though.

Edge opens a separate window too.

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