Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevin_thibedeau | Hacker News Reader

Hard to love when the broken extension ecosystem prevents the use of vertical tabs for these scenarios.

> Hard to love when the broken extension ecosystem prevents the use of vertical tabs for these scenarios.

Here's an in-development vertical tabs extension using their new extensions API.

  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-center-redux/

Apparently the tabs still show up at the top because the API to disable that isn't available yet. But you get vertical tabs and it should get better over time. I've been using this and it isn't 100% perfect, but getting better and better.

I've started making another one that try to respect the system's theme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/vertigo-tabs/

That is broken because it supports more tabs. The multiprocess model is precisely why the old extension model had to be abandoned.

Sadly, the new extension model isn’t nearly ready for prime time yet.

I've got vertical tabs from Test Pilot for months now and I'll never turn back. Not sure what you're talking about.

> Not sure what you're talking about.

They changed their add-on API and are in the process of deprecating the older one which allowed for radical UI changes. That's probably what he was talking about.

Will their own test pilot addon stop working then?

Nope, it just that older extensions will and IIRC the developer of the tree-style-tabs extension was really vocal about the fact that he disliked the new API. He had claimed it would be impossible to port his extension to the new system. I'm not clear on the history of it all, so I don't know if it was possible at the time or not.

Yes it will. In fact, the test pilot for Tab Center has already ended. And it will be removed entirely starting after Firefox 56.

https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/tab-center/

Tree style tabs work

Reply on news.ycombinator.com