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Comment by rpastuszak | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person who likes this change? Normally, I’d have 4-5 tabs that I keep switching between fairly often and then 20-xx most of the time useless, de facto bookmarks. I use a keyboard shortcut with fuzzy find to pick the right one.

Reclaiming the address bar space to cram more tabs on the screen is a marginal gain, at least in my case.

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What I find most interesting in this discussion is that it implicitly hinges on how each of us organises and browses information. For example, some people are good at recalling stuff that they have seen before, so bookmarks and search will work well for them.

At the same time, other people can handle a lot of information but only as long as it is readily present in front of them. Hide that information away and it is as if it never existed. Tools that depend on their ability to recall information will fail them. Tools that give them the ability to keep that information available and visible will make them shine.

It seems to me as if some OP/commenters fail to realise that not everyone uses browsers the same way, in turn making assumptions that things make no sense on that basis, e.g tabs as history va tabs as actively used documents, vertical tabs saving space when fullscreen-ish but not with side by side windows, or having multiple windows each with a few tabs vs a single window with hundreds, single display vs multihead, browser as quasi-OS vs browser as web browser (!) with OS as OS and native apps, laptop vs desktop, or anything in between or beyond that I could not think of right now.

Personally I'm glad Safari isn't yet another Chrome-like UI. I did not upgrade to the beta, but it seems to me the choices made would make sense for the way I use a browser on a laptop or desktop.

It just feels like another flamewar, which I can safely ignore while I continue enjoying my daily driver browser.

can you search your book marks? And their content? I need that.

I like it as well, for the same reason: I usually only have 2 to 4 browser tabs open and the new display works very well for users like me. I usually focus on some task or activity, and like to keep my working environment tidy. I have worked with many people who keep a huge number of tabs and perhaps browser windows open - that would bug me, but each to their own…

So, I didn’t like the new interface at first, but now I really like it. On my M1 MacBook Pro I really like the ability to run a few iPadOS apps, and the watch/phone/iPad/laptop handoff experience is also very good. I am very happy with the beta OS releases from last week.

I’ve not tried 15 yet, but I really like the idea of named groups of tabs. I have groups of stuff in windows for things that I’m researching and i hate having to open and look at every minimised window to see if that is the group of tabs I’m looking for as it’s often hard to tell from whatever tab url I left that window at before i minimised to the dock.

In Firefox, I use windows for different categories of subject/use case. I use the Titler extension to label the windows.

Workona works for uses cases like you, the only time that gets annoying is when you are using firefox containers. So I appreciate the new UI (didn't tried it yet) but seems that somehow fits my current workflow.

Looks interesting, but multi-account containers are crucial for me...

I like this change as well. I don't use tabs at all, I use pinch to show all tabs and switch more often than having to align my mouse along the top of the screen to switch to a tab after reading the text. It's similar to the KonMari method for laying out your things.

I'm with you. Here's what it comes down to: I use an internet browser maximized, usually. All monitors are wider than they are tall. Thus, vertical screen real estate is at a higher premium than horizontal real estate. Thus, control/chrome elements of the operating system, browser, etc should minimize vertical pixel usage in favor of horizontal usage in order to allow content to assume as many pixels as possible. E.g, move the operating system application/task bar from the default bottom of the screen to the left or right, integrate the address bar and tabs into the same vertical pixels, etc.

The reality is, I've never seen anyone stay productive with more than 5 or 6 tabs, not to mention battery and CPU utilization issues. The brain can only multitask so much, and none of the browsers are good at managing more than, say, a dozen tabs, so why not reclaim some vertical real estate and drop that number to six or so? If you really need the extra tab space (or, to see the full web address at all times, which is even more strange), I think that should be behind a Preferences option. Safari's design makes sense to me.

Of course, Safari probably wont make it configurable, but I hope we see this design trend also happen in Firefox, and while I won't opt for it, lets make it opt-out.

I'll have to give it more time but so far I like the change.

Typically I have dozens of tabs open, so at first blush it might seem that the redesign wouldn't work for me at all, and that would be true if I didn't adjust my tab habits.

What I've done is swept those dozens of tabs into a handful of purpose-oriented tab groups. I don't really need all of those tabs open at all times, all I really needed is somewhere to put them that's more ephemeral and has less management overhead than bookmarks. As a result, most groups only have a few tabs open and pose no problem with the new UI.

Theoretically, this approach may also have the benefit of improving focus. Because online message boards and the like live in my "general" tab group, when I'm switched to my "programming" tab group I'm soft-locked out of those sites by way of reduced accessibility, making it harder to drift off of my current task when googling for documentation, etc.

I’ve started to shift to this workflow too. There is content that I use once a week yet the tabs don’t always stay the same so the tab group paradigm is much better than committing everything to bookmarks and having to keep them updated.

I like it as well. I typically have only a handful of tabs open, for both mental clarity and focus.

There's so much empty space on the address bar, and vertical space is typically expensive real estate.

> Am I the only person who likes this change?

yes

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