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Comment by mikae1 | Hacker News Reader

Sidebery[0] and Tree Style Tab[1] are excellent reasons to stay with Firefox (or any of its derivatives).

> Containers! This is one of the biggest reasons to stick with Firefox.

Too bad you still can't chose what add-ons that should run in a certain container. In that sense it is more limited than profiles in Firefox (or Chrome). Speaking of containers, Temporary Containers[2] is a cool add-on too. Not recommended[3] though...

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

[3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...

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> Not recommended

The "recommended extensions" vetting process is another excellent reason to stick with Firefox.

>Recommended extensions differ from other extensions that are regularly reviewed by Firefox staff in that they are curated extensions that meet the highest standards of security, functionality, and user experience. Firefox staff thoroughly evaluate each extension before it receives Recommended status.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...

The profiles situation is probably the biggest papercut for me with Firefox.

I fix it with the extension and then installing the extra software, but it really shouldn't be necessary.

Containers are excellent, but not the same. I would like my work Bitwarden separate from my personal Bitwarden.

> Too bad you still can't chose what add-ons that should run in a certain container.

Using the same settings, including extensions, is why I use containers.

Creating several containers is something that I can do in under a minute. If I decided to add an extension, it applies to all containers. Creating a single profile takes several minutes. Maintenance is also a concern, since the configuration of those profiles will diverge unless I am conscientious about updating them all at the same time.

Profiles and containers serve different purposes and can be used in parallel. The main problem with Firefox lays in the difficulty in accessing profiles.

>Sidebery[0] and Tree Style Tab[1] are excellent reasons to stay with Firefox (or any of its derivatives).

I'm using Sideberry (moved from TST) on FF and i think it's good but Edge has great native vertical tabs implementation which doesn't require any "advanced" configuration to make it work.

Why Sideberry over TST?

Containers, 'panels', (IMO) looks better.

Yeah, even though I use TST on Firefox, the native vertical tab feature on Edge feels snappier and lighter to use probably because it's a native feature. Even if it lacks tree style tabs, Edge did a nice job with its vertical tabs and tab groups.

Can I ask how you use Sidebery and Tree Style Tab? I found that they both create a panel on the left side of screen and will stay there forever, which reduces the space for web content. The left panel also makes my small laptop screen look even smaller.

Sidebery and Tree Style Tabs make sense when used on a display with decent screen real estate when the viewport width is significantly higher than viewport height. I usually have more than 250 tabs open at a time which would be impossible to navigate without these vertical tree tab extensions.

It's supposed to replace the tab bar. Unfortunately there's no API to do that and you have to rely on a custom userChrome.css.

Re loss of screen space: yes. However the reasoning is that losing some horizontal space is not as bad as loosing vertical space.

To be fair, modern web design often maxes out at 1920p of screen width, often even narrower. You just lose whitespace.

Though it depends on how you use your screen: if you like to tile windows horizontally, it takes more of your space. Tree Style Tab has a keyboard shortcut, F1 by default, to toggle its sidebar panel, and when I’m tiling side-by-side I often use it to close the tab bar for the moment. I’ve been surprised just how many pages are at least a little broken at 618px wide (what I get for two windows side-by-side, with the sidebar open)—I expected it to be rare, but while it’s not the norm, it’s hardly rare.

You can toggle the pane with F1.

I've tried Sideberry and TST, but tend to prefer Simple Tab Groups[0] to either of them. The advantage is that STG reduces the clutter of tabs on the top-pane and of course allows one to group them and move them about. Sure, Sideberry allows you to group them and it shows the grouping in the side-pane, but all the tabs still show up on the top-pane.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...

You can hide the top tab bar for TST with an edit to userChrome.css

Add this:

#TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse !important; }

And I believe this is necessary: about:config toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets => false

Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't been made more seamless yet but it is what I always do.

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