Firefox Is Bringing in Tab Grouping Feature
news.itsfoss.com
news.itsfoss.com
Most of the Tab Group, AFAIK dont offer this feature. And I have to manually do it. Which isn't possible if you have lots of tabs.
>there was a feature on Firefox called “Panorama” which was ahead of its time if you ask me.
I remember Panorama being very very slow. It looks nice but not practical enough. I remember at the time requesting for List of Tabs with close button and search, precisely what is on offer now on Firefox but was rejected.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
It moves the tab view to the side, and each tab you open is grouped "under" the current tab. So you can also have nested groups up to any depth, and you can fold groups you aren't using. It's great to keep several rabbit holes nicely organized next to each other ;)
* if you use this, you can’t use any other sidebar at the same time
* you need to put in custom userchrome.css to hide top tabs. Once you’ve done this you can’t easily swap between vertical and horizontal tabs.
* it’s ugly and, while not exactly buggy, there is a lot of UI weirdness that comes with it being a workaround
I still use it and have done for years but native support would be a big improvement.
OTOH, Tree Style Tab is the best thing that happened to the Firefox UI in last few years.
TST (or one of its plugins) may become buggy and a memory hog if you have too many tabs. Things like dragging tabs stop working if you have too many tabs opened at once
I just wish that, when they integrate a subset of functionality of TST, further extensions can customize its behavior (like currently extensions can customize TST adding new functionality)
These days I'm using the Panorama Tab Groups [1] extension, which provide a practically identical experience the the old built in Panorama.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-...
Why, you ask, use tab groups instead of OS windows? The same reason you use tabs in the first place instead of OS windows, to have another layer in the toolkit. I don't want to have 17 windows kicking around for all 17 different topics I put on hold and treat like temporary bookmark folders till I somewhen use them again or declare finished. At time having like 500+ tabs combined (currently 220 - the plug-in even counts and is compatible with my TreeStyleTabs :).
Mostly I use it to keep tabs for tickets sorted, but I if there are topics/contexts not associated with a ticket I use it to track that as well. For example I have a tab group for breaks - I keep all the fun and non productive bits in there and later I can go back to work without loosing the sate of it.
And like, at least I'm using Edge (and so I have vertical tabs)... most people who talk about this feature use Chrome: I just don't see what the workflow is you are talking about where you are horizontally scrolling through a ton of tab groups at the top of your window without going insane.
Like, what actually is a concrete example? You said you have a tab group for breaks... how do you even get to that tab group if you have more than like two total tab groups and maybe like three tabs per group? What are you doing to make that workflow actually happen? When you want to enter your break, are you just remembering that your break's tabs are like three or four screens worth of tabs to the right of the tabs for the issue you are working on, and you start scrolling right?
(comment edited a bit later to add this paragraph) I haven't yet found a video of how this looks or works in Chrome but I'm realizing you can maybe shrink them down to the name? I am then wondering what the workflow is for how you choose which tab groups to put into a single window and whether you do keep them all collapsed and are constantly flipping between collapsed tab groups.
For my windows workflow, I am on Windows 10 (and refuse to downgrade to Windows 11) so I can see all of my windows--each of which has a short name I assigned it--on one of the task bars on one of my monitors. I can thereby find the window/groups easily and in each window I have the tabs (using Edge, so laid out vertically, but this would work the same and be just as reasonable with Chrome's horizontal layout) for that group. I can flip between windows with key bindings from the desktop and flip between tabs with key bindings from the browser.
In your example, you discussed having "17 topics" and "500+ tabs"; that's 30+ tabs per topic... I don't see how you are even going to put TWO tab groups in a single window, much less all 17! The Chrome user with their beloved tab groups... how are they handling this? All of the video examples I can find have like three tab groups and two tabs per group and it is already looking impossible to navigate crammed into the horizontal tab strip as the names of the groups are using up valuable real estate for the tabs themselves.
...That said, you say you are using TreeStyleTabs? That's really not "tab groups". I mean, I definitely understand the use case and workflow for TreeStyleTabs as you have a tree-view tab explorer (or at least did when I last used this kind of thing forever and a half ago). I would love a native version of that in a good browser. But that isn't what all of these people in the linked thread saying Firefox should just implement the thing Chrome has are trying to get, as that isn't what Chrome has ;P. "Firefox should land tree-style tabs (or even vertical tabs, for crying out loud, lol)" I 100% grok.
So why not use TST or similar (which you're obviously aware of)?
(FWIW, it is certainly highly related to why all of these users aren't satisfied by using an existing extension that implements tab groups: most of the reasons people describe also apply to why I am happier figuring out how to live without an extension for this. I personally believe it would behoove Firefox to lean heavily into being the one truly hackable customizable browser--steering towards things Chrome would balk at--but they have been running in the other direction now for many years and I am sad.)
As I said: I would definitely support any of these browsers implementing native "tree style tabs", but I don't (at least, yet) understand the workflow people are using for "tab groups" a la Chrome (the feature in question on this post that people want Firefox to integrate). I do want to understand, though! I legitimately am curious how people are concretely using tab groups, as the feature doesn't make sense to me currently but apparently a lot of people want it...
And for me having that as sort of 'super tabs' in the sidebar is nicer than flicking between multiple windows, but I can imagine some would prefer the more tangible separation.
There's a bunch of workflows that can avoid this. I've already covered bookmarking entire windows (and opening an entire bookmark folder in a new window), but there's also tonnes of addons in the way of session management. You are not doing 95 tasks in a single day, and I find properly closing them also brings the necessary closure to free up my mindspace.
Wait till we tell you about virtual desktop and that each virtual desktop has its own set of windows. Is turtles all the way down.
You have a problem. First step is to admit it. Second step is to install firefox with OneTab and session manager addons. Third (optional) step is find some way to backup or export these to firefox so you can restore some sanity to your workflow. Save the windows that logically fit in single sessions using session manager. Send the rest (stuff like hacker news articles) to Onetab. Once you've done that, you can accept the fact that you sent most of these tabs to die and you will likely never open them again. But they are always there if you need to resurrect them ;) (Also good idea to back up your firefox profile folder(s)).
Happy Browsing.
Admittedly on Mac, which you must be using, you can alt tab between apps I think.
Windows workflow across different OS is very different and Firefox has little control of it. For example I run three browser on my Mac, Chrome for specific group of Tabs and Firefox for some topic. While Safari for others. They each have an icon on the Dock and is easily accessible. If I had three Windows I would have to click on Windows menu, not to mention this complicate Pin Tabs, Restore Sessions etc.
I'd love something like tab groups that included windows, so I can seamlessly move tabs between windows, recover them after restarts, etc.
I also use it on Linux and after an update it reopens all the windows just fine (I get the message that I need to restart and just quit all windows).
It would be nice a feature that closes all the windows when you close one so to not lose a window by mistake.
- Its a firefox 'Recommended' addon - so its reviewed and vetted by Mozilla
- Great UX and features.
- Along with OneTab, its a lifesaving cure for tab hoarders.
- Autosaves your sessions.
- Store and recover last 10 autosaved sessions in each category (can be configured).
- Also manually save current session or just a window. can add, edit and delete tabs in sessions.
- Tag and organisze sessions.
- A major upgrade over the default 'Restore last session' option which on more than one occassion has lost my sessions.I also use Powertoys to search for Windows - Alt-Space to bring up the Powertoys Run menu, then % to search amongst open windows ("Window Walker").
Exposé on MacOS can get very, very cluttered with more than ten windows open from various apps, and distinguishing between them can be rather cumbersome if the content between the last opened tab of any given window isn’t visually distinct from another. The same is true in Window’s implementation and in their taskbar preview feature. The same is also true with tiling window managers, as every new window becomes something else to manage, where perhaps a “browser” slot should really occupy just one consistent tile.
Full-screen workflows (common on small laptops) also benefit from a singular “browser” screen, flanked by other applications instead of numerous windows whose minimization needs to be managed.
That, and managing tabs between windows is annoying, especially with rules to open a particular link within a given window, since that might break a setup as above. (Imagine a HN link summoning an entire separate window, reconfiguring your desktop setup, when the errant click could’ve just switched tab groups.
I rolled my own for use with tree style tabs: https://www.luciano.laratel.li/programs/named-tab/?title=Hi-...
I totally missed that panorama feature mentioned in the article, it looks kinda nice, but mouse heavy. Wonder how they'll implement tab groups in the future.
That being said, I think it was Firefox introducing them that caused the shift in the way people used a browser. I remember people asking me to set up Firefox because IE didn't have tabs. Nobody ever asked me to set Opera up for me.
But yes, absolutely credit where credit is due.
The first is restoring windows/tabs after a restart. This is not just janky when it refreshes all the pages when you focus a tab, but the browser doesn't even remember what workspace it was in and vomits all windows out onto the current workspace.
The second is bookmarks. If you think about it for a while it seems absurd that there is any apparent difference to the user between their history, bookmarks, and currently open tabs.
Both of these could be solved with some kind of hibernation state for a session. I don't want the pages to reload just because I restarted the machine or browser. I don't want to dig through history to find a window I just had open. I don't want to bookmark pages I frequently visit.
This is especially painful on a work machine since these should be very long sessions that can span a year or more. In the real world you have to restart the browser or machine every other week for updates.
This isn't at all my experience anymore. Session restoration in Firefox is pretty much seamless, and for the very rare edge-cases where the native stuff isn't sufficient, Tab Session Manager works for me.
And for those who'd question "but what about bookmarks?", I say they're lacking until they can maintain history and page position. I like to be able to pick up at the same point I left off in any context, even if I'm revisiting them days/weeks/months later. I have about 5 bookmarks total, but they're all for opening UI for local services.