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Comment by noisy_boy | Hacker News Reader

How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

Or being able to mark a window as "main" so even if I accidentally close it first, I don't lose all my pinned tabs upon restart? Again, I'm sure many people have burnt their fingers with this long-standing issue.

I have nothing against AI driven stuff but I keep hoping that one day Mozilla will do the basic things first.

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> How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

> Or being able to mark a window as "main" so even if I accidentally close it first, I don't lose all my pinned tabs upon restart? Again, I'm sure many people have burnt their fingers with this long-standing issue.

IIRC, Firefox has just about the same built-in session recovery features as the other major browsers. There's also session management extensions as a backup.

>> How about adding a grid feature so that I can view multiple tabs in a grid, side-by-side instead of having to manually resize multiple windows everytime I need to do this? I can't imagine I am the only one needing this.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

Exactly. This guy is saying "my windows manager sucks, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it"

> Exactly. This guy is saying "my windows manager sucks, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it"

Not really - see response to sibling comment.

> I am not talking about general tiling; just selective tiling for browser tabs.

Right, so your windows manager doesn't support selective tiling, why doesn't Mozilla do something about it??!

You seriously haven't seen a program that provides split panes? Never used an IDE that allows you to see multiple files at the same time in the same window, in a grid of panes, side by side?

You're just distracting. My point is this is what a windows manager is for, and you're avoiding to address that. Like someone else said, "You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs."

> You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs.

Because I don't want to manage 4 windows tiled like 4 panes - I want to manage a single window with 4 panes. What happens if I close one of 4? Now I have a gap that an related or unrelated window will fill or it'll be a wasted space - this doesn't happen in case of split panes because the other panes will expand to take the space. I logically group my work in separate windows - so in a split pane setup, once I'm done, I close a single window instead of having to close separate windows one by one. If I have a 4x2 grid in your tiling-WM-is-the-truth world, you expect me to close 8 windows one by one?

> You're just distracting.

Sure, if you lack imagination, everything must be feeling like a distraction.

TLDR

It makes sense for a browser to support this.

I'm not sure how what you describe is not what a tiling WM offers. Except for the "closing main window" thing but can't you just cancel closing with the history menu?

Imagine an IDE that allows you to see multiple files in an X by Y grid - replace "files" with web pages. Is expecting that feature in a browser that far fetched? Or are we resigned to creating multiple windows + tiling WM as the one-true-solution for this usecase?

You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs. My guess is you're unhappy with toolbars being repeated in each tile, is that it? If so, I believe Suckless's striped-down browser is the closest, together with a tiling WM.

If code editors are indicative, yes some power users tend to like a tiling window manager bundled in the app. So you may be right but I think it's out of scope for Firefox which targets the masses and it's definitely off-topic here.

> You're not describing how a tiling WM fails to satisfy your needs.

Yes I don't want repeated toolbars because they are waste of space when they are repeated in each window/pane - having to switch browsers isn't the point, the discussion is about what Firefox can do to improve its user's life (even if everyone doesn't expect/need split panes in their browser, some do). Because I don't want to manage 4 windows tiled like 4 panes - I want to manage a single window with 4 panes. What happens if I close one of 4? Now I have a gap that an related or unrelated window will fill or it'll be a wasted space - this doesn't happen in case of split panes because the other panes will expand to take the space. I logically group my work in separate windows - so in a split pane setup, once I'm done, I close a single window instead of closing the separate "pane-like" windows one by one.

But other browsers do this (Vivaldi, Arc has split view) and its great. If the OS does it you have awkward additional spacing between those tabs and additional browser chrome because the browser is unaware of the context you're in - comparing stuff side-by-side.

I'd like an excuse to use Firefox again, but they've just given up on new UI functionality and I'd miss out on a lot by switching away from Arc.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

I am not talking about general tiling; just selective tiling for browser tabs.

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

To be fair, that's what some people said about browser tabs when they first arrived too. I can see the use of having two or more browser tabs displayed in the same browser window as one logical unit, and being able to use the OS to switch between windows with different tabs. Two examples I can think of right now would be HN comments next to the article but in the same tab, or a group of live streaming videos in a grid.

Thanks for that - the incredulity of other replies made me think that I was asking for something unheard of; another use case is when you want to monitor multiple web pages simultaneously e.g. multiple Jenkins jobs.

Tabbed windows managers never were a thing even for people like us. Tiling windows managers are not mainstream but at least are something we know to exist. A known unknown for many of us. A feature like that in a browser could be nice for people that prefer traditional windows managers but might like to tile tabs in some browser window, maybe not all of them.

When browser tabs came about windows basically was a tabbed window manager if you only used maximized windows since it did not group windows from the same app in the taskbar. Basically tabs, but in the taskbar.

Having the HN comments side by side with the article is an awesome idea! I took the liberty of creating a simple Firefox extension for that. It is still pending approval by AMO, but once that is done, it will be available @ <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/hn-side-by-si...>

There is a divider that you can drag sideways to change the split ratio. Note that it creates an iframe inside the HN comments page, which means some websites (especially high-profile ones, unfortunately) can't load, as their security settings forbid embedding - there is nothing I can do about that, as it's a browser security feature.

In case you prefer a GreaseMonkey user script, I've got you covered too @ <https://pastebin.com/iVVYUUQ6>

Screenshots @ <https://imgur.com/a/2y41J0Z>

Eep, I just learned the AMO approval process is currently backlogged for weeks or even months. The GreaseMonkey user script is identical, though, and you can peruse the source to make sure it does nothing untoward.

Fortunately it's now been approved, so it looks like they cleared that backlog quickly or it was overstated.

Nice!

> This seems like the job of your WM/OS, not the browser.

By that logic it shouldn't have tabs either, but we generally view those as useful

They surely aren't necessary, though, and many browsers leave that to the WM as well.

Would this work?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs-we/

Firefox has a "Recently closed windows" menu under History, and by default Ctrl+Shift+N reopens the last closed window, if you close it by accident.

You can also Ctrl+click all the tabs you want to save, like the pinned ones in the main window, right click on one of them, select Bookmark tabs, and save them in a bookmark folder. Then if you accidentally close them you can middle click that bookmark folder to reopen all of them at once.

> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tile-tabs-we/

I already tried this extension - it basically opens new windows and tiles them side by side instead of splitting the current window. It is better than nothing but not really what I'm talking about.

> You can also Ctrl+click all the tabs you want to save, like the pinned ones in the main window, right click on one of them, select Bookmark tabs, and save them in a bookmark folder. Then if you accidentally close them you can middle click that bookmark folder to reopen all of them at once.

That describes my current workaround.

Idk if they exist anymore, but there used to be plugins for this.

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