Firefox 136 Desktop gets Vertical Tabs | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 136 Desktop gets Vertical Tabs

mozilla.org

31 pointsclumsysmurf18 comments

To update to 136, go to Help > About. Enabling then consists in enabling 'Show sidebar' in Settings > Browser Layout, and then right clicking on the sidebar and enabling 'Turn on Vertical Tabs'. Make sure to also immediately disable the AI Chat that they offer, because of course they do. Could they have done this in a more reasonable way? Probably.

First thoughts, I have to say I like it. I'll probably find something wrong with it, but I've always found it an interesting layout, I might stick to it for the time being.

Thanks for sharing this, not very discoverable, I think. The first issue I got is that I can't remove extensions from the sidebar.

It seems to be fine, though. I wish they'd make a better tab switcher, something like Mac OS's Spotlight, maybe improve the `Ctrl+L + % + space` thig.

> Make sure to also immediately disable the AI Chat that they offer

To be fair, it opens Claude/ChatGPT/... in what looks like a narrow vertical tab, and as far as I can tell doesn't give that tab any special permissions.

I switched to Zen a while ago and while for the 'main browser window' it's fantastic I often open multiple smaller windows (in a tiling VM) and hated having to manage collapsing the sidebar. It's done via a keyboard shortcut that seems to break half the time. Tried the new Firefox and I'm already switching back.

Another important feature: HEVC playback on Mac OS X. An increasing amount of video content, especially content recorded on mobile phones, uses HEVC. Inconsistent playback support represents a real barrier to HEVC adoption (among other things), and Firefox support goes a long ways toward making HEVC more widespread.

I don't really care about the vertical tabs, I'm here for the video decoding finally being enabled for AMD GPUs on Linux. While I usually don't have troubles with video playback, it's nice to know it'll be more stable in the future.

I like the vertical tabs but would it have killed them to leave a little more padding at the top of the window so we had something to grab onto? Safari is pretty minimal as well but leaves a little real estate at the top.

I switched to Sidebery long ago. This looks like a move in the right direction, but reading the docs say that it also loads in AI chat and other features? Like Edge? No, thank you. I'll stay on LibreWolf or some variant thereof.

Looks like this does not have the hierarchy/tree organization of sidebery, just the verticality.

I started and manage a relatively popular Firefox modification that has vertical tabs (with dynamic indentation, ie unfurls on hover) for several years now. The latest version now (ab)uses the new vertical tab sidebar to make Sidebery work rather well (and _massively_ reduce the complexity of the older versions!)

I'll link it here, since it might be of interest to someone: https://github.com/drannex/FirefoxSidebar

Looks nice! I have a few questions after watching the video in the readme if you don't mind:

In sidebery my pinned tabs are always at the top, but it looked like the pinned tabs in yours are part of the scrolling area? One thing I like a about pinned tabs always being visible is being able to see when I have new email/slack/calendar notifications even if scrolled way down the tab list. Is that possible with yours?

I usually have 500-1000 tabs, have you tested for any potential usability bugs when having way more tabs than fit vertically on one screen?

I need to update the video... It still shows the original (now legacy) TST implementation, but the gist and general design is the same.

Yes, the pinned tabs float (are 'stuck') to the top of the container/sidebar when you scroll.

I have hundreds of tabs at a time, and it works perfectly well.

Vertical tabs are awesome. I use them on the right-hand side in Vivaldi, along with thumbnails. It doesn't look like Firefox supports thumbnails, but maybe that's will come in the future.

I look forward to using it when it drops in LibreWolf

Same - any idea when we'll see this? Does LibreWolf typically adopt new Firefox features quickly, or do they prefer to hold off on new feature adoption for a few releases?

Per their FAQ, usually within 72 hours. That said it appears to be out now although the setting for vertical tabs is somewhat hidden (right click on the bookmark bar)

@dang can we get a title update?

Firexox -> Firefox.

It'd better not break Sidebery or tables will be flipped.

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