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Comment by spindritf | Hacker News Reader

> I haven't really been using Firefox all that much mainly due to how busy the interface is

Firefox UI is as busy as you make it[1]. It's very customizable without much effort. Not that it couldn't use a refresh but I quite like it the way it is.

EDIT: The commenters below get it right. Tree Style Tab[2] add-on is responsible for the tabs and you can remove the clutter by right-clicking the refresh button for example, choosing "customize..." from the context menu and just dragging all the unused stuff away into the box (a window that will appear). Toolbars can be hidden from View → Toolbars. Enabling integration with Ubuntu also thins it a bit.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/zdIy63Q.png

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

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Oh snap, now that's a UI overhaul. How's that tab interface working out?

At a glance I can imagine how much more effective it is at displaying a large number of tabs in the same window.

In fact, I'm finding it quite brilliant. The web at large takes advantage of vertical scrolling, so why shouldn't browsers? All of my bookmarks are already arranged in vertical lists.

Even when faced with the input procedure of navigating my cursor to a browser tab, vertically stacked tabs have a clear advantage (for trackpad/thinkpad nipple users like myself):

To move my cursor up and down (again, with a trackpad) all I have to do is bend a finger at the knuckle. When moving the cursor a substantial distance left or right, I torque my whole wrist slightly or reposition it entirely.

Maybe that's splitting hairs... I'm rather starry-eyed at the moment seeing your Firefox interface. Perhaps I'm missing some disadvantages?

> Perhaps I'm missing some disadvantages?

Drag and drop sometimes stops working and you lose the ability to move those tabs around (change their order). Some pages will be too wide, at least on a small screen like mine, forcing you to scroll horizontally. Also, after every (major) update you need to (re)move the new buttons.

But those are all very minor. Otherwise, it's smooth sailing.

When was the last major update where buttons got re-added? Are you speaking from actual experience or just postulating?

> When was the last major update where buttons got re-added?

Not so much re-added as just added. The download button (arrow) for example was added in Firefox 20.

Add-ons also tend to insert their buttons. Or even reactivate the add-ons bar. But it takes seconds to fix.

Firefox 4-20 hasn't had any toolbar button changes. You really can't count third-party addons as something that Mozilla changes to the toolbar.

Those bugs never happened to me. I've been using the add-on for years on the beta.

>Drag and drop sometimes stops working and you lose the ability to move those tabs around (change their order).

I haven't had that happen for months, so I'm hoping that it was a long standing bug that just got fixed.

> How's that tab interface working out?

I've been using it for years, I can't see myself go back to tabs on top. That's why I can't switch to chrome.

Tabs on the left (or right) is how it is supposed to be ! Websites nowadays have a lot of horizontal space because of our new big wide screens. We don't have 4/3 anymore and all the websites were conceived for that kind of resolution (800600 or 1024768).

Also it's more practical because you can open so many tabs at the same time, you can use nesting etc...

I really don't understand why it's still not the default, or at least a native option of the browser.

Agreed, I would never consider using another browser unless they had vertical tabs. My Firefox typically crashes once per day but treestyle tabs make it worth it.

You can make your tabs vertical in Opera without even having to install an extension, though they don't indent like they do in TreeStyleTabs.

The new Opera (using Chrome) lacks vertical tabs unfortunately. Can't seem to find any info on whether it'll come back

Once a day? Any idea why? For a while, mine was due to memory issues but they did some seriously awesome work fixing it somewhere in the high teen updates, ever since then it's been solid.

I had the same problem - tree style tabs would make the browser crash constantly. I eventually gave up.

> Firefox UI is as busy as you make it

For almost all Firefox users, the UI is as busy as Mozilla makes it.

1. I don't believe Firefox UI is busy

2. We always had those kind of "busy" UI since IE, Netscape, Opera and Firefox.

3. Chrome comes around, makes a very simplistic UI and now many people assume that it's the only way.

IMO Chrome is just too simplistic, It's beautiful yes but is it efficient? For example, the first thing I do when I install Firefox on a machine is to display the menu bar. And I think it's a shame there is no more status bar as well.

>it's a shame there is no more status bar as well

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-4-evar...

This is one of the most shameful things to have happened to Firefox. The status bar is core functionality. It should be included by default, and it should be enabled by default.

Now, if they really felt the need to play design games with the UI, they could have at least disabled the status bar by default, and allowed it to be quickly re-enabled (like can be done for the menus).

Forcing users to go through the hassle of installing an extension just to get back core functionality is truly unjustifiable and very shameful.

Thanks, just installed it, working wonders!

Beautiful! Hardly. Just de-cluttered on the face of things. Trying to select an encoding is about as difficult as pinning the tail on the donkey.

I think that for almost all Internet Explorer and Safari users the UI is as busy as their developers make it.

I expect the average user of Chrome and Firefox to be able and willing to at least get to the "View" menu (or similar) and configure the interface as he/she sees fit.

Indeed, I find vimperator's interface exceedingly minimal.[1]

[1] http://imgur.com/MkGwZZ5

if you enjoy vimperator I suspect you'll appreciate the tree style tabs mentioned above.. also if you `:set tabnumbers` you can easily switch between numbered tabs, which can be very useful

http://i.imgur.com/3x8nF0J.png

Just saw your post after posting myself. Please share how you got rid of some of the clutter.

Menu > Customize. This puts the chrome in "edit" mode where you can add and remove UI elements.

vertical tabs is one of the main reasons I still use FF as my primary browser.

What are you using for those side tabs?

Probably 'Tree Style Tab': https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Or the Vertical Tabs add-on:

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

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