Firefox Sidebar and Vertical tabs: try them out in Nightly Firefox Labs 131

[asafko]

Hi folks,

Vertical tabs and a new sidebar experience that make multitasking and context-switching easier are now available in Nightly 131. To try them, update to the latest Nightly and go to Settings > Firefox Labs, and activate the Sidebar and Vertical tabs experiments.

After you do this, you will be able to see the new sidebar, but you will still need to add the sidebar icon to the toolbar to be able to expand vertical tabs. Click Customize toolbar in the toolbar right-click menu, and drag the sidebar icon to your toolbar. This is a temporary situation, and in the future the icon will be added to the toolbar automatically. 

A few things to keep in mind:

• This work is still very much in progress and has some rough edges, functionally and visually. You’ll see us improve and polish things over the coming months.
• We will be sharing our informal backlog of improvements in this post today, so you can get a sense for where we ultimately want these features to be.
• To design this first version, we conducted extensive research, talked to many Firefox users to understand their multitasking and context-switching needs, and prototyped extensively to find the best solutions to address them.

What we’re putting out there is something that we believe will help the majority of people using Firefox achieve their day-to-day tasks. We know there is no perfect solution for everyone and welcome your feedback to shape the direction we move forward in.

[PedroSaldanha]

I'm not liking this, to be honest. The purpose of vertical tabs is often to free up horizontal space, given modern widescreen displays. However, what is happening in the implementation of Firefox—though it's not just Firefox—is that extra space is being used. The top bar still takes up a considerable amount of space and occupies lateral space as well. In the end, the number of occupied pixels on the screen is greater.

The experience I want to see in Firefox with vertical tabs is one that uses little or no space in the top bar, maximizing information and tools that should be on the side control, as if the entire browser were lying down. Nothing above.

[fuseteam]

the top bar is going to be slimmed down, this is confirmed in a post further up the thread. this is part of the reason the implemention is still experimental 😉

[wutongtaiwan]

I want to adjust the order of the sidebar tools by dragging the sidebar tools with the mouse, and I recommend adding this feature. Also, I think the sidebar is a bit wide and takes up too much space

[Pfize183]

Today I received Nightly 132, but no (visible) changes based on our suggestions 😞

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/132.0a1/releasenotes/ 

[tilwiti]

@asafko😶‍🌫️

[firefly_katamar]

I'm going to echo people's complaint / concerns with the current implementation of vertical tabs in FF. 

What I'd love to see in macOS is how I have my brave browser set-up, taking up as little vertical space as possible. 

 

[fuseteam]

if this is about the navbar collapsing— it has been confirmed it is being worked on in an post further up

[amc]

Until now I have been using the Tab Stash extension for vertical tabs. Comparing that with the current implementation in Nightly, I still prefer using Tab Stash, with the old sidebar.

Even ignoring the "stash" feature, the extension is better for vertical tabs because I can keep horizontal tabs displayed; I tend to use both. Its vertical tabs are also displayed more compactly.

For the sidebar, the separate toolbar feels wasteful. The best option might be to put the view icons at the top, where the old sidebar has its dropdown list.

[aleks2137]

Please, I need vertical tabs. It's the only reason I am not switching back to Firefox.

[YPAP2205]

Vertical tabs can be used in firefox version 130, I'm using it and it works pretty well. You can enable it in about:config by adding/setting "sidebar.revamp" set to true as it won't work without it. Then either set "sidebar.verticaltabs" to true or on the sidebar click on "Customize sidebar" and enable vertical tabs.

[Leogeorge2]

Firefox Nightly 131 introduces vertical tabs and a new sidebar for improved multitasking. Users can activate these features in Firefox Labs, though the sidebar icon must be manually added to the toolbar for now. This is an ongoing development, and feedback is encouraged to help refine these features over time.

[YPAP2205]

I think someone already mentioned this already, but I think when the sidebar is set to be hidden. Then the user can hover their mouse around the sidebar area, and the sidebar would appear. Because right now in the nightly channel v132, the sidebar isn't hidden when it's set to "Always hide". Which takes up an inconvenient amount of screen space. Microsoft Edge has this, and it helps save screen space.

Edit: Ok, looks like someone has already mentioned it.

[unengaged]

Let me say I love to be finally able to switch from Edge to Firefox thanks to the sidebars in Firefox nightly!

That being said, there is stuff to improve (basically look at how Edge does is), one probably minor but huge quality of live improvement that comes right to my mind and saves a lot of time:

When opening a new tab, the scrolling position of the sidebar stays where it was - so if I quickly open something and want to close it, I have to scroll down to the very end. It would be quite convenient, if opening a new tab makes the sidebar scroll down automatically.

Or, since some people probably like to stay where they are, just open a new tab the way the "open link in new tab"-feature works: Just next to the active tab.

Thanks alot!

[siny]

PLEASE create native multi-row tabs, this is one thing missing from Firefox since forever

[yoasif]

Try paxmod.

[siny]

The screenshot is with paxmod, but it stopped working after some changes in Firefox Nightly on 2024-08-22, and a few days later also in Dev.

Now, I think that I would actually like sidebar tabs, but with some tweaks:

- pinned tabs should take as much vertical space as needed to show them all, but be more compact, even more than in my screenshot

- other tabs should appear in columns with user defined maximum tab width, with MUCH less white space, everything should be more compact. Sidebar also needs to be resizable, with tabs growing proportionally until they reach min/max width, at which moment they should be re-aranged in fewer/more columns.

The point is: I want to see ALL 75, 100, or more tabs at once (yes, I have two 28" 4K monitors at 125% zoom), without any scrolling or waiting for popups to see what is behind the icon.

[mattheja]

Sorry if I am repeating something already said, but reading through all the replies and open bugs is too much time.

This is an excellent starting point. Kudos to the team!

Feedback:

- Allow me to re-size the sidebar. It's too wide by default. The collapsed sidebar only showing the icons is too sparse.

- A hierarchical tree navigation of tabs in the sidebar would be valuable show/hide associated tabs.

- I'd like to be able to create a folder or group for tabs, then show only those tabs. The folder/group selector would be somewhere in the sidebar. This is a feature offered by the Sideberry extension called "Group tabs (aka folders) with a custom name helps organize open pages."

[D0m1n1c]

Totally agree with the second suggestion, it's the same thing as some extensions offer (Tree Style Tab for exemple).

For the suggestion 3, maybe the team could bring to desktop the Collections that we have in the mobile browser.

[24Seven]

Hallelujah! Vertical tabs. Only took a couple of decades. I like that can now disable extensions that were doing that same. As for desired features:

1. Resizeable sidebar
2. Ability to control sorting
3. Smaller/configurable font/spacing to get see more tabs per screen.
4. Smaller icons for pinned tabs

[oDaniel]

I'm a fan of the new sidebar; I think it is really nice. I never really used many of these features before, but I use some workspaces on Obsidian and I am accustomed to having two tabs open at the same time for my workflow there.

I don't know if you can already do this or if there's a reason why you can't, but adding tabs to the sidebar would be nice. And I don't mean the vertical tabs. I mean being able to open a website or something in the sidebar, as you would open your history.

Having the ability to view two tabs in the same window would be convenient. I know you can do this by having two windows open, but maybe this feature could be implemented in this way.

[achede22]

As someone who has been using vertical tabs and recently transitioned from the Edge browser, I’ve found that placing the "new tab" button at the bottom of the vertical tabs column aligns better with my workflow. It allows me to quickly add new tabs when I’m at the end of my tab list, rather than having to reach for the top of the column.

I would like to request an option to move the "new tab" (plus sign) button to the lower end of the vertical tabs column. Alternatively, providing users with the ability to choose the button’s placement would be highly beneficial, allowing everyone to customize their experience based on personal preference.

Thank you for considering this suggestion. I believe it could enhance the user experience for those who prefer or are accustomed to a similar layout from other browsers.

[Vulcan__]

The new slimmed down title bar is not looking good. A better option would be to fuse the address bar and navigation bar when vertical tabs are enabled (similar to every other browser that supports vertical tabs)

[Cocomonk]

Firstly, thank you very much for the addition of the sidebar and vertical tabs.  I moved right over to Nightly specifically for them, and have really been enjoying their use.

I have seen a new bug that must have been introduced sometime in the last 1-2 updates.  If I enable the sidebar now, when I enter a partial URL or search term into the address bar, the search results dropdown now appears *behind* the background of the tab, rather than on top of it like normal.  This only occurs in a freshly opened tab, not ones that already have a web page in it.  I didn't see in anywhere in the comments list, so wanted to make it known

[Cocomonk]

After the patch last night, that bug appears to be fixed.  Thank you!

[wutongtaiwan]

At present, when the vertical tab is enabled, the browser's close button, minimize button, and maximize button still cannot be moved to the address bar line

[eXhumer]

Today's nightly update seem to have somewhat broken closing tabs in vertical expanded mode. It leaves behind empty spaces between tabs and no longer shows the colour of the container associated with the tab. Note that this issue only occurs when the vertical tab menu is in it's expanded form and not it's compact form.

[CapedCrusader]

This is very ugly! Please make it like Edge and Arc.

[CapedCrusader]

Please, let us use shortcurts like CMD + S to expand the sidebar like in Arc.

[fuseteam]

not sure if CMD+S is right one given cross platform support, but agreed some shortcut would be nice 😄
sideberry uses Ctrl+E so perhaps CMD+E perhaps?

[PatriceGr]

Tree Tabs, in Firefox, use the F1 shortcut to switch on/off the sidebar. I use the same in Vertical Tabs (I use one of them in my different Firefox).

[fuseteam]

how did you configure it for the vertical tabs?

[PatriceGr]

In the options, you can affect any shotcut. I use the same shotcut because I don't use the two modules in the same Firefox instance, indeed.

[fuseteam]

are you saying you set a shortcut for the current in development vertical tabs? i do not see it in the sidebar settings

[PatriceGr]

No, I speak about "Vertical Tabs", the extra module in Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/vertical-tabs-reloaded/
Not the feature that is in development in Nightly.

[fuseteam]

ah that was confusing

also it is also available in regular firefox behind about:config

[PatriceGr]

Sure, the extra module should find another name ^^

[ngdangtu]

I like the idea of sidebar, however there is room to improve imho:

1. sidebar seems too big to me. The current size only good for tablet or touch devices, but I spend most of my time on keyboard and touchpad (mouse) (this should be option to choose the size like toolbar)
2. add more buttons on sidebar, maybe it's a bug, maybe not but when I enter "Customize Toolbar" mode, I expect I could do the drag & drop like I did on toolbar

[Chlam1]

Please consider adding automatic expand/collapse functionality to the tab bar, like in Edge and Brave (if it isn't already on the roadmap).

Needing to click a separate button every time you want to expand/collapse the bar (rather than just mousing over the bar) is unintuitive and hampers productivity.

[asheriif]

Hi. There's currently something major (critical user journey) broken with the implementation (I think it was introduced recently): if the sidebar is expanded, closing tabs doesn't actually close them and just leaves an empty space there.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open 3 tabs with the sidebar expanded (in vertical tabs mode, of course).
2. Close the middle one.

Expected result:

1. Tab is actually closed.
2. UI is updated (the space in the middle is collapsed).

Actual result:

1. Space in the middle remains there.
2. Tab is not actually closed (you can confirm this by clicking on tab list in the toolbar and you'll see the tab is still there and is still open).

Here are two screenshots side by side of what happens:

I filed a bug report https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1919228

[Encrypter]

I noticed when I close tabs in expanded sidebar from the top, the tabs below it doesn't slide upwards and leave a blank space. Also, clicking on this blank space will open a new tab.

Also, can we get a close current tab button like the "New Tab" button:

Thank you!