07-24-2024 01:14 PM - edited 08-08-2024 07:55 AM
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:
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.
11-21-2024 02:26 PM
Yay, can we opt-in in it?
11-26-2024 03:18 PM
Hi!
Not yet, unfortunately, as experiments pick people randomly to ensure the statistical significance of the results, but we are working on making some form of opt-in available very early in 2025.
11-24-2024 04:31 AM
I would like it a lot more if it were separate from the toolbar
11-24-2024 12:28 PM
Right now the option to use vertical tabs in a show/hide fashion is broken.
If you change the sidebar button to show/hide the sidebar and have it hidden, using any other sidebar(bookmarks/history/addons etc) will result in the sidebar being shown afterwards instead of being hidden.
11-24-2024 09:54 PM
The new vertical tabs implementation is awesome. Eagerly waiting for the expand on hover to be implemented and tab groups to be polished.
I would also like this corner to be rounded, it doesn't look good on any OS with rounded windows.
11-25-2024 04:25 PM
It's great so far! the one thing I'd like to change or configure is whether tabs opened from pinned tabs are inserted at the top or bottom. They're currently inserted at the top, which means I have to scroll all the way up to get to them. I'd like them to be added at the bottom of the sidebar / tab list.
11-27-2024 02:44 AM
I believe vertical tabs are a bit of a hype these days 🙂 To each their own, and they might be useful if you got !own of those very wide screens. But for me, they are annoying and pretty useless!
11-27-2024 04:43 AM
Hi.
I've started using vertical tabs on the latest Firefox version, and it's been working great! Thanks for all the work on that!
The only thing that would make it better would be to have an option to expand it on hover, so that we can have the maximum screen space for pages, as well as being able to see the tabs titles when trying to switch between them. It's also hard to close tabs when the vertical tabs are collapsed.
11-27-2024 07:00 AM
I don't like the sidebar option at all, but then again, I'm an autistic person who instinctively dislikes any new features. I would prefer an option to completely disable it and an old view of history, without having to close sidebar after opening history.
But please, I'm begging you: bring back the "sort by date AND website" function!! And not "when you get to it", but as soon as possible! I won't be able to find anything without this feature.
11-27-2024 07:24 AM
The sidebar is optional, you can turn it off. I have it off. And the "sort by date and site" still exists when you view History in the side bar. This might only appear once you turn off the vertical tabs.
The way I can turn it on and of is with about:preferences#experimental . There is a checkbox next to Vertical Tabs. (I'm using Firefox Nightly. That option doesn't show in in Release. I don't know what version you are using.)
11-27-2024 07:31 AM
I can only see a tiny handful of options in Firefox Laboratory preferences, with probably none of them having anything to do with vertical tabs. I have Firefox 133 and the sidebar option just appeared out of nowhere today, not even first thing in the morning.
11-27-2024 07:36 AM
As for the settings I have when opening sidebar settings... (Sorry, it might not correspond to the English version, my Firefox display language is Polish - because I'm used to it, even though I'm also a fluent English speaker.) Firefox tools - all "off" (should I set History to "on" to enable date & website sorting??), sidebar panel - display and hide sidebar, sidebar position - on the left, tab settings - horizontal tabs. Which would mean that I DON'T have "vertical tabs" on, but I still don't know how to disable sidebar and bring back old history sorting option.
11-27-2024 07:56 AM
Hi Ewa! My apologies for causing you inconvenience, and I totally understand the need to sort for website and date.
One quick fix that you can go for is to:
- type about:config in your search bar,
- accept the warning you will see, then in the search bar of the page that opens search for sidebar.revamp,
- change it to false by clicking the Toggle button on the right.
- you should be able to see the old sidebar after this, with all the History sorting options.
Also, please feel free to post questions/screenshots in Polish, I'm a fluent speaker (but it's faster for me to respond in English about technical matters).
11-27-2024 08:03 AM
Oh thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for. And earlier I panicked and tried to downgrade Firefox, only to discover that it would mean losing all history records... fortunately, I reinstalled version 133 and could go back to my previous user profile.
And to use an onometopoeic in Polish, because I don't really know an English equivalent: ufffff... ("What a relief")
11-27-2024 08:07 AM
Oh, and by the way... I already got used to using Ctrl-H to open history tab, but I would really like it if the option to open it by clicking was brought back. Now when I click the history button on top bar, there's no option to simply open it, only the most recent pages are displayed and a possibility to change settings.
11-27-2024 07:38 AM
I have to point out that the scrolling of the sidebar tabs is sluggish. However, the "List all tabs" drop-down list scrolls like a bullet. Please make sure you do something about the scrolling speed of the vertical tabs!
Note: other vertical tabs add-ons (VTR, Sideberry) all scroll very fast as well.
11-28-2024 12:10 AM
This is a absolute great start
A few user experience thoughts
11-28-2024 03:08 AM - edited 11-28-2024 03:11 AM
There is also a weird thing with the now unified toolbar: there are two empty spaces, one at the very left, one at the right, between the control buttons (close, resize, minimise) and the rest. The left one, when the window is maximised, disappears. The right one remains. Waste of space and it looks like a bug.
Screenshot for reference.
11-28-2024 03:18 AM - edited 11-28-2024 03:19 AM
I don't have an empty space on the left side, but the blank space on the right is needed to be able to drag the window, as there is no window title bar.
PS: The horizontal tab bar also has this space.
11-28-2024 06:35 AM
Blank spaces can be customised in Firefox settings (three lines icon - More tools - Customise toolbar, or however the option is called in English). You can get rid of unneeded blank spaces this way.
11-28-2024 10:24 AM
Unfortunately, this space is not part of the configurable area.
11-29-2024 01:35 AM
These spaces cannot be touched. Cannot be moved. Cannot be removed. They're just there.
11-28-2024 04:26 PM
@skagon wrote:There is also a weird thing with the now unified toolbar: there are two empty spaces, one at the very left, one at the right, between the control buttons (close, resize, minimise) and the rest.
The title bar has "drag space" to allow moving a window when it's resizable without accidentally activating anything. On the left end, the space is created by this element:
<hbox class="titlebar-spacer" type="pre-tabs"></hbox>
That one has a CSS rule that hides it with display: none when it's not a resizable window.
The element on the right before the 3 buttons is:
<hbox class="titlebar-spacer" type="post-tabs"></hbox>
There's no similar rule to remove the post-tabs spacer in a maximized window. You could start a new Idea thread to shrink or eliminate that one.
11-29-2024 01:23 AM
Excellent info, thanks! About that new thread, I think I'll want until the vertical tabs thing has matured a bit more. Frankly, now that I know it's not a bug, I'm confident that, at some point, it'll be fixed. I'm more worried about the vertical tabs scrolling being sluggish like a wet sponge. THAT has to be fixed!
11-29-2024 07:46 AM
Another horrible 'feature'.
And ofc you just had to fk the browser up just to enable it. GREAT.
11-30-2024 10:20 AM
First, a huge thank you to the people who made this feature happen, I find it super useful!
I have some feedback:
- The history sidebar is less functional than the standard "library" history window, e.g., it would be great if one could choose to display the history at a gradually coarser granularity, just like the history window does it: Today's history, Yesterday's history, Last 7 days' history, This month's history, and so on.
- It's very nice that the history and bookmarks sidebars have keyboard shortcuts, and it would be convenient if the "AI chatbot" and "Tabs from other devices" sidebars would also have shortcuts.
12-01-2024 04:59 AM
It's your baby so I can only beg to deliver a button to hide this sidebar completely. I'm still missing it versions later und I guess not to be the only user who has no use for it at all.
12-01-2024 08:52 AM
You can set the Sidebars button to show/hide the sidebar rather than expand/collapse it. Use the gear button at the bottom of the Firefox 133 vertical button bar:
12-01-2024 11:57 PM
Clicked on the Vertical Tabs option in the pop-up announcing its availability.
I don't care for the vertical tabs arrangement at all.
I have spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to restore the tabs bar to a horizontal position at the top of the page. I have removed and re-installed Firefox twice. I have clicked on "Restore Defaults." No success.
There is NO selection option about tabs in the Firefox Labs section, as online instructions have indicated, so I won't be able to change it there.
I hope someone can add fix this ASAP. I've used Firefox for years and would like to stay with it; but the Vertical Tabs are going to force me into the arms of Safari.
12-02-2024 02:50 AM
Hi, could you please clarify when you say that clicking on "Restore defaults" in the customize toolbar didn't reset the tabs to horizontal tabs... It'd help us figure out why that didn't work if you could add more details - what operating system you're on and if anything happened at all when clicking that button. A screencast would be helpful, as this is the first time I've heard of this not resetting vertical tabs to horizontal.
12-02-2024 09:38 AM
Operating System is macOS Sequoia 15.1.1
Sorry not to have screen shots to share; but, frankly, it was late, I was frustrated, and I was clicking on anything that seemed remotely helpful. If memory serves me, the "Restore Default" option was presented as part of the new download/opening of Firefox. Even though I selected that option, the page displayed the Vertical Tabs layout instead.
Here's another twist: after I posted my comment, the horizontal tabs bar re-appeared.(?!) The only thing different that I can account for is that -- in order to post my comment -- I had to receive a login link and log in to Mozilla. It might be a coincidence; but after I did that, my beloved horizontal layout re-appeared.🤔
12-03-2024 05:24 AM
No worries and sorry this was confusing and frustrating. It sounds like we might need to make the onboarding clearer, since it sounds like you clicked the vertical tabs layout by mistake?
But I just noticed something, as you had mentioned you tried to get to Labs to turn it off. Are you using the Nightly version of Firefox or release version? (Nightly has a blue/purple logo and only Firefox Nightly has the sidebar in Labs whereas only Firefox release has the popup announcing vertical tabs).
It sounds like you're back to how you want your setup. But if you should find yourself in another state with the the sidebar/vertical tabs open and can't get out of it, it'd help us if you could share a screenshot - asafko and I were wondering if perhaps you didn't see the little gear icon on the bottom of the sidebar due to a theme you're using?
Because clicking that is one of the ways you can get back to horizontal tabs if you find yourself stuck again - see jscher2000's post.
12-02-2024 02:19 AM
It should be easier to remove.
Try these instructions:
12-02-2024 08:18 AM
Hello,
so with vertical tabs and tab groups somewhat working together in nightly now i switched over to native vertical tabs from using sidebery, and i have two annoyances/feature requests i would like to make.
Thank you for reading, I dont know if this is the correct place to make this feature request, as this also effects the normal, horizontal tab manipulation.
12-02-2024 08:57 AM - edited 12-02-2024 10:20 AM
Hi folks,
Thank you for all the feedback!
@skagon As @heftig pointed out, there’s a need for draggable space in the window, however, we agree with you that space on the right is visually awkward.
We’re working towards a solution that would leave ample space to drag the window around, but will avoid the "blank spaces" on the window edges.
Changing the width of the vertical tabs is available in the latest Nightly.
12-03-2024 03:19 AM
It´s fantastic addon. But, to close tabs needs mouse hover function and close, if it´s possible.
Great work!.
12-03-2024 05:32 PM
Was not a huge fan of the surprise addition of the sidebar. Took a trip to the wider internet and other user comments to figure out how to hide the bar. The sidebar button is very unobtrusive, to the point I overlooked it till toggling the "Expand and collapse sidebar" to "Show and hide sidebar" highlighted it.
The expand/collapse and show/hide settings have some interesting interactions. If expanded, then switched to show/hide, there is no way to collapse the bar again without opening the settings back up. Not sure what the intended behavior is, but my expectation would be expand/collapse function to be independent, and available when the toolbar is set to show/hide.