Firefox Workspaces ( Overview )

[Richard_Hajek]

Hey,

First of all, I love all of the new additions from Mozilla! New Thunderbird, K9 and Firefox Android add-ons are all amazing! And I would like to use Firefox instead of Ferdium. As Fredium is basically a browser anyway.

But I noticed that there are multiple tab groups / workspaces ideas out there so I wanted to summary them:

Name	Summary
(1) Workspaces a la Opera	Basically a vertical list of icons for each Workspace on the side (a button in the toolbar with a dropdown to select Workspaces would suffice), that instantly switch to all the Tabs open in a given Workspace and hides everything else. Pinned Tabs stay with each Workspace. Tab Groups can exist within a Workspace.
(2) Persistent Tab Groups / Workspaces	Design
(3) Addon Request - Firefox Workspaces	That is, I want to be able to create named sets of windows and tabs and switch quickly between them. I work on a number of projects both personal and for work that involve a large number of tabs across multiple windows. I’d like to be able to compartmentalize these. There are plenty of add-ons that let you save a window’s tabs as a named group, then restore it later, but that’s not good enough.

Now all of these I mostly agree with, personally. The main focus is the ability to simply save and load tab sets.

Bare-bones feature list:

• (<source proposal(s)>) <feature>
• (1,2,3) Load / save a tab set ( henceforth called a workspace )
• (1,2,3) UI for switching workspaces
• (1) Ability to declaratively define tabs for each workspace
• (Me) Inactive workspaces shall be offline / fully unloaded

Comprehensive feature list:

• (1) Fast switching of workspaces (sub second?)
• (3) Ability to save not only tab sets but tab and window sets
• (3) Set specific windows/tabs to be open in all workspaces
• (Me) Configuration option: Make each workspace live in it's own container
• (2) Configuration option: New window automatically creates a new workspace (true/false)
• (2) Configuration option: Invincible workspaces - If you close a window with this workspace, it moves to another window, assuming another open window

Unresolved questions:

• Should a workspace be only a set of tabs or windows too (2 proposals for no, one for yes)
• Should opening a new workspace replace the original or open a new window with the new workspace
• Should pinned tabs stay opened between workspaces

I personally, would be quite happy with the bare-bones feature set. I just need a button I can punch which will open a set of some tabs I set somewhere.

The closest addon I found are Simple Tab Groups, which while somewhat satisfactory for my usecase, albeit they don't have the declarative configuration and a faster way to switch workspaces, but I'll go with that for now.

[kxra]

Throwing another into the mix, would love to know what you think as someone who's given this a good amount of consideration already:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/concept-mapping-graph-view-of-tabs-bookmarks-amp-notes/idi-p/37...

[Richard_Hajek]

I think your proposal is pretty good too, but it might be something tad different, your ideas are much grander! I am just looking for some grouping of tabs, not an entirely new workflow haha. But your proposal would probably help me too!

[Onscreen7181]

Edge, Opera and Vivaldi have workspaces! would really like them in Firefox too.

[a91]

As someone who uses Firefox at work, a feature like this would be very useful to me. At least as an evolution of container tabs. I work with a client that uses two different Microsoft accounts for SSO purposes (including Teams). Container tabs let me use the same browser window. But I find opening tabs (especially during the signin process) can be finicky. If groups could be implemented better or the feature evolved, it would be killer for me.

[Aurelinius]

Yeah, I switched from an Opera browser, and the biggest thing I've been struggling over has been the lack of workspaces. Tab Containers comparatively feel a lot more convoluted for my purposes, so hopefully Firefox implements their own iteration.

[Richard_Hajek]

Definitely! I have multiple friends (     one      ), who is sticking with Opera only because of workspaces haha

[PastBlast]

Only can second this!! I even started working with edge (only at work 😉 ) because this feature is so useful.

[theblackhole]

Yes! Firefox needs a synced workspaces feature like the one from MS Edge. That's the only thing that keeps me from switching to the Fox (and I can't give up this feature because once you've tried, it's hard to go back).

We had remote tab close recently which is a first step towards a unified experience, adding synced workspaces would be the next step to make Firefox the B.B.O.A.T* IMO

*Best Browser Of All Time

[myspace]

Really good summary! Hope Firefox eventually (soon) adds a workspaces feature. I don't have all the answers to your unresolved questions, but I would prefer the pinned tabs to be unique to each workspace.

[Richard_Hajek]

Probably agreed. I think there's no right answer, we would just have to try one option and hope it suits ppl and if not then make it configurable hah