Vivaldi and particularly the Arc browser have interesting sidebar layouts and features ( judging by Arc reviews, unlike Vivaldi which I have first-hand usage experience ).
While Vivaldi has straight away ( natively - without addons ) the most featureful sidebar of the four ( counting Firefox in obviously, and Edge ), like ability to see history, reading lists, bookmarks, downloads and other native organization features like tab stacks on its sidebar, Arc in my view, has one of the best browser sidebar layouts out there, so let me describe it and how Firefox can presumably do a sidebar even better than theirs:
- "spaces" are akin to Firefox's tab groups ( enabled by tab group addons ) or Vivaldi workspaces ( native feature ) .
- "favorites" are like pinned, faviconized tabs arranged horizontally at the sidebar's top, that are kept when one switches between spaces ( in the same "profile" ) .
- spaces are switched to by selecting a space icon among a spaces icon row which exists at the sidebar's bottom .
- Like Vivaldi's tab stacks, a folder contains tasks's tabs ( in a space ) .
- Right below the favorites, there is a pinned list section that is particular to a space ( not shared among spaces ) .
- Each space can have its background color or even color gradient customized, and switching them is like turning an image gallery or carrousel ( gradual page turning animation ) .
- Search ( address bar ) is at the very sidebar's top, above the favorites .
- Arc's main window UI is mostly comprised of its sidebar which doesn't have an option to move to the browser's right side, and of a comparatively very thin top bar for windows controls ( and other stuff like browser menus or addons, I surmise ) .
Now, I think Arc's design can be better and Firefox can seek some inspiration from the suggested modifications, listed below :
- spaces switch row can be instead a slidable from bottom grid of icons and/or short text identifiers ( like 5 character strings ), which is also vertically scrollable ( as to not annoy too much an user by occluding most of the sidebar's tabs or whatever happens to be shown there, like history or bookmarks, for example ) .
- For the same reasons as above, what I refer to as "pinned list section" in Arc's sidebar description, is of dubious utility with it's current layout, presumedly blocking tab navigation if a sufficient number of folders and other pinnable to that section stuff is added to it .
- Finally, address bar on sidebar seems to not be a great choice if one wants to see a full query typed in it or most parts of an URL ( besides its website domain ) without too much horizontall scrolling .
Whatever their motivations to have address bar on sidebar, whether to maximize webpage space and/or have sidebar packed and be the UI element which draws attention ( or is supposed to ), it seems like they went a bit extreme on those components layouts .
So I make another suggestion related to the address bar ( the other is detailed on my other post in this discussion thread ), as it doesn't really occupy that much vertical space and needs not be relegated to a less prominent role in a browser's overall component layout and sizing .
The rationale for the below modification suggestions, is that the browser can proactively meet an user's needs and make clear to the person the action to be performed in a single interaction"entry point" ( to minimize user confusion by having too much choice or more cluttered UI with several input choices available ) . I have witnessed such confusion in non computer savvy people, typically from older adults . Presumably, all other users, including power users, would also appreciate this kind of straightforward interaction .
The mentioned suggestions:
Whenever an user digits alphanumeric keys or words( that way excluding among others, hotkeys and arrows) outside input controls on a webpage or menus, then address bar or search in the nav bar is faded out while being morphed ( and resized ) to a quick commands style widget fading in to center of viewport, being progressively shown/rendered from top ( where its command/ search widget is located ) to bottom, like it had an animation on its height ( maybe with a (de)materialize CSS animations effects or "Thanos snap" as seen on Telegram, when one deletes a message) . Of course, this would be enabled optionally by a setting.
In principle, the fadings ( maybe not for optional morphing and materializing effects ) should be doable and triggered by a Quick Commands launch. The trigger of Quick Commands launch by keyboard user input as described, is the tricky part it seems.
Would this feature be a resource hog and/or difficult to implement, either on user side with JS/CSS ( I haven't given it a try ) or by FF developers?
Notes on the above:
1) The user keyboard input would be passed to and shown by Quick commands on its search widget .
2) There exists a quick commands addon for FF .
3) A page load triggered by entering input followed by Enter key either on address bar or quick commands could possibly have an animation to the entire page ( or just its top ) , to make clear its connection to those components/widgets. For example, maybe those components would take part in such animation(s) by pretending to be or referring to the concept of a document printer's or typewriter mouth spewing a page out .
An user wouldn't or feel the need to know what such devices are as long as a visual and logical connection of cause and effect between involved components is established . Nor am I saying that such animations have to have any mimicking or fidelity to such devices .
What do you think about any of this ?
Here one tab is selected, one is in a container and one is not. Tr's easy to see the selected tab but quite hard to see which one is in the container. It should be better with a shadow or a border to each tab (and have the container color inside of that border).
