Native Vertical Tabs

[Gecko]

From the previous post on Crowdicity:

I would like to see vertical tabs baked in. MS Edge now has it out of the box!

I currently use addons for this - but there's no way to disable the top tab bar, which duplicates the tabs and takes up space.

Vertical tabs (with top bar disabled) would free up more space for web content, which is (usually) vertical. Most screens are widescreen (RIP ThinkPad 4:3 ratios), so the less browser UI at the top/bottom, the more content we can view.

The original post received 154 votes and as such was the 3rd highest voted post in the "General" category.

[notstarboard]

@musimuI'm not sure how the takeaway from my comment was that I'm "telling people off for asking for life improvement". I was mostly trying to point out that this feature is already like 90% present in Firefox, and I specifically said that I'm not against adding this.

There is something to be said for keeping software only as complicated as it needs to be. If everyone gets every customization option they want, the program is going to be bloated and buggy, and the rate of meaningful improvements will slow down. Given how many people seem to want vertical tabs I think it's fair to argue that this option makes sense, but I have to push back on the fact that adding options like this is "freedom" with no downsides.

It's a tough balance to strike as well for the developers, as anyone used to navigating with [insert UI element here] who switches to a new browser without it is likely to wish that [aforementioned UI element] still existed, regardless of how useful it actually is. So, I think it's an easier sell when you can make a case for why the change is helpful. The original post did not do that for me, because in the Edge gif we see that the vertical tabs just use up space along the left margin without slimming down the title/toolbars in the header at all. Others here have specifically asked for collapsing everything into one row to create more vertical space, which I think is a great suggestion, and which to me justifies how this could benefit many users. Hopefully Mozilla makes it happen.

[Renn]

So the simplest implementation I would like to have is:

1. Persist the "All Tabs" context menu on a side of the window

2. Hide current tabs bar on top of the screen, move OS buttons (minimize, maximize, close) into the toolbar

Should be relatively easy to implement than starting from scratch.

[avijayr]

3. The toolbar can also collapse into showing only the site icons ie without text (governed as a preference from the user)

[avijayr]

In addition, I would add:

3. The toolbar can also collapse into showing only the site icons ie without text (governed as a preference from the user)

[Bushibot]

Yeah, I was looking at moving off edge for a long list of reason but, but immediately felt the burn off no side tabs and groupings. Weak sauce.

Also if I import a active browser I kind expect those tabs to open and not have to go find them :p.

I guess I'll check back again in 6 months.

[sydney]

+1

[Yoochan]

As a daily user of treestyletab I could be interested... but treestyletab works wonderfully and to have an option to disable the redundant display of the tabs on top would be enough for me 🙂

[zerkshop]

The sidebar currently has Bookmarks, History, Synced Tabs. I think a natural step is to add the list of windows/tabs to the sidebar like vivaldi has. This lets you search/filter tabs across windows, and drag and drop to rearrange. Basically the functionality of that "List all tabs" button but put in the sidebar.

Also question about the firefox development process and https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/Community/Pull_requests - How likely would it be for a community member to submit a PR with any of this functionality and have it accepted?

Also what is up with this page? Whenever I right click to copy or Ctrl+C, the whole page greys out and the comment box says "Drop your files here" and I have to reload. This is on firefox, linux with wayland.

[avscwadcvaw]

I wanted to switch to Firefox and realised that there is no native vertical tab. Switched back to Edge. Will consider Firefox when this feature is implemented. Can't believe how stubborn some developers are - now it's 2024 and you are still refusing to implement such a nice feature.

[jn02]

I'd love to come back to Firefox, but switched to Edge last year due to native vertical tabs. I hope to be able to come back!

[vahdyx]

It's been a couple years, is this thing gonna be a thing? I'd love for it to. 

[wutongtaiwan]

Vertical tabs and tab grouping

I want vertical tabs and tab grouping. These two features are useful, and I hope you can learn from chrome and edge and learn their UI by the way

[Jon]

@wutongtaiwan there is a separate thread for tab grouping here -
Native Tab Grouping / More Customizable Tab bar - where we actually just announced that a team is working on tab groups.

[thelancastrian]

Great news, thanks Jon

[MW]

Vertical tabs

I usually keep a lot of tabs open when working on the computer, often going back and forth. Does Firefox like other browsers out there offer to switch to vertical tabs display? I do not find anything obvious in the browser in this regard. Thanks.