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.

[jmikhail]

@tehmGlad to see the tab previews are working! I don't seem to have them yet, but I might just be a version or two behind 🙂

[pstrisik]

Not just vertical tabs, but tree tabs.  Tree Style Tabs extension does this admirably and I have been using it for years now.  It is the single biggest feature that ties me to Fx.  Edge only has vertical tabs.  Chrome add-ins that try don't measure up to TST.  I am concerned that the author of TST will eventually give it up and that it will be lost when new Fx versions render it less compatible. 

Adopt his extension as native!!  It would be hard to match its features and functionality.

Here's just a peek at my tree:

[myspace]

Latest build looks great. Really glad this feature is finally coming to Firefox. 

[Burrobabe]

@pstrisikAbsolutely agree. When I found Tree Tabs it was exactly what I wanted.  I installed the extension and tried to set it up but, alas, I am an old dog trying to learn new tricks (I finished school when computers still used punch papers) and I couldn't figure out how to use it.  So I wound up on GitHub to ask for help but that place is just all coders who completely ignored ignorant little me.  I wound up just getting rid of it .

Why can't someone write instructions on how to set up and use these things in plain English? (boo-hoo). I need a serious tutorial just to learn how to use it!

[BillH]

I appreciate the initial progress on native vertical tabs - thanks!

I'd like to mention an issue I see, at least in FF 133.0.3. If I have more tabs open than can be displayed in the sidebar, with the touchpad (Linux Mint MATE 22 on 2015 MacBook Air) I cannot fully scroll to the top or bottom, and scrolling only moves a few pixels at a time. I don't see this issue using an external Lenovo bluetooth mouse.

Also a request... Please provide a setting to hide the tab bar completely to better support extensions providing vertical tabs. Or perhaps this is already planned?

[jojoRabbit]

I hope workspaces would be implemented as well, here is a screenshot from sideberry  (on top, there are two workspaces, indicating number of tabs)

having vertical tabs is good, but i hope firefox goes a step beyond and implement workspaces as well.
One pane of tabs is practical for a single project but not for mixing up multiple ones. This would be a great feature to have

[BorerOfHope]

I've been using vertical tabs for a short while now.

They're great so far. With many websites deciding to restrict content to a small central column with nothing on the sides (exept maybe ads), I can just put my tabs and my bookmarks there and have a few more rows of text on screen. I don't want to go back. This is the future, at least for me.

But I do have two things I'd like to see changed/fixed/implemented. I have not read all the comments in this thread so maybe other people have already mentioned these things.
And the fact that I complain about such small things shows how good the feature already is.

1. Currently the vertical tab bar is married to the sidebar. I'd like to have one bar on the left hand side and the other on the right hand side; preferrably it would be customizable which bar goes where. It helps me to more easily parse each list of websites when they're not right on top of one another.
The horizontal tab bar is not married to the sidebar like this. I'm too lazy to go back and confirm this for myself, but I believe the horizontal tabs stay left-aligned no matter where I move my sidebar. I feel it's inconsistent to treat vertical tabs differently.

2. This one may or may not be a bug. When I close the bookmarks sidebar (clicking on the bookmarks button at the bottom of the tabs sidebar), the vertical tab bar gets minimized too and shows only the favicons of my currently open tabs (no titles). I already don't like this behaviour but this part may be intentional. If it is, please change it. Just because I close my bookmarks does not mean I want to close or minimize other things too.
The bigger issue here is this: If I then reopen my bookmarks sidebar, the tabs sidebar stays minimized. If minimizing the tabs bar is intended, Firefox should remember its size and restore the tabs bar when I reopen the bookmarks sidebar, unless I manually mess with the size in between closing and reopening. An opposite action should also have the opposite effect. As it is now, the bookmarks button sometimes affects two UI elements and sometimes only one. Also, if it is intended to affect both the bookmarks and the tabs, why is the button only labeled "bookmarks"?
Preferrably Firefox should not decide to change UI elements in unexpected ways i.e. when I click the "bookmarks" button Firefox should not mess with UI elements that are not the bookmarks sidebar (such as the tabs sidebar).
Just as above: this is not something that happens whith horizontal tabs. Horizontal tabs remain unaffected by the open/closed status of the bookmarks sidebar or the clicking of the bookmarks button.

These two (again, relatively minor!) things make Firefox feel like there's no real design intent here; like the UI can follow whatever arbitrary rules the devs feel like making up today.
If you have horizontal tabs, they stay however they are no matter what changes elsewhere in the UI but when you switch to vertical tabs they change in unexpected ways when you manipulate another UI element.
I'm sure Mozilla doesn't inted for both these contradictory experiences to coexist and what I described above are just normal teething problems of a beta feature: It works but it's not finalized yet. But just in case these behaviours are indeed intentional, I wanted to voice my concern. Please don't keep it like this.

But once again, I really love where this feature is going and I'm essentially complaining about missing polish in a beta feature. Great work so far.