When one has hundreds of tabs open, it can become difficult to find particular tabs or groups of tabs.
I use empty tabs or multiple empty tabs to group my tabs so I can find what I am looking for among the currently 838 tabs I have open now. (I sometimes have up to 2000+ tabs. I know I need to bookmark them or whatever--and I do--but these are the things I actively am looking at or researching. I can clean them out down to 20 or so tabs...then I'm back up to 500 or more within a week. I might perhaps spend too much time on the Internet...) [EDIT: 915 tabs now...]
It can be time-consuming to get back to a particular place or find a string of tabs that I have been using. It would be nice to have a better way to quickly identify the tabs I am searching for among hundred or even thousands of open tabs.
Solution:
Tab Bar Separators are simply markers that separate tabs. These could be slim, solid tabs that stand up a little higher than the rest of the tabs, or they could be colored differently to make them stand out.
Tab Bar Separators could also be colored according to user preference, so that a person could put, say, a red separator in front (and even after) a bunch of important tabs and maybe a blue tab before a string of tabs in their search for puppies or whatever. There could be a selection of maybe 16 primary colors, with maybe an option for a custom color. Maybe they could also have a selectable icon or emojis to help make the markers unique and meaningful.
Another option would be to have Tab Outline Colorization, in which a tab or range of tabs could be selected, and the user could apply a bright outline in a specific color of their choosing from a dropdown list of perhaps 16 colors or could apply a custom color. This would set off groups of tabs for easy searching and scrolling along the tab bar.
In this example (of which I am not particularly proud)...
- The active tab is orange and is taller than other tabs so it is easier to see.
- There are four Tab Outline Colorized tabs, orange, light blue, maroon, and violet. These colors aren't significant...they are just several random user choice for grouping tabs. I would expect professionals to make these graphically more exciting...
- The yellow bar is just a Tab Bar Separator. It has no content and does nothing but separate groups.
As you can see by my counter on the right, I have 915 tabs open. Having colorized separators would let me scroll through the row of tabs and quickly find what I want. A standout active tab will help me locate the one I'm currently using, which can get lost quickly as you might imagine. Being able to colorize individual or groups of tabs (in a row or selecting one-at-a-time) would help to categorize my active tabs according to whatever I happen to be researching at the moment.
My example is just meant to be an example. As I said, I expect that professional designers could make it look AWESOME, and it would be incredibly useful.
I like both ideas. I use the first idea (Tab Bar Separators) already in a makeshift way by just popping up empty tabs, but that doesn't work well because they aren't particularly visible among other tabs. The second idea of Tab Outline Colorization would also be a fantastic addition to Firefox which would set it apart from the competition!
