Turn containers into spaces in vertical tabs (Arc style)

[a266]

Switching/opening containers in Firefox is slow.

You open a new tab, pick a container from a menu and lose the thread of what you were doing. Arc solved this with spaces you move between by swiping and Arc is closing soon, so there’s a gap to fill. Firefox already has the hard part : containers keep logins and cookies apart. What’s missing is simply the feel of moving between them.

I’d like containers to work like Arc spaces in vertical tabs. The sidebar would show only the tabs and pinned tabs of the active container and a small strip at the bottom would show one dot or icon per container. A two finger swipe left or right on the sidebar would move to another container and the strip would show where you are. A new tab would open in whichever container is active.

Each container would get a name, a color and an icon that you can change. Firefox already supports some of this, so the change is mostly in how it’s presented and how fast you can reach it.

There’s a real trade-off here. Arc’s spaces are a visual grouping, while containers are an isolation boundary. Once they’re the same thing, a tab group can’t span two containers. I think most people would accept it, but Firefox should explain it in the settings instead of hiding it.

On horizontal tabs, I’d keep the current container menu and add the same colors and icons, so a container looks the same in both modes. Vertical tabs are where the gain is, because there’s room for the strip and the sidebar can carry the whole navigation.