Sidebar and vertical tabs: release channel experimentation

[asafko]

Hi folks, 

Over the next couple of months, we will be testing an updated sidebar, its tools, and vertical tabs in the release version of Firefox (remember, a while back, we asked you to try it out in Nightly 131, and we appreciated your feedback and encouragement in this Connect thread). If you are using the release version, you might get early access to these features and get a nudge to try them out.

Only a portion of users in Firefox releases 133 and 134 will see this experience, helping us evaluate and improve the features. If you’re part of the experiment, we’d love for you to try this early version and share your thoughts. 

We’re also working on many improvements you’ve requested, including: 

• Easier ways to close tabs in the collapsed sidebar.
• Expanding the sidebar on hover.
• Reducing space used by tools in the expanded sidebar.
• Visually and functionally polishing the sidebar tools panels and browser layout in the vertical tabs mode. 

As usual, we appreciate your patience as we iron out the rough spots in the experience. If you’re not ready to engage with these new features, you can disable them in the sidebar settings or opt out from the experiment via about:studies.

If you are are having trouble figuring out how to disable the sidebar, please follow these steps:

1. Locate the gear icon with the Customize sidebar label at the bottom of the sidebar and click on it.

2. Set the Sidebar button setting to Show and hide sidebar.

3. Click the sidebar button in the toolbar to hide the sidebar (it is highlighted in the second screenshot).

4. Right-click the sidebar icon and choose the Remove from toolbar option.

Set Sidebar button setting to "Show and hide sidebar"Click the sidebar button in the toolbar to hide the sidebarRight click the sidebar icon choose "Remove from toolbar" option.

If you have already removed the sidebar button from the toolbar and are stuck with the sidebar visible, but no toolbar button to close it:

1. Right-click the toolbar and choose the Customize toolbar option.

2. Drag the sidebar icon back to the toolbar and click Done in the lower right corner.

3. Once the sidebar button is back in your toolbar, click it to close the sidebar.

4. Right-click the sidebar icon and choose the Remove from toolbar option.

Sidebar expanded with no sidebar button visibleReturn the sidebar button via Customize toolbarClose the sidebar, right-click the sidebar button and remove it.

 

[tilwiti]

🎉

[zade]

It would be great if we could customise the sidebar using the 'customise toolbars' feature. It'd be nice to add/move/remove all the buttons as we wish, rather than having to stick with a premade layout. Great other improvements though!

[mustaqim]

I would like to see unloaded tabs greyed out. On TST, I just reduce the opacity to 0.75 so it retains its colour.

It looks really good so far. Great work!

[Phoenix_F]

Yes! it will be amazing if we can even reduce more the width of vertical tabs so the sidebar use even less space also amazing job now that the title bar dissapears when vertical tabs are activated i wish it keeps like this in the future!.

 

[ThePillenwerfer]

There are already multiple questions on the support forum on how to remove the sidebar.

[Garf1991]

As long as there's a way to hide it for those of us who don't want it

[zul]

I just restarted firefox and am seeing a new sidebar shortcut icon section that I have feedback on.

tldr: PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK OR ADD AN OPTION TO DISABLE IT. It is a huge waste of space that can't be turned off while using the sidebar.

I use the sidebar for an addon called Tab Stash. Which means I keep it open pretty much all the time and don't multitask my sidebar - it's always just Tab Stash.

This new sidebar behavior adds a second sidebar with little icon shortcuts to other sidebar addons and some "Firefox tools" like history, bookmarks, and for some unfathomable reason an AI chatbot (tangent suggestion: get rid of this garbage - no one wants more AI bloatware). The tool icons can be disabled in the sidebar options but the addon icons cannot. I assume this forced 2nd sidebar was to make it easy to switch between sidebar tools/addons.

The problem is this 2nd icon sidebar can't be closed independently from the actual sidebar. If I click the "hide sidebar" button it hides the icon bar as well as the actual sidebar with my Tab Stash in it. Clicking the button again opens JUST the icon sidebar and not even my tab stash. There seems to be NO WAY to have JUST the sidebar open without that 2nd little waste-of-space bar connected to it.

Please, for the love of all things good, revert this change or let me disable that little icon sidebar and JUST use the old sidebar how it was. There was nothing wrong with it. Don't force these crappy design decisions on us for no reason.

[ThePillenwerfer]

I don't know if this will work or not but it may be worth seeing if setting sidebar.revamp to false in about:config helps.

[zul]

Thanks - I actually saw someone else suggest that on reddit after posting my comment and it did indeed work. Hopefully in the near future they will add the option directly to the sidebar settings so we don't have to dig around in obscure setting pages to get rid of that dumb extra bar.

[ThePillenwerfer]

It's annoying that these things just appear and it's left to users to find how to switch them off, or use them if they wish to.  Brief instructions in the Release Notes would be nice.

[probablywrong]

I have to say, the release notes are really lacking with Nightly. There's rarely an indication what changed between releases. I get that it might feel annoying for the dev team to have to get somebody to write up "we fixed some bugs that most of you won't understand or care about" but it's still pretty necessary imo, especially when there's been tweaks, feature changes, etc. I'm on the Nightly build because I want to help. Help me help you, Mozilla. Give me some basic release notes for each version.

[Angel0Love]

YAYAY!!  It works!!  FINALLY!!  Thank u so much ThePillenwerfer!!  Whew!

[Atombombe]

I fully agree with this.

[mild_cardboard]

I believe the new sidebar is a step in the right direction—and a definite improvement—but also use Tab Stash and find it a bit redundant in my setup. I think the design more pleasing than what came before, but might have to opt-out for the time being. Note: I have hidden the horizontal tabs and old sidebar header via userChrome.css.

[SiLiKhon]

Found a bug with Firefox 133.0, although not sure how to reproduce: at some point the sidebar toggle button stopped working (the sidebar got always hidden and was not appearing). That was really problematic as the tabs were in vertical mode and without the side bar the navigation between tabs got really hard. Moreover, restarting the browser didn't help - there was still no sidebar.

Weirdly enough, I couldn't locate the sidebar or vertical/horizontal tabs preferences in about:preferences. I only managed to fix this via about:config by toggling sidebar.revamp back and forth.

[NameLastname]

You can add new features all you want but don't force us into having this ugly sidebar thing on our screen. Atleast give us (normal users) the option to disable it without going through so much hassle. Real spit in your face. Next time i'm googling 'google chrome' instead of how to disable this.

[ThePillenwerfer]

Exactly, they shouldn't force these things on people who are up-dating.  It's fine to include them but have them switched off and provide instructions in the Release Notes on how to enable them if desired.

I agree it's "hassle" to disable them but at least we can, which is more than can be said of such things on Chrome.

[NameLastname]

Exactly. I have made this account with the hope that Firefox doesn't turn into the thing we all hate. Let's not lower ourselves to the level of Google.

[Atombombe]

I only made an account here to comment on how much I dislike the new sidebar.

I've been using Firefox for 20+ years and I hate everything I'm being forced any new UI design.

[VinceNardelli]

Forced? You can disable it and keep the original horizontal tab bar. I think the vertical tab bar reduced unutilised dead space and it looks distinctive and modern.

[Skywind]

I updated to 133 and found that there are some extension icons located to the bottom left corner of the sidebar. I looked around and didn't find any ways to remove them. I don't want them to be there. Any solutions to remove them?

[asafko]

Hi @Skywind! Sorry about this inconvenience. These extensions are there because they use the sidebar API to provide a persistent view. Right now, there's not yet a way to remove them without removing the extension for good. It's a priority for us to introduce a way to unpin extensions from the sidebar, however. 

[Skywind]

Thanks for the reply! I think being able to pin/unpin them is really important. With these icons pinned, now I have them both on the toolbar and sidebar, which is not necessary. If pinning them is optional, then users can decide whether to do that or not. I think that will be much better.

[Summerstorm]

I strongly dislike the fact that if I open and close my bookmarks via ctrl-b, the sidebar view stays open afterwards.

[jscher2000]

I filed a bug for this today: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1933818

[JustRTFM]

It is really sad to see zero critical thinking skills from the people complaining about this feature.

[kidchthonic]

Care to explain? Your usage of "critical thinking skills" doesn't seem to match the context. We who are opposed to surprise UI changes full of bugs and which have to be disabled in about:config have many valid reasons to dislike this behavior of Firefox. It's been going on for a few years (I'm still philosophically furious that I had to restore tabs to being tabs instead of chrome-like buttons using CSS and have to fix it every six months or so when it gets screwed up again) and it's always such a hassle.

[R44Dazza]

How do I turn this sidebar off? I DON'T want it and it just appeared.

Completely ruins my screen layout.

[R44Dazza]

Did anyone properly test this before releasing to the general public?

[Debali]

Is impossible to remove it on version 133 for MacOS, I think is broken and is very annoying! Why do we must play riddles with this?

[ifona5ofav]

The sidebar is an absolute FAIL. I hate it. I don't want any real estate taken away from the left side of my screen to the right. I was not happy with it automatically being applied. It took me several minutes to figure out how to get rid of it. I wish software developers (on all programs and operating systems) would stop changing things. I don't want things to change. At the very least, give us the option to turn off the new "enhancements".

[Wojtus6020]

How did you manage to disable the sidebar? I couldn't and I searched for a long time. I went back to version 132 because it was unusable, where is this world coming from

[Angel0Love]

I do not like it at all - sidebar!  They are bothersome for me cuz I like just FULL SCREEN which is better for FACEBOOK, that is all but again I still don't like for anything else for that matters.  Please show me how to get this firefox back normal screen by hide sidebar complete out as FULL and yes I did click to hide sidebar but that didn't work at all!  So I am not happy so I am going to switch to other browser!  I do not like update for that kind like sidebar!  I am over late 60s so please stop changing so much!   OH!  One more thing it is cuz I have only one eye which is right and that sidebar for some reason bother me... I know they do change from right left...etc, I know that.  Again I hate it!

[BelFox]

Hi @asafko,

I appreciate the hard work you and your team have done on making the new sidebar come to fruition in Firefox. I look forward to having a handy sidebar, vertical tabs and tab groups available in Firefox 🧡.

That being said, I think it is really important not to rush and confront users with unpolished features if they are not clearly part of a Firefox (Labs) experiment. Don't just put it in their face but invite them to take part in the experiment or not! And as always ... there will always be people who don't want changes, so provide an option for them to easily hide the sidebar. I don't think it is necessary to have the sidebar displayed at all times? For example, we should still be able to access the History sidebar panel by pressing Ctrl+H without having the sidebar visible?

I've made other suggestions on Connect before regarding the new History sidebar, the lay-out of tab groups in vertical mode and other stuff. I hope your team can take a look at it.

To conclude: you can save yourselves from a lot of drama by making it easy for users to (de)activate new features. Don't let (rightfully) annoyed users overshadow the release of these - really useful - features!

Firefox FTW! 🦊

[ThePillenwerfer]

I've just seen something rather alarming on the Support Forum:  Apparently the about:config method of getting rid will soon be taken from us.  That despite several reports from people saying the official way via the gear-wheel at the bottom doesn't work for them.

Come on, Mozilla, you claim to champion 'Freedom' so let us have the freedom to choose.

[Whatever3]

Ill just move to chrome, they forcing this on us is just a waste of time

[cor-el]

I notice that there is so little space available for the history that only one or two letter are shown for a history item what makes it of no use for me. The bookmarks look better, haven't tried the Synced tabs yet.

[Whatever3]

If something made me want to switch to chrome is this forced sidebar. Glad reddit had instructions to eliminate this cancer on about config option.

[ThePillenwerfer]

The snag is it won't be long before Chrome has it as well as it's the latest fashion.  At least on Firefox these sorts of things can usually be removed somehow, just not as easily as we'd wish.

My next-choice browser would be SeaMonkey as they seem to know what their users want and don't give a fig about what the latest crazes are.  At present there are a few things about it I don't like but if Firefox becomes more annoying it'll be a case of picking the least bad.