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.

[Arvid]

Also please let me hide the title when vertical tabs are enabled

[lfrigodesouza]

That would be a nice feature to have. I've tried dozens of add-ons and other customization, but none of them were as smooth and well rounded as a native implementation would be.

[SignalAffairs]

Microsoft Edge's implementation of vertical tabs is awesome for me. I started using it and can't go back to normal tabs on top. I hope Firefox adds this natively to the browser (optional of course!). Right now that's one of two (native sleeping tabs like MS Edge) things stopping me from using it full time but that's just me. 🙂

Microsoft documented how they decided to make it here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/vertical-tabs-preview-now-available-in-the-canary-an...

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/customer-insights-research/articles/giving-users-an-e...

[kessi]

It is really useful while opening many tab. Since I browse from laptop screen of side really go to waste while browsing website also vertical screen size is low in Firefox from new design. So this feature will be really useful.

[Anonymous]

This idea has a lot of support and should move forward to the development stage. If there is still something to be discussed, please clarify it.

[ikpjr]

Edge's native vertical tabs are good:

• compact sidebar (only show icons) when not using.
• move tabs to arbitrary group.
• folding, rearranging groups.

but their implementation has some (minor) drawbacks:

• pinned tabs "steal" space from the other tabs - a fix would be to have them be horizontally scrolled in a single line like can be achieved in CSS in Firefox and Vivaldi.
• opening of new tabs is inconsistent among several methods be it context menus, keyboard shortcuts or links from other apps(this also happens in horizontal tab strip layout).
• Vivaldi natively allows stacking of all tabs on a domain, by right-clicking a tab with such domain and selecting the "stacking of same domain tabs" option. 

I've experimented with almost all Vertical addons and concluded that for most flexibility and ease of finding and rearranging tabs and groups, "Edge's groups" are not sufficient, especially with many tabs. This would be its biggest drawback.

An intermediate solution I found(until a solution addressing major concerns in this thread is implemented) is to use "Tab Sidebar" for "Edge's groups" and "Simple Tab Groups" for related "Edge's groups"(on Firefox). This enables:

• Related tabs forming "Tasks"(these are often from different domains - search, comparison, study, forums, social, other pages as relevant to the task).
• Tasks put closer together by need, similarity, sequence which are grouped in a "Project".
• Tabs and tasks from other "Projects" are hidden from the sidebar(only current "Project" tabs and tasks are shown).
• The same operations that Edge allows are possible with these or other addons in Firefox.

I would add Project filtering with search and Project tags as an additional feature to be implemented as this enables easier Projects selection and focusing. Imagine being a consultant of any type with projects separable by domain knowledge or industry/business type. Or even a regular person that could have Projects assigned to facets of their life:

• as a student with a Project assigned for each course and a Task assigned for each concept worthy of attention.
• as a consumer or seller with a Project having separate Tasks for individual gadgets, clothing, etc.
• entertainment and self-realization Project comprised of Task types - books, audiovisual, sports, hobbies, friend activities or exploration/travel.
• as a professional with Project per client and Tasks types related to the various parts of doing business - marketing, buying, inventory, legal, accounting, expenses, sub-contracting, delegating, tracking in general.
• as a learner/researcher with individual Project assigned to Health topic and/or family conditions, investments, etc. 
• some of the above mentioned Tasks, could be spun off into their own Projects with their own Tasks, depending on the user and their intensity of use.

Related Projects are then filtered by the person who wishes to focus/advance on that facet of their life or be working/getting things done(has deadlines) at a specific time of day or week or month. The person could be switching frequently between those Projects and Project progress would be more like parallel in nature. Or it could be more sequential if Projects have other Project Task dependencies or sequential deadlines(like a software project with sub-projects or a building with its parts).

This is what is needed and sufficient for optimized user workflows, no more grouping and nesting than this is needed.

Whether this is achieved by extensions or native I don't care, as long as a lasting, robust and flexible solution is reached for implementation.

Addendum: "same tag" Project/Tasks analogy that was cut : imagine home and land/garden improvements on different rooms and patches, respectively and/or bench/garage hobbies- each room, patch and hobby being a Project; tools, materials, blueprints, knowledge and budget would be each Tasks or part of a Task, with Tasks resource type composition and resource type instances varying between Projects). Such Projects would fall under a Tag named "Home" or "Home Improvements" ready to be selected and switched to at the right time for the user.

[VARUNANILGUPTA]

Yes, I miss this a lot in Firefox. Also allow us to hide title bar in vertical tab mode, like in Edge.

[BlooskyDante]

I really like firefox and would love to support it, however as of right now I cannot give up the practicality of having vertical tabs natively

As a software dev in charge of a team it's really helpful to have many (50+ tabs) open at a time for whenever I need to check up on what someone is doing or if they need help. 

Personally, I'd like to see the feature be implemented in a way similar to the Tree Style Tab extension gives, where you can create stacks within stacks of tabs, allowing for proper ordering of tabs.

I think that what bothers me the most right now and is a deterrent to using FF with plugins is the inability to disable the current tabs view & title bar at the top, which reduces the amount of screen space available.

[Hemaant_7]

"Sadly this is why I must bounce between Edge and FF, just because those vertical tabs are so darn useful in my workflow."

same  for me also

[Freerunner]

Some time ago my company decided to quit supporting Firefox. I was really sad when I had to switch to Edge. But unfortunately I began to really like its vertical tabs. So much, that I began to hate Firefox' tabs implementation and its useless waste of screen real estate.

I was then looking out for browser alternatives at home. I'm a linux user for over 20 years. One linux user does not simply install Edge on one of her/his rigs. I found my freedom with qutebrowser and its vertical tabs implementation. It's simply amazing. Unfortunately qutebrowsers engine is based on chromium (qtwebengine, which makes it even worse, but technical details don't matter here).

I would love coming back to a useable Firefox as a daily, unfortunately I can't stand the UI without extreme modding (rip out default tab bar, unclutter address field with userchrome/css and restore missing functionality with addons/extensions). Even then it doesn't feel really good.

[grahamperrin]

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/native-vertical-tabs-like-in-microsoft-edge/idi-p/85

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> or just provide an API to hide the tab bar and …

1332447 - API to hide the tabstrip
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447>

[JHMeader]

Please make this happen. It's one of the very few things keeping me from ditching Chromium forever.

[Kevraya]

This is absolutely needed to win back the folks from Chromium based browsers. This is the only reason I use Microsoft Edge, this along with Tabs Grouping. The Mozilla team should just use Edge for some time and steal the idea.

[fredless]

Any update on this feature from Mozilla? Seems like it's been about 5 months since we've heard anything beyond this being "in review" either here or anywhere in the subreddit. I know development decisions can take some time, but an update would be appreciated if only to let the community know what is going on. That this turned out to be such a popular feature seems to have caught FF completely flat-footed here.

Mozilla is turning up the heat in the press lately (again) on the OS OEMs about unfair practices here - while that is certainly an issue honestly we're watching longtime FF users willingly turn to Edge or other Chromium alternatives primarily because they bake in a decent native implementation of this feature. Feels like we're now starting to hemorrhage a significant portion of our existing base to worthwhile innovations happening with other browser makers. Help us help you.

[Rishik]

As of right now,
i really love Firefox on Android due to its availability of extensions unlike most browsers (was using Yandex till then) so thought i would come back to Firefox on my PC for syncing both the browsers (on PC and mobile) only to realize that i got attached to Edge's vertical tabs feature and now i feel i am losing more than gain in productivity so please Firefox team, I would really appreciate if you would take the idea from edge and implement in Firefox so that many of Edge's fan-base can come and start to use Firefox again.