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.

[luis123456789]

As a Sidebery user, having access to the minimum practical functionality for this in a native manner would be nice. The most important IMO being that it would remove the need for userChrome modifications to hide the tab bar, since it would become direction-aware.

[BKLronin]

I would love to see this too. Extensionsa re not a proper solution even if they are good.

[Neophear]

Why has this not been implemented yet? With so many ultra wide users, this should be a no brainer

[klez]

Hey Mozilla,

I'll donate even more when this becomes implemented!

Love ya'll anyway

[avijayr]

If FF doesn't get native vertical tabs, how can this not happen? My fav default browser since Netscape days - what a way to go!

[nikelton]

How long will it take until we get those vertical tabs? Vertical Tabs are crucial when it came to corporate work and even in my daily life, it makes things so much easier to manage - Also the ability to group tabs, like tabs for work, tabs for education, tabs for shopping, personal tabs and etc.

This is really going to be a serious benefit to the browser. Mozilla is a great browser and will be even greater if they implement this. And please don't bring up add-ons for Firefox for vertical tabs, it's not the same, we need native vertical tabs, just like in Edge Browser.

[kbomb]

I must admit, if I would likely downvote this, I would.    Note, only allowing upvotes misleads a person into thinking an idea is popular, when it may be--on average--quite unpopular.   You are depriving yourselves of critical information.   What is the rationale for depriving yourselves of user feedback on a feedback site?

The FF interface is not old-fashioned at all in my view.    Chrome's is.   But maybe I'm confused.   There's a down arrow in the upper right of the FF window, and if you click it, you see a beautiful, clear, scrollable "vertical tab interface".   Better yet, **it takes zero screen real-estate when not needed,** unlike Edge. And the (scrollable) horizontal tab bar on top shows you tabs you've opened recently, and most often that is all I need, so I only use the scrollable vertical interface occasionally.    To create a permanent Edge-like vertical tab interface, am I right in thinking people just want a version of the FF vertical tab display in which the same interface is always showing?   I would be in favor of that as a user-customization option.

But maybe I'm missing something, and I apologize if that's true.  

[MrMichaelangelo]

@kbomb, yes, that is what this thread is for -- a vertical tab bar that is always displayed like Edge's.

And yes, it would be an option, just like it can be turned on or off in Edge.

[Jon]

@kbomb thanks for the feedback here - votes are only a part of the evaluation process. They help surface potential opportunities to improve our products, but we also spend a lot of time reviewing the comment sections for insights like specific use cases and also posts with different opinions. We just encourage that feedback stays constructive - so thank you again for sharing your point of view.

[thelancastrian]

Thanks @Jon , any feedback on the ask? It certainly appears to be a popular request 

[BKLronin]

Maybe a simple explanation why vtabs make sense to me:

The web is mostly happening in the center of the screen and that leaves the sides pretty much unused while vertical space is more precious. Vtabs lead to less scrolling and shorter mouse moves. 

A good example is this forum 🙂

Thank you for coming to my TED talk 😄

(Also free and saveable customization is beautiful)

[BKLronin]

If I may add another:

Vtabs make better use of screen space beacuse the web often concentrates in the middle of the screen and we have less vertical than horizontal space with our normal 16:9 monitors. They furthermore decrease mouse movement distance and there is more space for previews than on top. 

I dont see a problem in stacking of navigation elements on the side if a website should occupy that space. It is distuingishable enough to not get confused. It doesnt have to be seperated on top or bottom. 

This forum is a good example of central content and available space on the sides. 

IMHO Vivaldi does it best currently. Optional placement and another side panels for different tasks.

[Suraj_Mishra]

@kbombActually now that I think of it, you made a really good point. Having a binary response to check popularity would be a little misleading unless @Jon (Community Manager) goes through each and every comment to mentally evaluate the user opinion (which is what they are doing at the moment). I believe having a range instead of binary response should be better? Like we can have a selection range of 0 to 10 where 0 would mean the feature should not be applied, 5 would mean the users would like the feature implemented but it's not a priority and 10 would mean that the particular feature implementation should be of highest priority? @Jon what do you think about it?

[lt1328]

If you are going to implement this function, then you need to be able to use vertical tabs on both sides

[firefly_katamar]

I'd like to point out to FF devs reading this that I would love vertical tabs on both sides, what really needs to happen is that the tab bar can be hidden / shelf behavior.