Tab-scroll: intuitive mobile tab managment

[KianuGoedemond]

When using your mobile phone, scrolling through long webpages is one of the most intuitive ways of reading entire websites. Once you want to switch to a new tab, this "intuitivity" dissappears completely. To switch to a new tab, you need to go to the up/downside of your phone, click on the tab management and scroll through a long line of open tabs, resulting in the need of a second hand when using your phone or a needless loss of time and difficulties when holding your phone in one hand, by needing to readjust your phone position in your hand.

My idea is a proposal of a new use for tab management and scrolling in Firefox. Instead of an unreachable place for your tab management, I propose a customizable placement of your tabs in Firefox. The activation of your tab management is made by pressing your finger for 3 seconds on the right side of your screen (the time is adjustable in your settings, as is the placement of the tab management that can be changed to left). By pressing your finger, a menu with a small preview window of your open tabs appear and the page that you are viewing becomes blurred. Then you scroll through your tabs by either moving your finger up or down. Depending on the position of your finger on the screen, you scroll faster or slower through your tabs. The closer your finger is to the upper or lower extents of your screen, the faster you scroll through your tabs. To select the right tab, you moving to the center of the screen again and keep your finger on the screen in the same place for a couple of seconds, of which the time can be adjusted in your Firefox settings. With the same ease, search, history, downloads and bookmarks become accessible too.

By introducing this way of tab management, you no longer experience difficulties of not having your tabs in a reachable place. Instead you can access your tabs in an intuitive way with one hand and scroll fast through your tabs, while having a small preview of your tabs as well, all within reach of your hand.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[MarvinMep]

I like the idea, but (if I get it right) it would be too difficult keep the finger in touch with the screen all the time while making all those movements. The user should touch and hold by 2 sec just to open the tab manager (with I imagine more linear then the one in the mockups). Once tab manager is open it could be normally scrolled up and down. Then the user touch the chosen tab to open it or if the gives up scroll the manager back to the side tab manager came from (the initial hold touch could on either sides).

Besides (and that's the idea wich made me come to thia side), we also could be chege tabs by scrolling the page side to side (or up and down after we reach the begining or the and end of the page on screen).