Firefox releases tab groups for nightly

104 points
1/21/1970
3 days ago
by jack-bodine

Comments


sunaookami

It can also be enabled in Firefox Beta with "browser.tabs.groups.enabled" but it's still a bit buggy there. Ironically, Firefox was the first browser to have tab groups with Firefox 4 until they removed it because "nobody used it".

3 days ago

Paianni

Opera 11 (Dec 2010) had 'tab stacking'.

3 days ago

sunaookami

Didn't knew that, interesting! Really miss the old Opera.

3 days ago

[deleted]
3 days ago

hcs

It's still a bit buggy in Nightly, it seems, over the last few days I keep triggering it on accident.

2 days ago

ksec

>with Firefox 4 until they removed it because "nobody used it".

Tab Groups remains a good idea on paper but no one has done a useful implementation of it. I remember during the Firefox 4 Tab Group era I purposed that Tabs from site ( Say HN ) and any Tabs opened from that site, for example I have another tab from this submitted links bugzilla.mozilla.org. All To be moved together into a tab group instead of just moving site to a tab group.

It was rejected for whatever reason.

2 days ago

Cpoll

This sounds a bit like an extension that nests tabs in a tree structure (I can't remember the name).

2 days ago

dvogel

Both TST and Sidebery are leagues ahead of tab groups IMHO. Frankly sidebar tabs just work better for 16:9 aspect ratio because with a maximized window most sites don't make good use of 1/4 of the width anyway.

2 days ago

coffeeling

Huh? I use tab groups heavily in Brave. They're very useful, even if they're not nestable.

2 days ago

CrimsonRain

Try edge

2 days ago

wlesieutre

Exciting! Firefox used to support tab groups and removed them in 2016 because they weren’t used enough.

Now that Safari has them, I guess there’s pressure to have feature parity?

3 days ago

infensus

They took the most upvoted ideas from the community forum and started implementing them. Maybe to win some users over, but I think it might be too late for this to have any impact on market share.

I'm also kinda disappointed they just copied the UI from Chrome instead of releasing a refreshed version of the previous implementation. Old Firefox tab groups were like Safari tab groups (or "workspaces" in Edge, Vivaldi, Zen and maybe others), and I think they are way better for organisation. Yeah, STG extension still exists, but having it built-in would be nice.

2 days ago

DanitaBaires

Oh god. I hope that doesn't break the plugin I use (can't remember because I'm away from the computer), the one I had to install when they phased out the "panorama" feature.

6 hours ago

AAAAaccountAAAA

Hopefully they won't make it mandatorily enabled like on Android Chrome.

3 days ago

danpalmer

What does it mean for tab groups to be enforced? Is it popping up messages to shame you into sorting your tabs better?

Assuming not, what’s the harm?

3 days ago

sunaookami

Have you used Chrome for Android? It's absolutely awful and forced me to switch to another browser. All tabs are opened in a tab group, sometimes they will open a new tab group. Very confusing behaviour. The desktop implementation is good though.

3 days ago

danpalmer

I use Chrome on Android and have never noticed a tab group. Admittedly I don't use the browser extensively, but still. On iOS, which seems to be very similar, I've seen the "open in new tab group" button, but never used it.

4 hours ago

kgeist

>All tabs are opened in a tab group, sometimes they will open a new tab group. Very confusing behaviour.

So I'm not the only one. I never figured out why sometimes tabs open in an existing group, and sometimes in a new group. Curious to find the spec which explains the behavior...

2 days ago

Joker_vD

Yeah, it completely ruins the ability to switch to another tab: instead of the tab-switching screen having 6 tab previews, there are now 6 tab group previews with a single tab in each, and those previews are tiny, they are a quarter of the tab preview size. And closing a tab group is, again, more difficult than closing a tab because it has a ... instead of x at the top right corner.

2 days ago

KTibow

When clicking or using "open in new tab" from the long press menu (not "open in new tab in group")?

2 days ago

coffeeling

Brave has a setting to enable/disable the feature, idk if standard Chrome has it.

2 days ago

maxvisser

I rather have something like arc does where you can anchor tabs on the sidebar as bookmarks. It feels a lot less chaotic.

2 days ago

jay_kyburz

Or, you know, just use bookmarks.

a day ago

AzzyHN

I could've sworn Firefox already had tab groups, though I may be thinking of container tabs...

a day ago

[deleted]
2 days ago

AbuAssar

I use tab groups all the time in safari, and I used an extension to have them in firefox as well.

This feature is a must for me

2 days ago

e40

How long does it take to get from nightly to release?

3 days ago

throwaway74354

Firefox 135 is expected to be released on February 4.

3 days ago

glandium

This specific change will not automatically make progress from nightly to release. Specifically, this is enabling tab groups by default in nightly only, for however long it will take for the feature to be stabilized.

2 days ago

imcritic

I want tab groups in Chromium :-(

3 days ago

coffeeling

Chromium has had tab groups for ages, both on desktop and mobile.

2 days ago

johnea

A word was left out of the title: Again... Firefox releases tab groups

Tabs (including all kinds of groupings and UIs) were the best when they were dealt with in NPAPI plugins.

Mozilla foundation has been screwing them up ever since.

Of course, always for the betterment of humanity, totally not just because goggle told them to...

2 days ago

wtallis

Were there ever NPAPI plugins to manage tabs, or are you getting that confused with XUL extensions?

2 days ago