Firefox Is Working on Perfecting Tab Candy

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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May 9, 2000
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If you are one of those people who always have a gazillion tabs open at the same time and find it difficult to keep them all straight, you might want to check out what the crew at Mozilla is putting the finishing touches on.

Be sure to watch the video below for a full overview — from the looks of it, it seems as if Tab Candy is sort of like Apple’s Expose feature mixed with their Spaces feature, both of which are baked into OS X. For those who don’t use a Mac, basically these features allow you to zoom out and get a bird’s-eye-view of all your windows (or tabs, in this case) that are open — and you can also arrange open windows (or again, tabs, in this case) in certain spaces so they’re clumped together. This allows you to more easily find what you’re looking for with so many tabs open.
 
Why do people like this kinda stuff? The little tab dropdown list on Firefox 4 that shows the title for each tab is all I would ever want. When we are talking about lots of tabs its upwards of 20-40 tabs for most people I know. Showing a tiny little thumbnail isn't going to help navigation. Especially when many of those tabs are probably quite similar in appearance. I'll stick to the title bar text which can easily give me all the information I want in the smallest space possible without some silly time wasting animations.
 
I saw this yesterday and wondered WTF would be the use of it, and after almost a day of it simmering in the back of my brain I still can't find a use for it. I already use Tab Mix Plus which gives me rows of tabs - so that shit in the video never happens. I can't stand having more than one browser window open at a time - so that shit in the video will never happen. ;)

I know some people will be all over this like... well, a baby with candy I suppose. I just won't be one of 'em...
 
I never keep my tabs/browser opened long enough to make this useful, nor do I have interest to start doing so. It's what favorites are for.
 
I think it's a pretty cool idea. I would definitely use it. The tab thumbnails in Opera are definitely a step up from text-only tabs, but if it could go one step further, it would be great.
 
-1

I don't know why you would need this. If you need a visual picture to refresh your mind on what a specific tab is, then you either have (1) unsafe/risky browsing behavior, or (2) other.
 
Why do people like this kinda stuff? The little tab dropdown list on Firefox 4 that shows the title for each tab is all I would ever want. When we are talking about lots of tabs its upwards of 20-40 tabs for most people I know. Showing a tiny little thumbnail isn't going to help navigation. Especially when many of those tabs are probably quite similar in appearance. I'll stick to the title bar text which can easily give me all the information I want in the smallest space possible without some silly time wasting animations.

Normally I don't like this kind of stuff, but this I do like.

One thing I am worried about is how much resources does this take?

My last two browsing sessions, when I saved them I had 176 tabs open two days ago, and 118 yesterday (I typically save every day then start over...)

It would be cool to take those tabs and organize them. But, admittedly, at over 100 tabs (and sometimes getting close to 200 apparently), FF is about ready to implode on itself already and crash... So, this tab candy crap is probably just going to make it crash even faster...

But yeah, having those tabs organized out would be cool...

(And, FWIW, I had no idea my tab counts were so high... I tend to not close anything so I have a history of where I've been, but obviously that's getting to be ridiculous... No wonder I've been hoping for a "search tabs" option!)
 
Mmmm.. candy!!

pile%20of%20candy.jpg


I don't use Firefox.. will wait until Chromium perfects this before using it in SRWare Iron:D
 
These kinds of changes make me wonder if FF4 will even be worth upgrading to. Everything I've seen in the beta has made me not like it in the slightest, and this is just bloat. features with questionable usability would be better served as an extension or addon.

Seriously, outside of the one or two wackjobs that never close anything, who actually uses 30+ tabs per browser window?

at this point all I want is a simple, efficient browser with a completely customizable UI and extension support. Leave the bloat-fluff options to the users to add in if they want.
 
Don't we call this opening a new window and dragging all your tabs into that new window...

Great job FF you went in a circle.
 
This should allow for a smoother UI transition as touchscreens become more prevalent on laptops and desktops.
 
Don't we call this opening a new window and dragging all your tabs into that new window...

Great job FF you went in a circle.

exactly my thoughts.

I've had a chance to test out ff4.0b1 and the tab management is really... really terrible compared to chrome's (and even safari for that matter). dragging tabs.. merging, separating into new window, arranging, etc.. feels really choppy and unnatural when you compare it to some other browsers.
 
I do tend to have moments where I get a shit load of tabs open at once. Like, looking up programming references, I'll have multiple threads open at a time reading about what people are trying and doing.

The thing i disliked most about FF4 beta was that it does what IE does with tabs. That is, forever tab you open, it shows up as a separate window on the taskbar. That's a total PITA for, because I like to keep windows separate from tabs. A window should still be the main divider, and tabs should still be the sub-divider. By making tabs the same level of division as a window, it's easy to lose track of what you had opened where.
 
Why do people like this kinda stuff? The little tab dropdown list on Firefox 4 that shows the title for each tab is all I would ever want. When we are talking about lots of tabs its upwards of 20-40 tabs for most people I know. Showing a tiny little thumbnail isn't going to help navigation. Especially when many of those tabs are probably quite similar in appearance. I'll stick to the title bar text which can easily give me all the information I want in the smallest space possible without some silly time wasting animations.

This basically...
 
If you really have to have 20+ tabs open they already have a solution for this. It's called bookmarks.
 
I use firefox showcase for my multitab situations (got 7 open now), but the grouping stuff would be great
 
Normally I don't like this kind of stuff, but this I do like.

One thing I am worried about is how much resources does this take?

My last two browsing sessions, when I saved them I had 176 tabs open two days ago, and 118 yesterday (I typically save every day then start over...)

It would be cool to take those tabs and organize them. But, admittedly, at over 100 tabs (and sometimes getting close to 200 apparently), FF is about ready to implode on itself already and crash... So, this tab candy crap is probably just going to make it crash even faster...

But yeah, having those tabs organized out would be cool...

(And, FWIW, I had no idea my tab counts were so high... I tend to not close anything so I have a history of where I've been, but obviously that's getting to be ridiculous... No wonder I've been hoping for a "search tabs" option!)

WTF dude... that's what you know, the "History" is for...
 
They need to take note from IE and make FF take advantage of Windows Aero to make tab glimpsing an easier experience.
 
Im probably one of the few people who have over 100 tabs open. Its very useful when going through multiple threads on forums where I could just refresh the tabs to read any new posts made. Reading news articles is another way for me to start making multiple tabs. I also do this for school work when I have to do some research for something and I need data from multiple sites to make my paper.

Looking forward to something like this since it would definitely be of help to me.
 
dont understand... I deal with this on a daily basis (im a web designer), and I have no problem opening 3 windows each with appropriate tabs running.

To be fair though I run 2 30" monitors, so i tend to move windows around... with all of them visible.
 
this is awesome, granted like above I do this by opening new windows but the added functionality would be great. also for laptops this would be a far better solution.
 
Doesnt windows 7 do this already?

This is basically tab grouping writ large - IE8 does this (at least it's in there) and I think Opera has something similar but, as I stated above, I've been known to have 30+ tabs open when doing research and it's not an issue. I'd rather have 40+ tabs in 4 or 5 rows in the same browser (and visible info on each tab since I limit them to 150 pixels wide) than have 4 or 5 copies of Firefox open with a few tabs in each.

It's not the OS thing with the Taskbar and button grouping, this is browser-only with the Firefox dealio.

But everybody is different - this will be "the cat's meow" for some folks while others like myself will just be "ugh..." and move on. :)
 
I've never had more than, say, 5 tabs open at one time. I can't fathom why someone would need to be looking at 20+ pages all at once.
 
Because for some of us, it's easier to have access to everything at one time in multiple pages than it is to have to do things in a linear page 1 to page 2 to page 3 fashion. I hated school, personally, and couldn't stand the linear way things are typically taught. I learned more on my own by grabbing the books, hitting the library, looking up stuff in encyclopedias, and getting my hands on the material than I ever did simply sitting in a classroom and listening to someone regurgitate the same crap daily.

Same thing with surfing for info in the present. The entire concept of hypertext is that you don't have to read through an entire topic beginning to end to get the info you might want. You could read half the first page and hit a link to a related topic that expands your awareness and your knowledge base, so you click it - but typically as soon as you do that, you just "lost" the starting content since you (typically) load the new link in the same tab/window.

With multiple tabs, a person doesn't have to go Back/Forward so much as a conceptual "side to side" motion as the original tab would still be there, holding the original content, while you open the link in a new tab, now you have both pages of info there for you, easily switched between with a simple click. More efficient ways of doing things...

I hit a page with tons of links to more info, I simply hit the links with a wheel-click (press down on the mouse wheel (if you're using a wheel mouse, that is) and that almost always opens that link in a new tab inside the same browser window, but some browsers need to be configured to do it.

I've seen people with wheel mice that never knew this and they'd have 14 browser windows open, but then I'd "show them the light" and once they understood what the tabbed browsing could do for their efficiency (not to mention the fact that 14 browser windows open at the same time is a freakin' nightmare, or worse) they definitely altered their habits accordingly and were much better off.

Some people get it, some people don't, but it's better to have this stuff as an option than not...
 
No thanks. Looks like an invitation to micro-managing slavery. Would rather train myself to simply not open many tabs. Keep it simple.
 
This is actually kind of cool. I might like this... still can't tell for sure til I use it though.
 
I've never had more than, say, 5 tabs open at one time. I can't fathom why someone would need to be looking at 20+ pages all at once.

Everyone's browsing habits are different. I have 48 tabs open across three Firefox windows right now, each window dealing with a different subject I was looking at and want to get back to in the next few hours.
 
I've never had more than, say, 5 tabs open at one time. I can't fathom why someone would need to be looking at 20+ pages all at once.

As others have already said.. it's a simple way to look up a lot of content at once instead of back and forth. For instance: I recently took interest in MMA fighting, so I bounced over to Wikipedia to look at the bio of one fighter; A half hour later I am reading through and closing out a dozen or so tabs on different fighters that have fought or are somehow linked to the original fighter. I do this all the time on ESPN as well.. I'll open up the main page, look at the featured articles and select the ones that peak my interest to go into new tabs, and then I'll generally open up the Tennis and College Football subsections in new tabs and then open 3-4 articles from each of those subsections into new tabs. I'll end up with 20 or so tabs and then I go through and read each article and close the tabs out; Which is far less tedious than opening ESPN, opening one article, then going back to the main page and opening another article.. and repeating this process 20 some odd times.

I dunno how you operate on your browser, but it just seems more efficient to me to have plenty of tabs open as opposed to backtracking a thousand times.
 
I've never had more than, say, 5 tabs open at one time. I can't fathom why someone would need to be looking at 20+ pages all at once.

Seriously? I guess you just know the one porn page then huh?:D
 
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