[HN Gopher] Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
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       Brave Browser introduces vertical tabs
        
       Author : czottmann
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2023-06-01 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (brave.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (brave.com)
        
       | SxC97 wrote:
       | Looks like there's no tree functionality. I'll be sticking with
       | Orion for the time being.
        
         | thunderbong wrote:
         | Or Vivaldi, which even lets you rename the group of tabs!
        
       | DerekBickerton wrote:
       | Never liked vertical tabs. Horses for courses, personal
       | preference and all that. My muscle memory for normal/horizontal
       | tab layouts is so ingrained in me, that using anything different
       | would take on a huge unlearning.
        
         | dschuessler wrote:
         | I want to like them because they save vertical space, and you
         | can always read the page titles, regardless of how many tabs
         | you have open.
         | 
         | But as with you, my muscle memory gets in the way.
        
         | witchesindublin wrote:
         | It becomes useful if you need to sort through dozens of tabs or
         | use a touchscreen.
        
       | slily wrote:
       | Why do people need dozens or hundreds of tabs to the point that
       | they need groups for them? We've had bookmarks (and folders for
       | them) for decades... It made way more sense when you could expect
       | tabs to always be loaded, and not behave like another set of
       | bookmarks.
        
         | kitsunesoba wrote:
         | Bookmarks have management overhead and are too easily forgotten
         | about. For a lot of people tabs serve as a sort of to-do list
         | or with groups, repositories for sites that will briefly be
         | useful for a certain task in the near future. They naturally
         | get closed as they're done with, eschewing any kind of cleanup
         | step as is necessary with bookmarks.
        
       | james_pm wrote:
       | Everyone is copying Arc. Microsoft showed a similar design to
       | what Arc has along with vertical tabs.
        
         | OutsmartDan wrote:
         | The crucial difference is keeping the address bar- this is
         | where I think Arc is falling short. Maybe it's me, but I have
         | an extremely difficult time reprogramming my expectations of
         | where the address bar should be.
        
         | miohtama wrote:
         | Tree Style Tabs were released for Firefox around 2007
         | 
         | https://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_treestyletab.html.en#history
         | 
         | I am not sure if someone like Opera was earlier, but Arc is
         | likely copying this.
        
           | Lammy wrote:
           | > I am not sure if someone like Opera was earlier
           | 
           | OmniWeb 5.0, 2004:
           | https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2004/02/ow5/3/#tabs
        
             | cosmotic wrote:
             | Windows common controls had side-aligned tabs around 1997
        
               | pgeorgi wrote:
               | OS/2 2.1:
               | https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/os221#general,
               | released December 1993.
        
             | kitsunesoba wrote:
             | Yep, OmniWeb was the first place I saw the of the vertical
             | tabs back in the mid-00s. Blew my mind.
             | 
             | The concept of "drawers" that OS X had at the time was well
             | suited for this kind of thing, with some "free" (in terms
             | of dev effort) flexibility of allowing the user to choose
             | which edge they unfurled from. It's too bad they fell out
             | of style in favor of much more static sidebars.
        
             | stonogo wrote:
             | Opera 4 had them in 2000. Opera 3 might have, but it won't
             | run on Windows 10 so I can't easily check.
             | 
             | edit: Started up a VM -- Opera 3 didnt have tabs at all,
             | although it did already have an MDI.
        
         | fayten wrote:
         | I don't really think anyone is copying anyone here. This is a
         | popular feature for browsers that has been around for over a
         | decade.
         | 
         | Orion[1] is another recent MacOS browser that released before
         | Arc in 2021 and has vertical tabs. Edge had vertical tabs as an
         | experiment back in 2020[2] and is full feature now. Vivaldi has
         | had vertical tabs since 2015[3]. It might not count since it's
         | not built in, but Firefox has had vertical tab extensions since
         | 2007[4].
         | 
         | [1]https://browser.kagi.com/
         | 
         | [2] https://www.howtogeek.com/697986/how-to-enable-and-use-
         | verti...
         | 
         | [3]https://www.maketecheasier.com/vertical-tabs-browsers/
         | 
         | [4]https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/graphs/contributors
        
       | whatscooking wrote:
       | I care more about having enough horizontal space to do split view
       | than I care about having 10px of vertical space
        
         | joaopms wrote:
         | For me it's opposite! Since I have a ultrawide 1080p monitor
         | (2560x1080), I actually prefer to "waste" horizontal space :)
        
       | zamadatix wrote:
       | Anyone remember the "Compact Navigation" test Chrome did ~a
       | decade ago? https://pureinfotech.com/how-to-enable-compact-
       | navigation-fe...
       | 
       | It had a major downside of putting browser chrome over the page
       | area and hiding the URL. Over time the latter has become the
       | default anyways but the former is still iffy. Safari approached
       | this concept more recently, as the only browser I'm aware with
       | this as an officially supported option, but put the URL bar
       | directly in the tab, which is a bit more awkward to use. On
       | Vivaldi there is the option to hide it but then activate it via a
       | keyboard shortcut/gesture, which functions similarly but can
       | cause extra switching between keyboard based navigation and mouse
       | based navigation (the latter of which can be very hard to avoid).
       | Because of the way Vivaldi is implemented it's always performed a
       | lot worse than other Chromium based browsers for me as well. In
       | Firefox there were several CSS hacks for this but it was
       | constantly falling apart on updates so I gave up on it.
       | 
       | I guess the long story short is: as a very light tab user (1-8
       | throughout the day) I miss this old option in Chrom* greatly.
        
       | gnicholas wrote:
       | I've been using this on Brave dev for several months. It's great!
       | I hope they enable nested tabs, which I loved having in TST on
       | Firefox.
        
       | bandzest wrote:
       | I was waiting for the 'Arc'-ening to happen.
        
         | hiidrew wrote:
         | I just want the shift-ctrl-c to be in every browser. Probably
         | my favorite feature from Arc.
        
           | greenie_beans wrote:
           | ah! nice! thanks!
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | game_the0ry wrote:
       | I really liked brave and this is an interesting feature, but I
       | had to stop using it when I tried syncing my bookmarks - for some
       | reason, a bunch ended up duplicating, and I have a lot of
       | bookmarks that are well organized.
       | 
       | Otherwise, I would have kept using it - it was fast and energy
       | efficient on my intel macbook, way better than chrome.
       | 
       | I also have to say - I hate when I have so many tabs open. It's
       | basically a manifestation of my ADHD. I need to focus one thing
       | at a time.
        
       | TradingPlaces wrote:
       | Kagi's Orion browser also has this. I like it.
        
       | biggestfan wrote:
       | It's strange to me how a key selling point of these vertical tabs
       | is "save on vertical space", but they almost always still include
       | a header bar. You can see in the video they posted that it saves
       | almost no vertical space, while now taking up a massive amount of
       | horizontal space.
        
         | tivert wrote:
         | > It's strange to me how a key selling point of these vertical
         | tabs is "save on vertical space", but they almost always still
         | include a header bar.
         | 
         | Honestly, that's not the main selling point of vertical tabs
         | for me. Horizontal tabs don't scale for more than a dozen or
         | so, but vertical tabs do. The "wasted" horizontal space is
         | useless for reading most page, but displays enough data for
         | practical navigation, and the vertical organization allows
         | more-developed vertical scrolling technologies to be used with
         | the tab list (e.g. scroll wheels).
        
           | alpaca128 wrote:
           | > the vertical organization allows more-developed vertical
           | scrolling technologies to be used with the tab list (e.g.
           | scroll wheels).
           | 
           | Firefox also lets you scroll the tabs horizontally. Which I
           | prefer to Brave's approach of simply not displaying the last
           | tabs in the bar if it's too many, which means newly opened
           | tabs simply never show up while the others are shrunk so far
           | they become difficult to hit with the cursor.
        
         | nicklevin wrote:
         | Arc moves the header bar stuff (URL) to the left pane, so the
         | entire right pane is site content.
        
         | kevincox wrote:
         | That's a cool idea. Move the rest of the browser chrome into
         | the left bar as well. Less of vertical tabs as an entire
         | vertical chrome.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Perhaps we should just make monitors in 4:3 like we used to
         | instead of 16:9 which is ridiculous since we typically don't
         | watch movies in the office.
        
           | tivert wrote:
           | > Perhaps we should just make monitors in 4:3 like we used to
           | instead of 16:9 which is ridiculous since we don't typically
           | watch movies in the office.
           | 
           | That's on the right track, but going too far. 16:10 or 3:2 is
           | much more reasonable.
           | 
           | The idea of using 16:9 screens for work needs to die in a
           | fire.
        
             | Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
             | IMO the closer the ratio gets to 1 the better but the only
             | fact I have for this is 1280x1024 (5:4) being better than
             | 1024x768 (4:3)
        
         | abdullahkhalids wrote:
         | They certainly do save space on Firefox (with the right
         | config).
         | 
         | In the default setting, there is OS title bar, then a
         | address+icon bar, then the tab bar.
         | 
         | After installing sidebar tabs, you can remove the tab bar with
         | some css, which saves about 5% of the vertical screen space.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | "tab bar in titlebar" has been the Firefox default for a
           | number of years at this point. If Linux, your distro/packager
           | of choice may have overridden that. The only true exception
           | to this is tile based WMs (which don't have title bars) but
           | in that case it's still above by default.
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | You are correct. I have been using sidebar tabs for
             | probably a decade now, so I had completely forgotten about
             | the redesign.
        
           | kitsunesoba wrote:
           | You can also remove that unnecessarily large sidebar header
           | that Firefox insists on not letting users disable via normal
           | means with userchrome mods. Some such setups can be seen at
           | https://firefoxcss-store.github.io/.
        
       | svet_0 wrote:
       | Brave gives a very bad vibe (mostly due to the affiliate links
       | scandal), I prefer to just use my favorite browsers (ff/edge) +
       | uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger which give good privacy/adblock
       | experience, are open source and customizable to my liking.
        
       | elforce002 wrote:
       | Ngl, I'm digging this feature.
        
       | stranded22 wrote:
       | I have just found that 'disable JavaScript' in Brave on iOS
       | removes 'Promoted Posts' on Reddit on mobile.
       | 
       | So, looks like I'll move to that when Apollo shuts down.
       | 
       | Works with Twitter too - I'm a noob smh.
       | 
       | *looks like I'm wrong- now not loading. Oh well.
        
         | gnicholas wrote:
         | Are the vertical tabs available on iOS also? I could see it
         | being useful on iPad, but not iPhone.
        
       | adr1an wrote:
       | Sidebery firefox addon, among others, saves you of making richer
       | CEOs that are against human rights (search for brendan eich
       | homophobia).
        
       | elbrian wrote:
       | I see the name "Brave Browser" and my brain just refuses to
       | engage. Their marketing team ruined the product for me before I
       | ever got the chance to try it.
        
         | gota wrote:
         | What do you mean? Do you feel anxious about having to rent a
         | tuxedo when someone mentions Opera?
         | 
         | I jest, but I don't think I get what you are implying. What is
         | the difference between this fantasy name and any other that is
         | also an existing noun?
        
           | lagniappe wrote:
           | > What do you mean?
           | 
           | For once can we just skip the inevitable discussion that
           | takes place in every single brave thread?
        
             | gota wrote:
             | I am sorry, I am truly not aware. I'll google it but
             | appreciate a link if you have it at hand.
             | 
             | Thanks and sorry - I didn't mean to start a thread that is
             | not useful for most people
        
       | zcmack wrote:
       | close your damn tabs, heathens
        
       | CoBE10 wrote:
       | I've been using Firefox with Tab Center Reborn, and a config
       | which collapses the tabs so only the favicons are visible. Using
       | Shift-Tab, Ctrl-Shift-Tab and Ctrl-T, Ctrl-W to go around and
       | open/close is so logical for me. First time I heard about Tree
       | style tabs I was so against them because they occupied
       | significant amount of space and I didn't know you could collapse
       | them. I don't see myself ever going back horizontal tabs.
       | Vertical is so much better, especially on smaller screen (like
       | 1366x768), where horizontal space isn't needed that much as
       | vertical is.
       | 
       | My setup: https://i.imgur.com/sZ8zdol.png
        
         | miohtama wrote:
         | Tree Style Tabs work well, because screen estate is not wasted
         | on 16:9 and 16:10 style displays. Web browsing is mostly
         | reading task and because of usability, line length cannot
         | exceed a certain width. Thus, there is more screen estate
         | horizontally around the page than vertically on top and bottom
         | of the page you are reading.
        
           | smoe wrote:
           | I liked vertical tabs on my main monitor where there is
           | plenty of space. But on the laptop, especially with using
           | split screen i got too crowded. I have since made the tabs
           | completely invisible and just navigate trough them with the
           | Vimium extension.
           | 
           | This has some quirks because of the limitations a browser
           | extension has, but I now much prefer to just use keyboard
           | shortcuts and search to jump to tabs.
        
       | meghan_rain wrote:
       | aka bookmarks
        
         | chrisco255 wrote:
         | who needs bookmarks when you can have 750 tabs open at once?
        
           | 1MachineElf wrote:
           | The latter is more valuable to the ad tech industry. In fact,
           | they benefit from browsers with crippled bookmarking systems.
           | Every time a user types in "facebook" instead of facebook.com
           | into the omnibar, that user is directed to a
           | Google/Bing/Brave Search page with ads.
        
             | jollyllama wrote:
             | I can't live with Braves terrible bookmark manager, and
             | inability to save history for more than a few months. But I
             | can't live without the flawless ad blocking.
        
               | elforce002 wrote:
               | Same. I can't live without ad blocking + ublock. I don't
               | remember the last time I saw an ad and I'm happy for
               | that.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-01 23:01 UTC)