welcome Firefox to 2021
Awesome!
Can you now please make it so that of I have over 100 tabs open that Firefox makes my computer die, even if all those tabs are all pre-killed by a tab closer?
I also asked for compact mode. Where’s that?
Please help me understand how to use tab groups and how to use bookmarks and why they are different things.
For me, open tabs and bookmarks are different levels of the same thing. I’ll open a bunch of tabs researching some task I want to do, and leave them open because I want to come back to that. Bookmarks do the same thing, but with lower visibility and higher permanence.
Tab groups let me group a handful of things to reduce the clutter. Similar to the way that folders are useful within the bookmarks manager.
To use them, just drag one tab on top of another, it’ll make a new group. Give it a name, and you can now expand/collapse. So 10 tabs all related to one task can stay in-sight to remind you, but only take up 1 tab’s worth of space in the bar.
Multitasking, preparing for meetings/workshops, not having to make bookmarks that are only relevant for the duration of a project/task.
There are many valid uses of tab groups that need to be kept open for quick accessibility without waiting for pages to load or finding specific groups of links that will not be relevant in a week
Most of what web browsers do is the same feature multiple times just presented differently
Yeah, thought the same with vertical tabs already. It’s extremely cool that it’s there now for folks who want it, but if you have a strategy for putting tabs into multiple windows and then dealing with those windows appropriately, then there’s really no point in making it a vertical list for the handful of tabs per window you’ll likely have…
I don’t know about groups specifically, but keeping a tab open retains its history, so you can go back (and forward) later.
Yes, tab groups maintain history, even across save & reopen operations.
Oops, I wasn’t clear… I meant I don’t know what the use-case is for tab groups, but keeping tabs open in any form should save history. (Thank you for letting me know, though!)
I gave a few of my personal use cases above, but in short: when I need to reference or act on multiple things on different sites at short notice, and will probably need to again later; to label tabs; and when I need multiple tabs of the same website, but because the URL doesn’t update a bookmark is insufficient.
Edit: You’re welcome!
Tab groups are built for open tabs, bookmarks are built for revisiting things. Their use cases are quite different in my opinion.
Ok but when do you make the decision to invest in organizing open tabs into groups versus bookmarking them or just moving them to a dedicated window. When do you close the tab or tab group – only when the initiative is over? Do you “archive” those tabs as bookmarks?
And then there’s the profile variable
This question is a highly personal one from my perspective. I haven’t used the groups yet but I often toggle between six or seven contexts throughout the day and I’ll give them a shot for that.
Profiles toggling just didn’t work for me as it was too … Slow for me as in I have to reorientate myself whenever I switched profiles.
I think you organize tabs into different containergroups based on groups and bookmarks
just moving them to a dedicated window.
That’s the key, it’s like having a separate window, but without the separate window.
At work I’ll open anywhere between 40 and 100 tabs at a time, but I want to keep them near my existing tabs and not in another window. I have an extension that opens them all in a new tab group. I typically work from the left edge of the group and close out of tabs as I get through them. I can still hop between my non grouped and grouped tabs without having to change windows. And if I want to pause it for a bit then I “minimize” the group like a window.
Why do you have to “get through them” in a specific order, though?
Because I have bees in my head that tell me to get through them in order
I don’t have to. It’s just easier to work left to right with the order of the tabs.
This is work work, not just dorking around at home.
Here’s a use case: I often have to open up a bunch of instances of the same website (an internal version of a customer-facing page). They all have the same URL, but because they’re single-page apps, they all have massively different functions. For a few hours, I’ll need to flip back and forth between a few of them at a time, as well as some other websites on different pages, as well as an external program that I’m referencing or modifying. Then I don’t have to do that again for a week or two. So I use a tab group to put all of them in, and then once they’re done, I save and close the tab group to reopen next time.
Here’s another use case: I can use a single tab inside a “tab group” but use the tab group label to “name” the tab. That way, even though I have a dozen tabs open with the project name I work on at the beginning of the title, I can look at the label and know which one is the Jira ticket for the devops task I’m working on, which one is the Jira ticket for the new feature I’m waiting for QA signoff on, which one is the Jira ticket for the dependency update I need to do, etc. I also use this functionality when I have a bunch of stuff processing and I need to remember which one is on which step; do I need to do step 3 on this one or step 4? The tab group label knows.
Or here’s another one: I’m currently in the middle of a big accessibility push for our product’s front-end. I have all of the various tabs and resources and Jira tickets and specs open in a tab group, and I can flip between all of them. I open them all every time because it’s rare that I only want one of them (though, if I do, it’s nice that Firefox automatically sleeps all but the active one when I reopen the group). When I’m working on the project, I open that tab group. When I’m done, I save and close it.
Tab groups were literally the only thing I missed from Chrome when I migrated. I’m so glad to have them back, even though it did take
sevenfive long years. Since it was available as a feature flag, I’ve used it so much.
instead of having 12984 tabs open, you can have 345 groups with only a few dozen tabs in each one.
Ohhh that’s what it is! I was did couple times since the last update; by mistake, didn’t know what it was. Now I know.
Been loving the feature.
My next hope is that they’ll upgrade tab groups so (when collapsed) I can move them around like normal tabs. Right now it’s a little awkward if I start the group in the wrong spot.
I like the concept of tab groups but i don’t think that they’re for me. If i could pin certain sites into the groups however, that would be a game changer.
This update borked my Sidebery config. It doesn’t expand on hover anymore. I will look into it after I wake up but does anyone have an idea what could they changed on CSS?
Edit: Took me some time but it’s fixable.
Pretty much every update screws up my config these days, but it’s good because it means they’re actually working on improving the interface
I think this update was the first one that brake my config in a long time. I was actually expecting this from vertical tabs update but it went fine. The current UI of Firefox looks too mobile-y. Thankfully we got add-ons and CSS options.
I had to enable them:
about:config
->browser.tabs.groups.enabled
->true
Thank you for this. Now I know hire to turn them off.
But they’re off by default so I’m not sure what you’re talking about
Not on my browser they aren’t. They just started offering to make groups one day, and while I want to tear out someone’s tongue for it, it would require far too much effort, and might just be a bit of an overreaction.
Same here. They also just went away on their own 😂
I’ve been using them for a few weeks now. Lifesaver as I try to organize stupid bullshit that life forces on me.
I’m saving all my tabs on a regular basis for 3 firefox pages. How does grouping tabs impact saving them? Does it create sub folders in the main saved tab folder?
Me using the Tiled Tab groups add-on for 2 years now… Good-morning
am i the only one who like, closes all tabs when done? i have tabs I’ll come back to when working on something not when it’s all finished i close it all the fuck down.
i know ‘am i the only one’ is a cliche n shit but I’m starting to think i really am. everyone i know has all these tabs open all the time.
I do this as well - the only exception is work, where I pin a few tabs. Out of curiosity are you an “inbox zero” person? Because I am, and the only parallel I can draw is between that and my similar tab management.
inbox zero
absolutely :D
You are among your people friend
Me too. I hate having lots of tabs. Makes it so much harder to find the tab I want.
My LibreWolf config purges all data session (history, open tabs, search,cookies…) on quite/exit !
If there’s something I need to keep or read-later, or work-on: readeck/zotero/karakeep makes everything easier to find !
If I need to bookmark something important linkding !
All those browser tabs, history, search results are a privacy nightmare !!
Hoping someone might be able to help me out with this info, I’ve tried looking and can’t find a solid answer.
When you use the “Save and close group” feature of tab groups, do they
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Stay forever, no matter if you close Firefox, restart your pc, not used that group in months etc.
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Allow an unlimited, or at least a high number, of saved and closed tab groups.
I mainly ask because it specifically puts closed and saved tab groups in a section called “recent tab groups” which sounds suspiciously temporary.
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Now, the team is experimenting with smart tab groups, a new AI-powered feature that suggests names and groups based on the tabs you have open.
Off course, they found a way to integrate more Ai features.
ffs. Of course they had to slap AI on top of it. Goddammit.
Because you know it’s really hard naming your group yourself
Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the inclusion of some small AI feature is what justified the rest of this work being done. As in, someone got approval for tab groups only because they were smart enough to describe it as “AI powered tab groups“. Just speculation