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Mozilla Preparing To Scrap Tabbed Browsing?
Barence writes "Mozilla Labs has launched a design competition that aims to find an alternative to tabbed browsing. 'Tabs worked well on slow machines on a thin internet, where ten browser sessions were "many browser sessions,"' Mozilla claims on its Design Challenge website. 'Today, 20+ parallel sessions are quite common; the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application; we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive. However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless.' Aza Raskin, the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, has already blogged on the possibility of moving tabs down the side of the browser, with tabs grouped by the type of activity involved (i.e. applications, work spaces)."
We need a ribbon!
20+ tabs? Damn, when i have 10 tabs i'm already lost, even with addons to view thumbnails of those tabs...
I'm rather intrigued what will come out of this design contest...
Personally i don't think the sidebar is that good of an idea. Eats away too much space of my screen.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice - Grey's Law
Sounds less like ditching tabs, and more like adding grouping. Make it optional, and I don't see a problem.
And here we see the next step in FireFox going down the drain. I want a browser not an OS. FireFox is bloated and crash prone, even more so that IE7. If Opera had the plug-in capability of Firefox, I'd move back to it.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Aza Raskin, the head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, has already blogged on the possibility of moving tabs down the side of the browser, with tabs grouped by the type of activity involved (i.e. applications, work spaces).
Insanely stupid IMO! I personally because I want browser space, totally remove every toolbar - including the tab bar (scroll through them with Ctrl-Tab in Opera) - and now some idiots want to waste more space.
I don't want a 'Safari look' on my browser, I just want it to be functional and work the way I want. What turns me on is the fact that I can open more than 10 tabs freely on a PC with 512 megs of RAM and not be hogged.
Sadly, more and more people turn on to other browsers because of their pimped looks (IE) only later to find out that they're peace of crap in the features included.
[insert lame sig here]
Traditionally when competition exists it pushes the technology (or industry) forward but unfortunately that hasn't been the case with browsers.
While browsers improve they also remain very much the same. If you pull up a copy of Netscape Navigator 4.0 you'll find that most things are still identical to today's browsers.
Just to give one example, look at bookmarks, they rarely have even basic search capabilities (e.g. title) and never have more sophisticated searches (e.g. content). Organisation is horribly difficult and finding anything often takes longer than googling it.
To give another example, history, it is a basic list of websites you've visited but often containing random javascript pages and giving no visual representation of what you visited (visual memory is useful). Search is bad here too.
I could list more and more examples but I think you get my point.
Even the Redmondites can't throw an ad campaign accusing tabs of being evil after being the final adopter of the technology. . . .
This is funny as the first place I remember seeing a tabbed interface was MS Office, back before I knew of Linux. For example, the different sheets in a spreadsheet program are exactly like tabs, both in look and feel, and function. It's funny how much hype and 'innovation' it has taken to bring such a common UI element into web browsers.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Obvious solution, group them together by site. Instead of a dozen separate tabs which say 'Slashdot Co...' have one tab saying 'slashdot.org' and when I click on that it can show me everything I have open. In fact this is too obvious to be a new idea: surely someone's already programmed an extension that makes this happen?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application"
Err no, it isn't. Its not even close to being an OS. A data display application with some built in interpreters is ALL it is and hopefully is all it will be since most browsers are bloated enough already.
"we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive"
Speak for yourself pal - not all of us want to manage our private files or even lives online. Just because you do doesn't make it so for everyone.
Similar story here, though never as many as 60 tabs! How do you keep track of them?
For academic purposes it can get a bit out of hand when I have 20-30 tabs open, each one containing a journal paper. Trying to juggle them, find the one that I need to look at right now, then another that I need to quote etc. can be difficult. An intelligent way of managing this would be a godsend. TFA is quite correct when it says that browsers are becoming less and less about pure data display - they're a portal to what has become a major part of everyday life - the Internet.
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First, the browser isn't an OS. (It's a browser, stupid!)
Second, someone's pissed about chrome's separate processes per tab. (now, just close the process on that tab and no more crashes.)
Third, to make firefox useful, you must bloat it up with addons. (evidenced by the 12+ addons I have loaded right now)
Fourth, someone's also pissed about chrome being so fast. (let's not argue, it's just way faster.)
Fifth, If I could load addons into chrome, I'd be a fanboy. (specifically adblock)
Sixth, make firefox able to use different javascript engines and perhaps different rendering engines, then we'll talk about tabs. (which, if you think about it is the main appeal of firefox. It's why people started switching in the first place.)
They're using their grammar skills there.
That's what bothers me more, that my browsing experiences hangs with one page. Perhaps every tabs should be it's own thread/process/whatever.
I don't know about alternatives to tabs, but whatever they come up with (like Google's Chromium), I'm pretty sure it will be still tabs but just an alternative presentation adding up to the same thing - even if becomes like the mulitple desktops Linuxes have. I don't think anyone wants to go to the pre-tab days of having 20 browser apps crowding out the other apps.
I wish they would concentrate on making the browser better at sorting information, an update to the dated bookmark concept, maybe with a profile that automatically transfers (if you want it too) to your other computers, making your experience more seamless. Or just being able to save a webpage as a PDF (take a hint from OS X) without using add-ons.
Let's get a poll up for this. # of tabs used regularly. I hope there's a Cowboy Neal option! ;)
Tabbing has taken over the browsing world entirely!
Except for the fact that only people who are technical seem to use them. All my non technical friends when I watch them browse the Internet it is quite painful. They keep on clicking a new application to open the browser for every page they want open at the same time. Google the URL (which I won't correct them as it is probably safer that way as they don't go to a mistyped URL and get a bunch of junk). When they have a lot of browsers open they Minimize and maximize or move windows around until the find the right one.
I would say more effort would be to making tab browing easier for the non tech person (Yes it is really easy for the tech person a click of the mouse or a Alt/Ctrl/Command - T) but the non-technical people will not experiment with their computer. When we see a funny little Icon we click on it and see what it does, a non technical person will just leave it alone. And don't even bother trying to get them to go threw the menu.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"Today, 20+ parallel sessions are quite common; the browser is more of an operating system than a data display application; we use it to manage the web as a shared hard drive. However, if you have more than seven or eight tabs open they become pretty much useless."
Sure, maybe the Mozilla folks like their browser so much they use it as an OS and open up 20+ tabs at once with it, but I'm pretty confident the average user just browses the web with it, and doesn't open more than 3 or 4 tabs at once. At least I don't (or anyone I know, for that matter) and I even consider myself a power user, I spend about 2 hours a day in my browser.
Maybe the Mozilla devs should consider gathering some statistics to back up their assumptions about browser use because this really sounds like they don't really get the difference between the 1% power users and the 99% casual users that just visit the same few websites they visit everyday.
Until that, just keep the tabs please.
Tabs and new windows are not mutually exclusive. I group my tabs just fine by having a separate window for each set of tabs. To me it makes a lot of sense since I can ALT-tab between subjects and CTRL-tab between tabs in that subject. I don't see their sidebar solution as being any better.
perhaps a default to open new application requests as a tab. Then all the power users need to do is turn it off.
I know when I want a new browser (to seperate out one set of work from another) but grandma doesn't configure her web experience like that.
As others have said, the first thing I do in Windows is turn off window grouping, and in firefox is turn off all the extraneous, real estate-sucking bars they haven enabled.
I suggest that they implement whichever solution(s) they like as an extension, and let people vote with their downloads which one they like best before drastically changing the browser. Let the users decide.
Grouping tabs wouldn't work. All those hundreds of tabs would still end up in the same group: porn. And I'd be just as lost.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Hell yeah. They can have my tabs when they pry them from my cold dead hands. My browsing habit is basically to google something, middle click a bunch of likely looking links and then go look at them - hopefully they've loaded up by then.
Still... if they can come up with something better i'm willing to give it a go.
Suggest the default for clicking a URL shortcut should be to open a new tab (if browser already opened)
I think the correct metaphor for organizing a large number of (Web) pages is a book. A book can have hundreds or even thousands of pages, referenced by page number at least. The pages can be organized into sections, chapters, and subsections, all of which are listed in a hierarchical table of contents. The pages can also be indexed according to key words and topics. And there's a level of abstraction above a book if needed: a bookshelf. In terms of user interface design, all of these bookish elements have been implemented pretty well in other contexts. Coverflow-style page flipping would probably be one navigation option, for example.
I've always made it a point to add favicons to any sites I develop because when I'm using my browser, it helps me find the tab I'm looking for quicker. If more websites took advantage of favicons that would sort of take care of the problem. If the site didn't have one, perhaps the browser could use a small thumbnail of a screenshot of the site?
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
In Opera, when I have more than a few tabs open I already ignore the tab bar. You can hold the right mouse button and roll the scroll wheel to bring up a list of all the open tabs. I don't think its the solution Mozilla is looking for, but when I have 25-30 tabs open it certainly is an easier way for me to browse through them than trying to flip through the tabs.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Removing tabs would be a big deal, and if you do it. You had damn well better be right.
Coke thought the people wanted something new with "New Coke". That didn't go over well and the backlash damaged Coke as many Coke drinkers, went with other products and some didn't come back with Coke Classic came out.
This sounds brilliant to me.
If the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd had their way we would all be using carrier pigeons..
Seriously, Netscape stopped innovating and died. IE stopped improving and lost an amazing amount of market share. Firefox HAS to keep awake and on top of the game if they want to stay relevant.
And improving the web using experience at home is an excellent idea. Just test lots of cool ideas until we find one that works well. Then try to figure out something better.
Now I usually don't have more than 5-20 broswer tabs max, often split across 2 or three workspaces. That still doesn't mean that the system can't be improved!
Honestly guys, let's try and let the users decide. Why not implement add-ons, skins, and multiple alternative Firefoxen? Like Firefox blueflame or something? See which UI is the most popular. Let people swap out UI on demand. Then after a round of beta testing make the most popular the defaults.
The key is to allow change on every level feasible.
[signature]
...not having 500 tabs open, just because you want to read them in the next 3 years or something? ^^
You know, there is a feature called "bookmarks" for this.
Basically, the only point where I can imagine that it makes sense to open enough tabs to fill the whole bar, is when you open many images, or search results. They could be displayed in a gallery-like manner.
But I have a problem with sidebars: They take away too much space. And still you got no overview.
You basically either create one line per tab, which would usually cut off the most important part of the page title (Making 10 tabs say "Slashdot Comments | Mo..."). And below, you still got 80% of the tab empty.
Or you add line-breaks, and more, and got some huge rows that take away most of the place, while still only allowing some 8 tabs to be visible. Again: Lost space. Filled but still lost.
But the concept of grouping tasks/tabs is not bad. Just please do not implement it in that incredibly disturbing and useless manner that it's implemented in XP.
I would recommend adding a second "level" of tabs. For usability and overview, I would by default (but changable) force the number of tabs per set to 10 max. (average = 7). So you could have one level showing the topics, which would for example contain one topic for each project you are working on, and one for random stuff. And below that, there were the tabs, just like now.
Oh, and I would create a function in the right-click menu of the tabs, that would show a window with the exact details on the memory and CPU usage of that tab. So people could finally see, that most memory eating in Firefox comes from Flash, and huge, html-downscaled pics and animated gifs. Seriously. Flash is the guilty one here.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Except for the fact that only people who are technical seem to use them. All my non technical friends when I watch them browse the Internet it is quite painful. They keep on clicking a new application to open the browser for every page they want open at the same time. Google the URL (which I won't correct them as it is probably safer that way as they don't go to a mistyped URL and get a bunch of junk). When they have a lot of browsers open they Minimize and maximize or move windows around until the find the right one.
What drives me batty is when people open windows explorer windows to get to certain folders, then close them instead of minimize only to have to open them up again a minute later. I have to sit on my hands to keep from ripping the mouse away from them.
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I personally think that the difference between arranging by tabs and arranging by multiple windows is nearly irrelevent. It's just a question of how to position the buttons that bring foucs to that content.
The thing that tabbed browsing gets right that matters is that it fetches and renders the page without immediately bringing focus to it.
-Dave
...this just shows that they don't know what (some) people use tabs for.
Personally, when I tend to browse forums or a website, etc, I use tabs like footnotes.
1) Efficiency: I continue reading the current thread or page, and 'open new tab' on any interesting link. This allows THAT page to load in the background while I continue to read uninterrupted. So while I have "broadband" some pages STILL take a not-irrelevant time to load.
2) Organization: tabs allow me to reduce clutter and keep things organized. Right now, for instance, I have outlook, 2 emails I should be working on instead of reading/posting to /., 4 different excel worksheets (work), outlook reminders, adobe (work) and firefox. At least with the tabs all residing within firefox I can keep neatly separated between what I'm doing and what I SHOULD be doing....
3) resources: ok, this was a far bigger issue with previous hardware and OS's, but it's still my preference not to run/exit/run/exit multiple iterations of any program. To open a new browser for a page I might spend 30 seconds reading seems a waste (and is quite a bit slower than ctrl+t) - on a day of heavy web-browsing, I might open 100+ pages. Perhaps I'm just ignorant and the memory load/memory leakage of multiple tabs is essentially the same for tabs as for multiple iterations, but that's my 'sense' of it - tabs seem less likely to run me out of resources.
And no, having a host of "context" tabs that I could open doesn't sound terribly useful - if I open my "slashdot" tab, I'm after the individual stories, which the browser can't possibly predict which are worth downloading. On the other side of the coin, how could the browser anticipate/understand that (forum post)(4chan)(algore.com)(goatsce.cx) are all contextually tied (but only for as long as I need to make that forum post and insert the image - and then never, ever again).
For my style of tab-heavy browsing, I wouldn't mind perhaps the tabs running down the side of the page. That seems more logically useful given the lateral nature of text, and easier to pack 20-30 tabs on a page. However, then it becomes a WASTE of space for people who only open a small number of tabs. With tabs on top, you're losing only the thickness of a text line in screen real estate; with tabs to the side, you lose the WIDTH of a text line - substantially more - even if you only have two tabs open. For that matter, I'd simply be happy with the ability to increase the height of the CURRENT tabline, like you can with the Windows bar in XP, so with 20-30 tabs, I can read more of their (currently-abbreviated) headers, at a small cost in screen area.
In short, I love tabs and use them intensively. Don't see much of a need to change them.
-Styopa
I use Tab Mix Plus and Colorful Tabs.
More than 200 CPU and memory hogging bugs in Firefox
Mozilla Labs seems a little like Microsoft: They want to change things that don't matter, rather than fix the huge, serious bugs, like the CPU and memory hogging bug. There are more than 200 CPU and memory hogging bugs listed in Bugzilla. There are more than 200 CPU hogging bugs, but Mozilla Labs only allows you to see the first 200.
If Mozilla doesn't allow visitors coming from Slashdot to see the bug list directly, put this URL into your browser: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org, simply enter CPU into the "Find a bug" field, and click on "Find".
Yesterday I had a few Windows and tabs open, but my computer seemed very slow. I discovered that Firefox was taking 89% of the CPU, doing nothing! I first reported the CPU hogging bug in version 1.9, perhaps 7 years ago. My experience is that CPU hogging in Firefox has become much worse since version 3.0.5, and worse than that in version 3.0.10.
Firefox, the laptop killer
The first component in a laptop to fail is often the fan. Usually a replacement fan is expensive to buy and install. Firefox's CPU hogging causes laptop fans to run much more often, and thus reach their end of life sooner.
In my experience with hundreds of programs, Firefox is the only one that consistently hogs the CPU.
Also, the All-In-One Gestures and FireGestures addons will do this for Firefox.
Default behavior for these is that an initial down-roll opens the tab's history, and up-roll opens the tab list.
Personally, I'm just the opposite. As I'm browsing through something, I tend to open up new tabs for stuff that's interesting, because I don't want to interupt my reading of the current page. Then I go through the tabs, closing them when I'm finished.
Then there's the slashdot thing - where I use a new tab to post a comment without losing my place on the thread.
I don't read AC A human right
Are you referring to the application limit in the Starter Edition? The one designed for the most basic of netbooks? The one where IE or Firefox can have as many tabs as they want as they're still a single application?
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Me, too.
I rarely get up to "20" open tabs, but I really very much prefer 20 tabs than a task bar with 20 Firefox buttons on it, all of them squished so much that you just see the little Firefox logo with no meaningful text.
At least on the tabs you can see the icons for each website.
No matter... if they remove built in tabs, someone will add it as an add-on.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Firefox has over 10,000 open bugs. Stop using it.
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but at least rephrase what you said so that it sounds like some general Microsoft fud. How many of those are untriaged? How many will turn out to be dups? How many bugs were fixed for firefox 3?
Here are some tips to make Firefox use less memory. And for the love of god and all that is holy, I hope Tab Mix Plus isn't the memory leak it used to be.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Uhhgg...
No, no, you can't do this... you're underestimating the ignorance of typical users. They will go crazy thinking they've "lost" the page they were on when they don't see it anymore; trust me, I've seen it happen all too often standing behind users who were using my computer that was actually configured that way (open new tabs instead of windows).
Yes, most users really seem to be that ignorant.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Have you seen the "Tree Style Tab" addon? I just found it the other day, and I'm not sure how I lived without it.
This provides tree-style tab bar, like a folder tree of Windows Explorer. You can collapse/expand sub trees, etc.. Very nice.
The only reason I use tabbed browsing is because the BACK button is slow/unreliable/unpredictable. As far as I am concerned, the BACK button should instantaneously take me to the rendering of the most recent web page unless the page has some kind of meta tag which indicates that BACK requires either a refresh or is totally prohibited (e-commerce, banking, etc). But for ordinary surfing, the links on the previous BACK buffer are still valid and if only the browser remembered the previous page's contents we could have instant BACK functionality.
The ghost process problem is almost always a result of Adobe's piss-poor Flash implementation. Flashblock ftw.
Firefox should be a little better at sandboxing plugins, but they can't be blamed for Adobe's crap.
> Firefox should be a little better at sandboxing plugins, but they can't be blamed for Adobe's crap.
Yes they can. They should do whatever is necessary to avoid leaving a ghost process that have to be manually killed. I had to explain to my 9 year old why he couldn't launch a browser on his ubuntu eeepc. It seems clear to him that the windows machine he uses for games is less buggy than his linux machine.
And I can't blame him.