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Google Contemplating Removing Chrome 'Close Other Tabs' and 'Close Tabs to the Right' Options (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Chrome engineers are planning to remove two options from Chrome that allow users to quickly close a large number of tabs with just a few clicks. The options, named "Close other tabs" and "Close tabs to the right" reside in the menu that appears when a user right-clicks on a Chrome tab. According to an issue on the Chromium project spotted yesterday by a Reddit user, Google engineers planned to remove to menu options for many years even before opening the Chromium issue, dated itself to July 31, 2015. After several years of inactivity and no decision, things started to move again in September 2016, when usage statistics confirmed that Chrome users rarely used the two options they initially wanted to remove. Seeing no new discussions past this point, Chromium engineers assigned the issue in February, meaning engineers are getting ready to remove the two menu options it in future Chromium builds.
When are they going to remove the Print option from the context menu? I'd bet usage data shows this getting clicked all the time but every single one of those clicks was from someone who wanted to press Search. It's the most useless feature around.
As someone who tends to open new links in a new tab and who ends up with a dozen or so open, I've always found those options to be very useful, especially the 'Close Tabs to the Right' one. I'm not sure why Google would want to get rid of them - the options hardly seem like a security risk or a burden on processor or RAM resources. I'll miss them if they do disappear.
Vertical tabs.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
I can't be the only person who uses these on a regular basis.
Unless...I am.
Mind. Blown.
No, seriously. Is usage that rare? Because I do use these a lot. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
I mean, who closes tabs anyway. I have over 300 open right now.
One of the web-browsers out there is to have a minor change to its GUI... How fascinating...
A particularly slownewsday? I wish it were...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Edge, here I come...
That's actually a feature I tend to use quite often, especially when researching something - when I finally find the page that (best) tells me what I want to know, I can get rid of all the others that led me there. What exactly is the horrible horrible overhead that the maintainers have to put up with to keep these features in the main branch?
Meanwhile, another thing that drives me crazy is that Chrome will close a window with 19 active tabs without a single complaint. At least Firefox will ASK if you want to close a window with multiple tabs. But in Chrome, a single brainfart/mouso will cost you bigly.
Remove Nazis instead.
put the "reopen the last closed tab" into the command bar.
Yes, I know there's a keyboard command. But just as certain is that the moment I accidentally close a tab, I won't remember it because I don't need it THAT often.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'll surely use it until it's removed.
Anyone still using Chrome should have long since resolved to using a mostly featureless browser. If you are looking for features, you probably should be looking more at using Palemoon or another browser maintained by another small group. Once a browser seems to hit critical appeal, features start getting stripped out because your grandparents might fuck something up.
How about they enable multiple tab rows first?
"usage statistics confirmed that Chrome users rarely used the two options"
The features are useful when you have accumulated a large number of open tabs and need to clean up. This means it may not be needed too often, depending on the user's usage habits. However, it doesn't mean that the feature is not useful when you need it.
I think the features are rarely used at least partly because many users simply are not aware of it.
"I wish it were as simple as deprecating islam"
I don't. Along with similar concepts. And Islam isn't a thing.
Assuming that those options aren't problems from the code maintenance or security points of view, and if users haven't complained about them, then why remove them? I'm sure some people use them; in Pale Moon I have Tab Mix Plus set up to handle tabs in a way that most users would never even think of, and honestly, I'd be lost without it.
I know it's heresy to suggest that Chrome might actually be configurable to suit individual needs and tastes; that said, why can't they they just have a preferences setting to show or hide those items? There's a difference between taking the lowest common denominator into account, and catering exclusively to it; and I'm tired of features being stripped away from both software and hardware because the average non-demanding user isn't sufficiently sophisticated to make use of them.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
You should never remove features from software. Some users are using those features that you think are useless. You can hide features, or make them more difficult to mistakenly activate, but removal is moronic.
Close all Tabs and Close Tabs to the Right are features I use all the time in FireFox. I refuse to use spyware like Chrome. Google has proven they are unable to Do No Evil.
I'll probably use them a LOT. I often end up with 40+ tabs open from thinking I'll come back to something. Here's hoping they change their minds.
How can I keep up with replies to my Slashdot comments if I can't quickly closed out the tabs I've already looked at?
The people who use these features, like me, are the same people who turn off telemetry back to Google, so Google thinks no one uses the features.
And Islam isn't a thing.
Please say that publicly in Malaysia. Please. Pretty please :-)
I use close tabs to the right ALL THE TIME.
As with anyone else, that just makes them mad.
Those two options are so useful, but I've been waiting for them to fill in the obvious remaining choices:
- Close tabs to the left
- Close this tab and tabs to the right/left (this is two options)
- Close odd numbered tabs
- Close tabs I don't want my Boss/Mom to see (shortcut keys: Ctrl+Ctrl+Ctrl+Ctrl)
- Close tabs with numbers in the Fibonacci sequence
- Close tabs with pages originating in travel ban countries
- Close tabs except those with numbers on my lucky number list (default values will be provided)
That's un-American...
Google takes their users to be a bunch of moronic infants. Why remove a feature? Ever?? Especially one that has been working fine for years. Oh right... because you don't want to confuse and upset the fragile minds of your users, you can barely manage to use one button on mouse. OK, so that's not for me.
Might makes right irrelevant.
Probably made by the same people that decided to shut down google reader.
Removing features simply because they're not used by everyone every single day never made sense to me. Even if it is something only a very small percentage of users use, so what? It's not like you have to write that code again every time you compile. It just sits there minding its own business. Leave it alone and mind your own business. It doesn't affect any other work, so why remove it? To save a few bytes of memory? We all have nine zillion memories now. Who cares? Some people use it. And if more people knew about it they'd probably use it, too.
Most people power on their machine, use the web browser, and office apps. That doesn't mean it would be beneficial to stop making all other programs just because most people don't use them. Same thing.
" when usage statistics confirmed that Chrome users rarely used the two options they initially wanted to remove"
The bigger issue he is Google is spying on you. Did they bother to ask you to track your usage of Chrome? Seriously, fuck off Google.
Real men let the tabs close themselves. Typically after you get more than 1200 of them open and your computer runs out of all available RAM and the entire OS craps itself and then reboots. THAT's the way manly men close tabs.
And the really manly manly men then restore the previous chrome session when the computer is back up and running.
Wow! Thats going to blow away my power research pattern.
Open two pages worth of google results i.e. 20 tabs,
find the few I need, drag them to the far left and close all tabs to right.
Owwwch!!!
I have been slowly transitioning to Firefox, and I use those options often, so this is the kick I needed to just move to Firefox and make that my default browser.
Sheesh, i would prefer if they just got rid of the X on the tab? I inadvertently close tabs I have open because there is an X on each tab. Get rid of it. I will do a Ctl+w if I am done, or just close the entire browser. The X i feel eats up real estate, and is an annoyance.
Remove Nazis instead.
Learn the power of "and".
I'd like to remove all hateful political ideologies, even those wrapped in religious trappings.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Make it so the thing that asks you if you want to save the password saves the password if you click "yes".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Although I eventually switched back to Firefox, when they finally added this critical feature, the ability to "close all to the right" was the main reason I used Chrome for several years before that. I use it at least 10 times a day. I will never again use a browser without it.
Why not? Religion is pure idiocy.
Why are developers always removing features. All we want is a good feature packed browser that the geeks can use and not have too worry about being to hard to use for "normal" users. People write extentions to restore the lost features then the developers cripple the extention API.
(see title)
Google likes arbitrarily killing things or changing them for unknown reasons. I keep coming back because their search is the most consistent, but will gladly jump ship if I could find something ~80% as good. Already quit using chrome, what a pile of crap. Youtube is also crap (mandatory login, unskippable annoying ads, volume non-uniformity across videos, etc) I wish it had better competitors.
If this feature can be reproduced with a simple extension, no big deal.
Probably very few people used this feature, so it makes sense to remove it. For those the few who did use it, this is what extensions are for.
For instance, I like using backspace to go to the previous page. Apparently is pissed some people off so Google removed it. Found an extension to re-enable it, everybody's happy.
To whom it may concern...
There's an utterly mind-blowing, revolutionary notion called "customization".
There are ancient rumors that before the coming of the return of the Great Dark Apple, people that used shit used to have options on how to do so. Ye, let it be known that you can also give users the option to turn on or off certain UI elements instead of just removing them...so it is written in the ancient texts.
If they had keyboard shortcuts, I would use them, but they don't, and I'm not about to lift my hand over to the mouse to right click on a tab.
Would that prove once and for all it is a religion of peace?
That's because the RSS dropdown feeds have an item 'open all' which I click inadvertently and sudddenly I have 10 tabs opening up. So closing everything to the right would be useful then.
Of course I'd also be happy if that 'open all' option were removed...
What's that thing over there on the wall?
The fire exit?
Yeah the fire exit. I never see anyone use that ugly thing. Board it up.
But I've heard of people using it...
My studies have shown that only 1% of buildings ever use their fire exits! Board it up now and give it a nice white paint job! White is more interesting than color.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
TL/DR: If you want to close tabs to the right: shift click the rightmost tab, press ctrl-W.
Ctrl-click on a tab to "select" it, without losing your current selection.
Shift-click to select select a group of tabs.
You can drag any set of tabs out of the current browser.
Enjoy!
Can we move the spell check correction to the context menu option closest to the mouse instead of the one farthest away?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
So you'd deport Democrats?
You mean Republicans, don't you? They are the one that pander to the religious right...
Honestly, this is one of the features which makes me keep using Chrome. Especially "Close tabs to the right" which allows me to drag the tab where I want and get rid of the stuff I just wanted to take a glance at.
I really, REALLY hate the trend towards full-screen, single-page browsing with videos enabled by default. It's beginning to feel a lot like "channel surfing"
And leave America without a president?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I use these two options multiple times per day. I don't see why they feel the need to remove them just because they're not used "frequently" by most users. Does this code need to be touched for every build? Is there a good way for those of us that use this feature to voice our opinions to the Chromium developers?
When are we getting ability to add custom menu items to tabs?
Being able to add items would be hugely useful.
I've never used any of these since I actively manage tabs with an extension like I'd hope any power users do.
To my dismay, i see people on here whining, supposed power users crying for an objectively inferior feature being removed.
Why? You do know Chrome has extensions, right?
For any purpose these 2 features have, there are vastly superior forms in very simple extensions that make research, work and browsing very easy to manage.
Whether it is Tree Style Tabs or Tabs Outliner, there are a bunch of useful ones. Many let you suspend instead of close, just in case you find something you don't immediately need but want to check later. (in my case, Tabs Outliner has an x or bin, x suspends, bin closes, AND you can then drag those tabs to ordered lists and add a quick note below / above it)
Trust me, i don't agree with their reasons, in fact i hate that fuckwit Ben having argued with him plenty of times over the years, but this is just sad.
Tabs are an overly simplistic way to track and manage "views". In browsers and in IDEs I encounter daily a situation where I created too many of them and they loose their meaning to me. I wished there was a better way to organize "views" in a more scalable way, while also preserving the history of their creation. I want to be able to navigate them by keyboard (and mouse).
No one seems to care that Chrome is reporting how you do your work back to Google?
And the frog says "Is it getting warmer in this pot?"
Like seriously, it might not be an option used everyday, but it's damn useful when you open 50 bookmarks by mistake. Does it really bother them that much?
You know, I've been using almost nothing but Chrome for many years (at least 5), and somehow I never really noticed them there..I only read the context menus *for* something that I'm looking for.. I never notice all the other drivel on those context menus...
I've never understood this incessant NEED these days to keep reducing user options and control over their own tools and experience. We are devolving into a pool of the lowest (dumbest) common denominator at break neck speed.
They used to do some hand-waving with excuses about reducing unnecessary cpu load etc etc but every time you see them cutting things that have no negative effect on anything and then adding things which are totally off-mission and DO hit the cpu hard you can see that it's all BS.
They are treating projects that are meant to cater to many peoples needs as if they (the devs) are the only ones who will ever use them and as such are making permanent changes in the same way users would make personal customization choices for themselves alone. Totally out of context and selfish in the extreme.
It's an option I use daily (on Edge) and would really miss if it were to be removed.
There is already an easy workflow for close other tabs, drag the tag off and close the old window. It's great, if you need two tabs you drank then off and close the rest. Close tabs to right doesn't even have a sensible use case anyway.
Google as a company is all for diversity and minorities, but want to remove a minorily used feature. What gives?
Google engineer scratches nose before sipping on coffee.
Requiem for the American Dream
This is a "power user" feature, and power users tend to switch off analytics. Maybe it looks like the feature is getting used much less than it actually is.
Seriously. Can't use backspace to go back. Can't customize much of anything. And now this.
I get that people click it accidentally, but that's no reason to remove it. Do what they did on Android and have the option, but provide an undo for a few seconds after it's clicked.
bad move....the way bookmarks are handled is bad enough but i suffer through.. i may need to rtn to firefox
Does is cost extra electricity to keep the 2 options on?
As someone who's used Chrome every day for the last five years - I had to right click on the tab to see what menu options this article talking about. I've never used them, never needed them and never known they're there.
If you use tabbed browsing properly (one window per subject, one tab per page) you would never need to close "all windows but this" or "all windows right of this" - and if you do, how hard is it to tear the primary tab out then close the remaining window with your unneeded tabs.
It seems usage statistics indicate most users share this view.
Heading should read: "After collecting usage statistics for almost two years, Chrome developers decide to remove two unnecessary menu options."
No? So what exactly is it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have generally found it more useful, in all browsers, to close the browser and use the history to open the tabs I want open after reopening the browser.
Yep. Every time I see a post about Chrome and Tabs, I point out that Firefox is my daily driver because of the TreeStyleTabs plug in.
Chrome used to have vertical tabs, but some engineer took it out because he thought no one used it (because is was in some hard to find config setting... duh)
I usually have 40-50 tabs open at once, and there is no way I will do that on a browser not supporting vertical tabs.
46137
99% of the time, I like to go back through the tabs to check they aren't important before closing. It only takes a few extra seconds and can save more than that in pain and annoyance.
Perhaps it is still "news for nerds", but I am not sure this can still qualify as "stuff that matters"
It's a stupid idea. Why am I not surprised?
Why do companies, particularly Google in this case, remove basic options and features in software as if it is costing them money.
Google particular seems to shut down small-mid size projects that can be incredibly useful and profitable.
Two examples:
1. Google Movie Showtimes...this was great, it was a nationwide very accurate movie showtime page that was a feature on Google...it didn't require much maintenance once it was already built. Also, they still have to have staff working on movie results...except they now use a Netflix-like side scroller that requires a user to click to get more info.
2. Google Wave...it could have been Slack. Slack is exactly Google Wave only with a polished interface. How much is Slack valued at right now again?
Thank you Dave Raggett
delete full browser)
Dear Chrome Engineer,
Before you are trying to remove these two awesome functions, please stop using them for one day. Then you should change your mind.
Or their heads are completely up their....
Or they don't actually use their own browser?...
There are four or five main features I use in any browser (depending on perspective, and aside from debugger and the scrollbar):
- New Tab
- Address/URL input
- Close All Tabs
- Close Tabs to the Right
- Pin Tab
It should be obvious the usefulness for anyone that opens more than a few tabs.
I open lots of tabs, and enter URLs or ctrl click links to open things in a new tab from pages I don't want to leave yet.
For pages I really don't want to lose my spot on (docs?!) I will pin them usually.
Right now I have 10~ pinned tabs and maybe 20 total open.
Sometimes I open so many tabs its just too much, and I cannot pin everything. This usually results in multiple windows of tabs.
Sometimes I get frustrated with so many windows and tabs open that I decide to reduce most of what I want to stay at to one window, and then open another window for opening and closing tabs i don't care about.
When reducing the number of tabs open I use one or two methods. Either I close all tabs on my window with all of the pinned tabs (which leaves the pinned tabs in place), or I move the important tabs I want to keep but not pin to the left (in the pinned window) and then use the close all tabs to the right option.
If google removes this feature I will likely still use chrome (some) for development and testing, but may end up having to use FF or Vivaldi for browsing and tab management.
And no, bookmarks aren't really a solution for me. I have hundreds of bookmarks, so closing the window and opening bookmarks would just slow me down.
TLDR;
Google fire your UX people and hire me, they clearly have run out of useful things to do if chopping one of the more useful features of chrome is the best 'new innovation' they can come up with.
"but its simpler!" the google UX kid said? Sir, your mind is simpler, and that's why you propose dumb changes. /end rant /begin coffee2
...It'll be the last time I use Chrome.
They recently took away my ability to hit backspace to go back a page. Now I have to use Alt+another key to do what I took just one to do. I had to install an extension to put that feature back.
Now mind you, I can understand why most people don't use those features. But then again they're not the same sort of users as I am. As others are. There are people who will open dozens of tabs to compare things or to have multiple sources of information available. Then when it's no longer needed...we close the other tabs and call it a job done.
For example. I'll look at a dozen sites to provide references for things that I say on discussion forums. Once I'm done with my post and I no longer need those tabs and want to go and look at another discussion topic, I'll "close other tabs" and go on my way.
I'd hate to have to click over and over and over when there is a simple way to do it.
The only thing that will keep me with Chrome is if someone creates an extension to put back what Chrome takes away.
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
he story says the engineers found it was used rarely, citing that as the reason for removal.
So Google knows EVERY click you do and every page you visit even the buttons and how often you use them.
Doesn't anybody else find this creepy? See Google is a perverted peeping Tom watching your every move.
The reason I DON'T use Chrome.
We have clear laws on Presidential succession due to the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. Alas, that would give us President Orrin Hatch, which I'm not sure is an improvement. (Mike Pence and Paul Ryan would be ineligible.) I find many of Hatch's positions distasteful but I don't think he qualifies for the other N-word.
Is idiocy a thing like all other things?
You tell me. If Islam is a thing then it is nothing different than all the other things.
Not sure where you're going with that. As for as I can tell, people often consider it an insult if you lower something like that to the level of a thing.
Like most religions it can be interpreted as such, and like most religions it can also be interpreted and used as a political tool to motivate hate.
It would rid the world of an idiot.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Odds are, people who use advanced features are more likely to turn data harvesting off. Thus making those metrics questionable. Then again, anyone who is opposed to being monitored is not part of the Google's target audience."
Sounds likely, AC. But here is Google's mistake. There is a sort of hierarchy or pyramid of users for many application. In rough percentages:
* 1% of users might become superusers making plugins and doing all sorts of fancy things with an application.
* 10% of users might become knowledgeable about what you can do with an app and provide support and encouragement for their friends (and also rely on the 1% for support and new features like plugins).
* 89% as all the rest just use the app and ask the 11% for help.
If you decide to design your platform for the 89%, you alienate all the people up the pyramid who provide free support and evangelism for the product and who guide the product in new directions. As Eric von Hippel at MIT has done studies showing that most (like 80%) of innovations are customer suggestions; so, you also cut yourself off from customer-led innovation.
I'm really going to miss "close tabs to the right" which I use frequently (and yes I have telemetry turned off too). If there is not a plugin possible for that, removing that feature is definitely going to reduce my liking of Chrome (which I use on a Chromebook). Now, maybe by itself that one change won't make me abandon Chrome (as if there are many great alternatives with Firefox/Mozilla fiascos) -- but, add up enough of these misguided decisions, and the odds will continue to change.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.