Firefox to Adopt Chrome's Tab Ordering Feature
One of the best features in Google's Chrome browser is the way it handles tabs. In Chrome, when you click a link, the tab that opens appears to the immediate right of the current tab. It may seem like a small thing, but when you have so many tabs open in Firefox that they spill off the sides of the screen, having to scroll to the end to see the new web page is annoying and inefficient.
According to Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox at Mozilla, the Firefox web browser will soon be changing the way in which new tabs are opened. Like in Chrome, new tabs in Firefox will open to the immediate right of the tab you are on. If multiple tabs are opened in the background from links clicked, they will open sequentially to the right of each other. New tabs created by the "New Tab" button or the keyboard shortcut will still open at the end of the tab strip, as they do now.
Says Beltzner, the goal is to have tabs that are related grouped together. The change will be landing on the trunk shortly and then they will decide whether or not to take it to Firefox 3.1. (Please do!)
Tabs, tabs, everywhere
The tab ordering feature is one of the little things that doesn't get a lot of attention when people talk about Google Chrome. Instead, the focus is on the WebKit engine, the lightweight feel, the speed, and, of course, the lack of RSS (the horror!). However, if you often switch between Chrome and Firefox, you're probably frustrated when you start opening tabs in Firefox and they end up at the end of a long list of your open sites, forcing to you to scroll to see them.
Getting tab ordering right is not as minor as it seems. When it's right, it "just works" and you don't even really have to think about it. Minor features like this are the sort of things that you can't quite put your finger on when people ask you why you prefer your Chrome browser - you just know that you like it better. It just seems easier to use in some way.
Chrome showed us how tab ordering should work and we can't wait to see Firefox adopt this useful feature.
Image credit: tabs by Inju
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Can't wait to see this new Firefox Feature. If this will be out, I really have to adjust a little.
There is a plugin in the meantime called "Tabs Open Relative" which makes new tabs open next to the active one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1956
I've used it for a few months, and find it annoying to go back to Safari, where the tabs keep queuing up at the end.
That is excellent! I also feel that the Chrome tab ordering is way better in respect to new tab links that open immediately after the current tab... especially when there's 100's of them! :)
This way of opening tabs has been around in the kde browser konqueror for ages... And webkit is a fork of the rendering engine developed for konqueror. It must be frustrating for the developers of quality open source software to see all their great work and ideas attributed directly to google.
Don't get me wrong, chrome is a great piece of software and it gives credit where it's due. The problem is with the people reporting on it I guess.
AFAIR Flock has been doing this for ages as well. Time for FF to catch-up at last :-)
Re the "just works" feeling, it's indeed great when you don't need to ctrl-tab all the way to the right in order to read the content of that new tab you just opened.
To me, a bigger deal is the ability to grab a tab out of Chrome, move it a new window in my other monitor to view sites side-by-side (comparison, drag-and-drop, copy/paste, etc), then drag it back to it's rightful place in the mess of tabs. Very useful.
You can already do this and a lot more to Tabs with an extension called 'Tabs Mix Plus. Must have extension. But it'll still be good to have built in support for it. Better late than never I guess!
@Mickey Hate to say this; but Konqueror has had the detach tab thing for ages too ;)
Don't think you can re-attach tabs to a window though.
I'm in total agreement with Bhavishya. Tab Mix Plus is the one plugin above all others that should go core in Firefox. The entire way tabs are handled in Firefox needs to be revamped. The feature list of TMP is vastly superior.
So far Chrome appears to be little more to me than a reskinned Konqueror without anything really standout IMO.
It's true, Flock has been doing this for some time. I first notice this from Flock and think it was better in terms of usability.
Glad to see if FF finally catches up on this one.
IE 7 also handle's tabs the way Chrome does, when you click on a link to open a new window it opens immediately to the right. New tabs in IE7 open up at, ctrl+t, open at the end of your tab list.
I agree with the other comments how this type of tab handling has been around for a while and that Firefox probably isn't just adopting from Chrome :).
I like to second the vote for Tab Mix Plus as the most usefull addon.
I am exited that Chrome forces Firefox to get their stuff together.
Another feature that I like to be moved from Addon to default behavior: Expand the width of the search box as one types in the phrase.
all I know is Chrome better at least have a simple xml viewer by 2.0 ;)
This feature is also in Epiphany, although I'm sure the userbase is far less than Konqueror. On Windows, I can't live without Tab Mix Plus.
Who doesn't use this type of tab ordering theses days? Chrome, IE; everyone does it like that, except FF.
Mickey, Firefox 3.1 supports detatching/re-attaching and reordering.
they also need to add the title save feature
How come Chrome gets credit for this even though Internet Explorer started doing it when they finally added tabbed browsing?
Okay, yes, Chrome is a much better browser than IE, but it's not like they invented this idea.
Can't you already do that with Tab Mix Plus? I like them opening at the end better. I always have to search around for them in Chrome.
Posted by: Jandy Stone
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January 13, 2009 10:24 AM
@Jandy: I'm just the opposite. When I close a recently opened tab I like to know that the tab one over was it's parent/source tab (if I only opened that one tab), so that's where I want to return to. It actually lessens searching around for tabs in my experience. I still really miss some Firefox experiences though.
Posted by: Mitch
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January 13, 2009 10:30 AM
I've used browsers before that treat new tabs that way, and I don't like it. I like my new tabs to go to the end of the list and I'll read them all in the order I opened them.
However, with the amount of tabs I usually have open, so I don't have to use the drop down list, there is an extension called Tree Style Tabs (http://www.thattalldude.com/main/2008/10/treestyle-tabs.html) which I have found to be very nice. It also makes better use of the space on my widescreen, which is quite often wasted as sites aren't set up for width.
@Mitch, that's why I hope Firefox doesn't override Tab Mix Plus's options - different people like it different ways. I tend to open a lot of tabs at once, then go through them one by one, and it's easier to find the new ones if they're all at the end. And I like my main sites (mail, GReader, FF) to stay to the left, and not keep getting moved over by new tabs being opened).
Posted by: Jandy Stone
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January 13, 2009 10:55 AM
Sarah I swear I've been getting frustrated with this problem for the past two days. It's been ridiculous. I want ALL my tabs to open to the right, including new blank tabs, not just links.
Though I believe TabMix is an ext that already solves this problem. Hopefully the integration will come soon (like this month soon)!
Opera had this feature longer than I can remember, but many years.
i was going to instinctively mention TMP (Tab Mix Plus) also but i see it's well mentioned in the comments. so my questions are:
why do so many articles ignore, overlook, or omit talking about TMP?
why do firefox developers seem to ignore TMP features?
TMP is a must have for firefox along with noscript and adblockplus IMHO. i refuse to use a browser or surf the web without these extensions.
P.S. i'm not sure i want to use chrome on a regular basis. something about it bothers me but i'm not quite sure what. something about privacy, profiling, tracking, or being locked into one vendor that i don't understand yet.
Yet another feature Chrome stole from Opera, where its been a preference you can select for ages.
Firefox would do better to look at the source, rather than the cheap copy
It's been something considered by Mozilla for ages. I don't think they "took the idea" from anywhere other than a many years old request in their ticketing system. I guess they just finally decided that this was the better way to do it, and that the existing users would put up with the change in how things were done, and that anyone switching from another tabbed browser would expect it to work this way. I believe that colourful tabs is yet another extension that does this trick in existing firefox versions.
I'll never understand why people don't just use Opera, which has had this feature as a selectable option forever, along with a host of other smart design features that other browsers continue to implement and call them 'new deveopments'.
I thought it was some revolutionary feature that enable my mind to read the link without having to open them.
I agree that it's a nice feature and is how tabs in Firefox "should" work, but when I have more tabs than there is room for on my screen, I just click on the very last box, the one to the right of the right-arrow on the tab bar. A list of all my tabs, with the full name of the page, drops down and I select from that. Much easier than scrolling.
One of the best features in Chomre is the way the new tabs open they have taken so much attention to that Firefox realized late.
Perhaps people don't realize it, but currently in firefox, alt-9 (*nix and windows, dunno what the equivalent keypress on OSX would be) takes you to the furthest right tab, not the 9th tab like alt-[1-8] does. This makes for a nice workflow, where the first 8 tabs are the ones you commonly use and can get to easily, while alt-9 jumps you to that tab you just opened.
Opening up new tabs next to the currently read tab breaks that workflow because then if you open a tab in one of the first 7 tabs, the following ones get shifted and are no longer easily jumped to.
I'll wait for this one and try to see if it is better for Firefox to adopt Chrome's Tab Feature.
Hm.. You mean the way Opera has been doing for ages..? :wink, grin:
Dude, five words.
Tab Mix Session Plus 3.0
Wait is that image actually a preview of the new feature? The tab bar simply got moved to the top! In Chrome the tabs are where the "Page Title" and "Window Bar" are located.