1499039 - More compact tabs (as list)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, enhancement)

Description

[wojtek]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0

Steps to reproduce:

Configured tabs as "compact" (which is default in recent versions)


Actual results:

The tabs became square previews


Expected results:

The tab list should stay a list, but it should be compact, i.e. the height should be 1/3 of the current height (which would make the preview smaller as well).

Current "compact" view is cumbersome to use as it requires better aiming if we want to swipe-to-close tab.

Comment 1

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Hello and thank you for the report, 

The compact tabs options has the description of "Arrange tabs in two columns in portrait mode" and it's been like this for a very long time. There is a title of the page displayed above the tab as well as an image of the page displayed in the tab, you can swipe to close the tab to the left or right, making it easier for right or left handed users to use FF. So I do not understand what you mean by "is cumbersome to use and requires better aiming".

There is always the option to disable the compact tabs option if it's uncomfortable to use for you.


Closing the issue as there is no need to change the current implementation.

Comment 2

[wojtek]

I know how it looks like and how it operates, I'm aware of the description. And I know it has been like that for a long time (which is a kinda silly argument - XUL was also at Firefox core for a long time yet it was replaced…)

The option doesn't do what it suggests it would do (though it fits description - it gives two columns). Simple example with 3 tabs:
* compact: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fz9ydbu3c5jbg7f/firefox-android-3tabs-compact.png?dl=0
* normal: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sq5shygwnxqs0m6/firefox-android-3tabs-normal.png?dl=0

If you compare those then they use roughly the same amount of space.

OK, this is kinda specific case, it's get better with even number of tabs and in case of 6 tabs one is out of viewport:
* compact: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0vjkqnphda95rkc/firefox-android-6tabs-compact.png?dl=0
* normal: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sgu1kpbwrdyly95/firefox-android-6tabs-normal.png?dl=0

But still, not that much gain. Here is how I would imagine real compact tabs (mind you, I'm not that fluent with graphics software, there's a lot of improvements to sizing of the preview, etc):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8vxeokyh4bwvwci/firefox-android-6tabs-narrow.png?dl=0

As you can see:
* there are many more tabs visible/available in a single viewport;
* it's easier to operate on them via swiping (no need to "grab and hold" particular tab when wanting to close many in succession -  it's enough to repeat swiping gesture in same place and those below would slide up)