1509350 - Provide tab groups (panorama)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Cam]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0

Steps to reproduce:

This is now going to be a parity issue with Chrome (https://www.chromestory.com/2018/11/how-to-enable-tab-groups-in-chrome/).

Note that all of the extensions that have attempted to recreate this functionality in a post 57 Firefox are completely broken and unusable, so clearly this isn't something that can be foisted on extension authors with the APIs you've provided.


Actual results:

Chrome decided to add tab groups, meaning it will be significantly more usable than firefox after that lands.


Expected results:

Firefox should remain the best browser.

Comment 1

[Cam]

Follow up, as of May 19, 2019 FF 68.0b2 has no functioning tab groups extension. The least broken one: simple tab groups, has no way to add tabs to a container when a group is associated with a container. The tab mangement ui is a tab itself which is left open when you switch away from it, it requires about:config changes to make its dark mode work (which break the rust docs website amongst others) and is in general extremely unpleasant to use. All of that on top of having to trust a third party to not sell the extension and its see-everything you do on the internet and manipulate everything you see privileges. Honestly folks, this is something that needs to be baked in and not farmed out to the public for reasons of quality and privacy.

Comment 2

[nemo]

Holy crap it'd be great if this came back. I still have a pre-webextensions profile that I run very carefully on select sites with noscript due in large part to this. Also, IMO tab panorama would make a great UI to make containers more intuitive. You could even allow drag and drop between containers - just the url, none of the session stuff ofc, but even that would make things so much more pleasant to use.

Anyway, my +1 for this bug. And yes, none of the extensions that tried to revive this were usable. They just were too limited by webextensions, were very buggy and hacky.

Comment 3

[Jacques Le Roux]

I'm still using FF 56.0.2 because of that. I have 37 tab groups with 1 to 60 tabs in, average 12,5. I'll not switch to security because of that :/
I'm not dumb, I really need them for my daily work.

Comment 4

[Kuba Niewiarowski]

(In reply to Cam from comment #1)

Follow up, as of May 19, 2019 FF 68.0b2 has no functioning tab groups extension.

I'll just leave it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/

Comment 5

[Cam]

(In reply to Kuba Niewiarowski from comment #4)

(In reply to Cam from comment #1)

Follow up, as of May 19, 2019 FF 68.0b2 has no functioning tab groups extension.

I'll just leave it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/panorama-tab-groups/

It doesn't work. Neither does Simple Tab Groups or any of the others. I've tried them all.

Comment 6

[John Doe]

Exactly. It all boils down to what you would define as "functional".

There are many add-ons which hide tabs and group them but as far as i know all of them rely on "hacks".
"Hacks" as in abusing the API functions to try to achieve feature parity.

Performance issues, lost or corrupted tabs and even sessions are pretty common with these add-ons.
So common in fact that the authors are forced build in back-up mechanisms for
the problems which are bound to arise sooner or later.

Comment 7

[Jacques Le Roux]

I'm very disapointed about all that. I'm still using FF 56 because of tabs-group en tabs-tree. I made an effort to get from 700 tabs to 329 (today) with still around 30 groups. I hoped to switch to Quantum, but seems it's not an option to me :/

Life of people would be much more easier if FF had panorama resurrected and done well. I mean not only geeks but everybody. Then Just a little information about it would help to get FF more attention, people are not stupid!

Comment 8

[Asif Youssuff]

Looks like this has landed in Chrome: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2020/04/12/google-chrome-81-tab-groups-tab-management-update-chrome-browser/

Comment 9

[Jacques Le Roux]

Damned, after 2,5 years (still on 56.0.2 for this reason), I'd have never thought I'd have to turn to Chrome :/

Comment 10

[Cam]

Looks like people are pretty happy with Chrome having this built in: https://gizmodo.com/tab-groups-is-chromes-best-new-feature-in-years-and-he-1842944249

Comment 11

[Jeremy]

Could this maybe be built witin the Multi Account Container framework? seems like there might be some complementary code.

Comment 12

[supportive]

(In reply to Cam from comment #10)

Looks like people are pretty happy with Chrome having this built in: https://gizmodo.com/tab-groups-is-chromes-best-new-feature-in-years-and-he-1842944249

Hello!
I have doubts about this and that is why:
tab group in Chrome - is just coloured underline. Grouped tabs still visible in tab panel. It's ridiculous, really. In my opinion, tab groups look much better in Vivaldi (only the look, not management).

Dear Mozilla developers, please allow me to propose some suggestions. The "mother" tab should have a possibility to hide all internal tabs from tab panel. These tabs should have a possibility to become available:

• one by one like drop-down list/small previews;
• expand/collapse all together in a row, by command (click/cursor point);
• both possibilities.
  I also found some bright ideas in Chrome group management:
• it is easy to add new tab to existent group by menu or dragging with cursor;
• it is easy to create new group and rename it;
• group labels are always visible on tab panel and perfectly highlighted;
• it is easy to switch tabs from one group to another with one move.
  Please, think about them too.
  Thank you for your great job!

Comment 13

[Shazada]

Would love to have the old feature back again :) and like said above not with extension.
These are either not working well or are clogging memory. Then having multiple Firefox browsers open at the same time works even better with other desktops.

The only downside is when you close the instance, the last instance tabs are restored.
So I have:
FF 1:

• 2 pinned tabs
• X tabs
  FF 2:
• No pinned tabs (new instance never copies the pinned tabs)
• y tabs

Close FF 1 and then FF 2. next time you'll have FF 2 with no pinned tabs available and only y tabs.

Comment 14

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola y'all!

Setting NEW and setting flags as this was asked for over at https://support.mozilla.org/es/questions/1323588

The feature they mentioned is detailed on https://blog.google/products/chrome/manage-tabs-with-google-chrome

It looks a lot like https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/containers but not quite as on the other implementation there's no multi-account component.

Hope this helps.

¡Gracias!
Alex

Comment 15

[Graham Perrin]

If Firefox is to offer tab group functionality, then I strongly suggest:

• reopening bug 1357214 for the Tab Groups API

– with a mid- or long-term goal of ending extension conflicts for developers of extensions that worked without an API.

Thank you

Comment 16

[Graham Perrin]

(In reply to Jeremy from comment #11)

Could this maybe be built witin the Multi Account Container framework? …

I suspect not.

If you think of containment as (essentially) restricting/preventing flow across boundaries: this is fundamentally opposed to the seamlessness that is required when moving a tab from one group to another.

There was related discussion in GitHub but (sorry) I don't have a link handy.

Comment 17

[Carlo 'Carcarlo' Carmagnini]

I confirm that the available web extension successors of the original Tab Groups are buggy and not at the same level (as it happened to many other extensions after Quantum, by the way). I also suggest you to look at how Opera now implements a similar function, called Workspaces. I find it works great regarding the RAM usage, I suppose they unload the tabs. Vivaldi has got Tab Stacks but they are no similar to Tab Groups, that is one of the most voted feature requests on their forum. Meanwhile Firefox continue to lose market share.
Performance of Tab Groups in Firefox 56 is fine, I still have two profiles that I use with Firefox pre-Quantum with thousands of tabs and they actually perform better regarding memory usage of course, than current Firefox (I use NoScript on both).
There is actually a problem with many unique features that, removed from Firefox Australis/Quantum, have resurrected in other browsers.

Would it be actually possible to implement a new level of API to permit a fully functional Tab Groups, as an extension if default implementation is impossible? Is that the cause of this failure of many extensions that were popular till Firefox 56? DownThemAll is another one that was among the most used and often promoted in the Add Ons web site, and after Quantum it has become almost useless.

Comment 18

[Jeremy]

There is related conversation happening on GitHub https://github.com/photodiode/panorama-view/issues/73

Comment 19

[Miha Psenica]

Chrome prompted me today to try grouped tabs. Since tabs in Firefox have been a bit neglected for several years, I wanted to see how they did it. First impression, it looks ugly and takes more space for the ugly dot. But then I clicked the dot and the tabs got hidden! And my first thought was "Genius! I could use this, too bad Firefox doesn't have it!". I went searching for the progress on this in Firefox (or for add-ons) and I ended up in this enhancement request.
I have tried many add-ons including Panorama, but as noted above, tabs get lost and I don't want that. I have currently 329 tabs open on laptop and a feature to group tabs would be super useful. I'm currently using "Tab Manager Plus" to at least see all tabs, but it doesn't allow grouping (lost with sessions).

I'll vote for this in hopes that Firefox catches with Chrome in tab management. Tab groups are definitely behind.

Comment 20

[h]

(In reply to Miha Psenica from comment #19)

Chrome prompted me today to try grouped tabs. Since tabs in Firefox have been a bit neglected for several years, I wanted to see how they did it. First impression, it looks ugly and takes more space for the ugly dot. But then I clicked the dot and the tabs got hidden! And my first thought was "Genius! I could use this, too bad Firefox doesn't have it!". I went searching for the progress on this in Firefox (or for add-ons) and I ended up in this enhancement request.
I have tried many add-ons including Panorama, but as noted above, tabs get lost and I don't want that. I have currently 329 tabs open on laptop and a feature to group tabs would be super useful. I'm currently using "Tab Manager Plus" to at least see all tabs, but it doesn't allow grouping (lost with sessions).

I'll vote for this in hopes that Firefox catches with Chrome in tab management. Tab groups are definitely behind.

I'm with you on this one. I've been forever wanting grouped tabs and seeing Chrome add it made me realize that this is a feature that should be natively supported by all browsers. The plugins out there trying to address this issue look absolutely out of place and don't fix the underlying problem, basic tab management. Can't phantom how this was once a feature in FireFox and they removed it.

Comment 21

[balisitg]

I really want to see this specially with shortcut to group something by domain I guess even chrome dont have it. Example I have 10 different tabs with Youtube and just press shortcut and group it in group called Youtube

Comment 22

[Álan e Sousa]

Funny that no one mentions Opera. Is it the same functionality as Opera's Workspaces? Because Safari just implemented that (well, it will be available later this year) and it is exactly what I'm missing in Firefox. And it has been there for some time now (in Opera). My use case is the same as of some other commenters: I created 4 workspaces that I use to better separate my work tabs (I'm using Firefox for personal stuff and Opera for work-related stuff, but would be awesome to only need Firefox). The rationale for the need for separation is simple: I'm a researcher and sometimes I have to do research on many topics at the same time, so I put one topic on each workspace, and usually open dozens of tabs on each workspace.

Comment 23

[brunoais]

@Álan Crístoffer + everybody else:
Temporary workaround:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/

I know it's not ideal but it works well enough.

Comment 24

[Álan e Sousa]

I'll try it out. It's not ideal, but if it's functional it's a start. Thanks.

Comment 25

[zozulyakviktor]

This would be absolutely fantastic feature to have in Firefox. I am seeing this used broadly in my organization among people using Chrome.

Comment 29

[Artur]

I'm using Firefox at my job, and I have a lot of tabs > 30 or something like that. It is a very confusing to scroll tabs left and right every time.
Just waiting for this feature would be added sometime, will it or not?

Comment 30

[Dee]

I've been a Firefox user forever and then in early 2010-ish I made a switch to Chrome because... well you all know why. It was simply superior at the time - in everything. But now with everything going on in the world especially around privacy - I decided to give Firefox another shot. And boy - did it got better! It has everything you could wish for. Everything but... well, you guessed it.

Funny thing is that I only discovered tab groups in Chrome like a couple of months ago. It's one of these things I didn't know I needed and now - simply cannot live without it. It should simply be illegal at this point for a web browser not to have this feature.

I already made a switch to Firefox as my personal browser and mobile browser. As a matter of fact - I am typing this message in Firefox! But without this feature I just can't stop using Chrome entirely - for my work I really need this ability to group tabs together for easy context switching.

I'm not sure if that's true but I read somewhere that this feature was already here in Firefox at some point even before Chrome - and then got removed because... no one used it. Well, what can I say - such a great example of that traditional pitfall of so called "data-driven decision making process" without ever asking a question "why am I seeing this data?". No idea what has happened - maybe that feature was poorly implemented or poorly marketed so no one even knew about it, but clearly a conclusion that no one used it because no one needed it was not a correct one to draw.

Comment 31

[Álan e Sousa]

(In reply to Dee from comment #30)

I've been using the extension they suggested (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups) and it works nicely. I don't think having an extension is an excuse to not have it built-in in this case, but at least I don't have to use Opera anymore.

Comment 32

[nemo]

I had a lot of reliability issues with simple tab groups in tab state not restoring reliably on start/quit, and export being broken making backups not a fallback. But perhaps the situation has improved. Do you still have to manually enable tab hiding in settings? I'll give it another shot. It's been a few years after all. That said, I've been idling in this bug 'cause addon creators said the API wasn't rich enough to replicate the original panorama, and I figured this was the best shot at a non-buggy implementation.

As for comment #30's discussion of marketing. At the time that Firefox added Tab Panorama it got a lot of positive press
https://techcrunch.com/2010/07/23/firefox-tab-candy/
, so seems odd to think people might not have known it existed. It did suffer a little from discoverability in the Firefox UI admittedly. I think it never had a proper dedicated button on the tab bar. Also managing ginormous numbers of tabs was rather clunky.

That said, not all reviews at the time were positive:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/11/hands-on-opera-11-tab-stacking-vs-firefox-panorama/

So maybe that played into it.

Comment 33

[rickard]

I find tab grouping very nice, I use it to group tabs I don't open often but I still want them easily accessible when I need them, just click on the collapsed tab group and they're there...
Most browsers have this feature now, Firefox was one of the first have it but then removed it!?

Comment 34

[Rico]

Tab groups are such an important Feature. With Firefox I am still using windows to separate different kind of tabs. I'd really love to use tab groups as implemented in Chrome. That way I could for example have some tabs with documentation open in a tab group while having some other tools open in a different tab group and e.g. news in a third tab group without the need of having three windows that I can't differentiate at first look. Colored and/or named tab groups on the other hand can be easily distinguished from each other. PS: I tried the simple-tab-groups extension but it does not fit my needs. In Chrome this was done so nicely.

Comment 35

[Paulo Manrique]

We really want to support Mozilla. We really do. We believe Mozilla is the last bastion for a free web. But then we got to things like this, where clearly Firefox is losing users daily because of simple things like tab grouping and it looks like no one gives a crap.

It's like a Thunderbird feature, to display a nice vertical view of emails like any modern email client, it's sitting there for 19 freaking years.(1)

Come on Mozilla, help us help you. We are on the same side.

(1) - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=213945

Comment 36

[Simon]

I'm just going to pile on here and say that this is by far the feature I miss the most in Firefox, and the main "but" when I try to convince friends and family to move away from Chrome. I swoop in on this bug report every few months in the hopes that it has magically changed in the past 4 years. I appreciate the suggestions for addons, but none of them work very smoothly and at that point I'm more tempted to just adopt a browser that has it natively. I love the pinned tabs though, and I hope to see tab groups return one day.

Comment 37

[David Chmelik]

Firefox should remain the best browser.

Firefox was best before removed tab groups (and other things)--and continued best as fork: Pale Moon. Secondly (because of other bugs/removals) I use Konqueror/Chrome/forks & similar (KDE Falkon, now overall best/fastest but less powerful than slow Pale Moon 29) which since '0s Firefox is an imitator of Chrome (worst web browser, but fast) in ways worse than Chrome itself despite last year becoming fastest (still didn't get to using more than Chromium (because various bugs/removals deserving tickets, but apathetic since switched to Pale Moon for main usage.)

You imitated Chrome (critical mistake I could write a BSc CS & lifelong/AA+ Art paper on.)
You removed tab groups.
Chrome ported to Android and added graphical tab groups.
You ported to Android and added graphical tab groups.
Chrome added tab groups to desktop.
So, what to do next is clear!

Desktop should be leading/standard: where more programmers (and power users) and people focused on art/graphics are! We tend to use more tab groups and many like them graphical.

Just as one can read an analogue faster than digital clock, graphical tab groups are superior (lists, favicons (which many URIs don't have) just don't cut it.)

Comment 39

[Haris]

@Triage owner: Could you please revisit this ticket? This feature request is creating a huge UX gap towards Chromium, so putting this feature request into the backlog makes sense. This feature will create a significant benefit to most users as many users tend to have many tabs open, and organising those tabs in groups improves UX quite a lot as many users have experienced once they used some Chromium browser. May we add this feature to the development backlog?

Comment 40

[Ronan Jouchet]

(In reply to Haris from comment #39)

@Triage owner: Could you please revisit this ticket? This feature request is creating a huge UX gap towards Chromium, so putting this feature request into the backlog makes sense. This feature will create a significant benefit to most users as many users tend to have many tabs open, and organising those tabs in groups improves UX quite a lot as many users have experienced once they used some Chromium browser. May we add this feature to the development backlog?

Yes please. To add weight to reconsider this,

1. Personal anecdotal evidence says the Chrome feature is used a lot. At work (a North-American tech SMB with browser users ranging from non-technical to "power users"), witnessing browser usage by { looking around at the office, observing when people share their screens in Zoom/Gmeet }, I see the feature used everyday across a majority of colleagues. From what I see, people use Chrome Tab Groups to cluster live projects together, and expand/collapse them as needed to make good use of tab bar space. Said differently and purely factually, the name of colleagues Chrome Tab Groups are project names.
   • Also, confirming the feature "virality". Since introduction of the feature in Chrome, I personally witnessed 3 cases of colleagues noticing the feature, saying things like "oh cool, didn't know this exists, I 100% need this to fix tab overload", and then a few days/weeks later you actually see them use the feature.
2. My personal experience with Firefox "tab grouping" addons has been disappointing. In particular, using Simple Tab Groups in Firefox (one of several addons filling the functional gap), I suffered several cases of losing tabs 😕. No idea if it was an addon bug, or a Firefox / Firefox Sync bug, but my point is that such a feature is critical, so implementation should be as core/safe as possible, and I'd rather not leave it to an extension! Since these data loss cases, I've abandoned Simple Tab Groups with a bitter taste, haven't looked into other addons, and don't wish to.
   • And so, most of the time I accept the gap and shrug, and once in a blue moon I will use the "Bookmark All Tabs" / "Bookmark Multiple Tabs" feature, but it adds friction, isn't as fluid as collapsing/expanding a Tab Group, and forces me to clutter my bookmarks with temporary stuff.

Please please please, reconsider adding a basic, built-in Chrome-like, Tab Groups feature. Thanks for Firefox.

Comment 41

[nemo]

I find it amusing that Firefox, which created this incredibly useful feature that got an enormous amount of attention in the tech world before abandoning it, is now considering it as a Chrome parity feature to restore.

But one thing that I think could help things stand out a bit from the Chrome feature... If you brought back tab panorama, I think the panels would be an AWESOME way to visualise firefox containers. I don't know if this would make sense as the default, but an option to enable "one container per tab group" would be pretty great. There's various 3rd-party extensions out there already that do this for tab groups, I just happen to think it'd be more intuitive in a visual desktop kind of rendering like the old Tab Panorama.

So, tossing this feature request on the pile if this bug ever gets some love.