1693799 - Increase tab minimum width

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Per discussions we need to increase the minimum width value on tabs.
Adjusting for the selected tab would be most useful but reality is we need to adjust all tab width equally to avoid odd interractions when clicking between acrtive and non active tabs.
The new min width value is TBD by UX

Comment 1

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

NIing Aaron here to get new min width value

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Romain Testard [:RT] from comment #0)

Per discussions we need to increase the minimum width value on tabs.

Can we please have a brief summary for those who weren't part of the discussion? If nothing else, knowing what led to the current minimum width will help engineers / UX / product people looking into changing the minimum width possibly years down the road. (Source code annotations will lead them directly to this bug.)

Comment 3

[Will]

Attachment: min tab width.png

Basically it's not long enough. Even the word "New" for "New Tab" is fading out on the "w". Being this aggressive is not necessary because Firefox has an excellent tabstrip scrolling UI. I remember someone from UX said you should at least be able to see the word "The" without the "e" being faded.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Will from comment #3)

Created attachment 9204449 [details]
min tab width.png

Basically it's not long enough. Even the word "New" for "New Tab" is fading out on the "w".

Part of the problem seems to be that we removed the vertical separator lines, and thus created the need to separate the tabs with extra empty space in between? It's possible that this somehow makes the tab bar more ergonomic, but let's be clear about what tradeoffs we're making here.

Being this aggressive is not necessary because Firefox has an excellent tabstrip scrolling UI.

The most excellent scrolling UI is unlikely to beat being able to see the item you're looking for without scrolling. So if the new design requires scrolling more often while barely maintaining how much of each tab it shows, that might actually be a net loss.

I remember someone from UX said you should at least be able to see the word "The" without the "e" being faded.

Worth noting that this is font-size and thus system specific, while the tab min width is in pixels.

Comment 5

[Will]

Attachment: chrome minimum width.png

Oh, all I meant was, unlike Chrome, Firefox does have a scrollable tab strip, so the minimum width can be a lot wider than it currently is and it's not a problem. For some reason, Chrome UX has avoided making their tab strip scrollable to the point of insanity (see attached screenshot for their minimum width. Yes, seriously, that is not a bug, that is working as intended haha)

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Will from comment #5)

Firefox does have a scrollable tab strip, so the minimum width can be a lot wider than it currently is and it's not a problem.

It is a problem though. For a given tab width, a Proton tab seems to have less room for the label. If the tab strip could previously hold, say, 10 tabs without scrolling and now requires scrolling for the same amount of tabs in order to show the same amount of text per tab, that's a regression.

Comment 7

[Will]

Attachment: vertical vs horizontal

I respect you're concern and it's a good point. I guess I'm coming at it from the other perspective where I've gotten used to and spoiled by "vertical tabs", they show you so much of the tab title that I find I'm not seeing nearly enough with Firefox. I hope UX can find a good balance/compromise here.

attached is Edge's vertical tabs vs Firefox stable

Comment 8

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Will from comment #7)

I've gotten used to and spoiled by "vertical tabs", they show you so much of the tab title that I find I'm not seeing nearly enough with Firefox. I hope UX can find a good balance/compromise here.

If we want to show more text than pre-Proton tabs do, that's a different discussion to have than increasing the minimum width of Proton tabs in order to maintain the amount of text pre-Proton tabs have already been showing. Vertical tabs are yet another feature to discuss that we could offer separately. Let's not conflate all these issues and ideas.

Comment 9

[Will]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [::dao] from comment #8)

(In reply to Will from comment #7)

I've gotten used to and spoiled by "vertical tabs", they show you so much of the tab title that I find I'm not seeing nearly enough with Firefox. I hope UX can find a good balance/compromise here.

If we want to show more text than pre-Proton tabs do, that's a different discussion to have than increasing the minimum width of Proton tabs in order to maintain the amount of text pre-Proton tabs have already been showing. Vertical tabs are yet another feature to discuss that we could offer separately. Let's not conflate all these issues and ideas.

I'm wasn't conflating vertical tabs and horizontal tabs, I'm just saying when UX is deciding on tab minimum width for horizontal tabs, please factor in how nice it is to see lots of the tab title. People who are used to vertical tabs understand this. Obviously you can't allow the minimum tab width to be as wide as they are with vertical tabs, but somewhere in between would be ideal.

Comment 10

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Will from comment #9)

If we want to show more text than pre-Proton tabs do, that's a different discussion to have than increasing the minimum width of Proton tabs in order to maintain the amount of text pre-Proton tabs have already been showing. Vertical tabs are yet another feature to discuss that we could offer separately. Let's not conflate all these issues and ideas.

I'm wasn't conflating vertical tabs and horizontal tabs, I'm just saying when UX is deciding on tab minimum width for horizontal tabs, please factor in how nice it is to see lots of the tab title. People who are used to vertical tabs understand this. Obviously you can't allow the minimum tab width to be as wide as they are with vertical tabs, but somewhere in between would be ideal.

Understood. But again, we seem to have a regression here, where Proton tabs show less text than before. I'm not sure, but I think that led to this bug being filed. Let's figure out this regression, and then we can discuss if we want to show even more text than we used to.

Comment 11

[Aaron Benson]

I think we can close this provided the updated tab measurements. Also worth noting that product/ux was not in favor of increasing the tab min-width because it would decrease the information density (e.g. number of shown tabs) before overflowing. Clearing NI from UX.

Comment 12

[Aaron Benson]

Attachment: Mockup of new tab strip against existing tab strip.

Comment 13

[Will]

It's great that more of the tab title is visible in Proton, thank you!

Comment 14

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

Thanks, closing now as won't fix