Open Bug 551849 (pinnedtabs) Opened 14 years ago Updated 28 days ago

[meta] Pinned tabs

Categories

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: faaborg, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 16 open bugs)

Details

(Keywords: meta)

Attachments

(1 file)

This project covers the design and creation of a Firefox Home Tab, a small persistent tab placed at the far left of the tab strip that will serve as the user's home on the Web.  The plan is for this interface to be locally hosted, customizable, and personalized to the needs of each individual user.

The second aspect of this project is allowing users to create "App Tabs," small persistent tabs placed to the right of the Home Tab that contain home pages or Web applications that the user very regularly interacts with.  App tabs can not be accidentally closed, and they do get lost when viewing a large number of documents in separate tabs.

Wiki page with more information about the project: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/Home_Tab
This should depend upon bug 544819 - Create a basic Home Tab linking to the current Home Page:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=544819

A compelling usability issue:
Should the Home Tab and/or the App Tabs be pinned to the far left of the tab strip so that when the scrollbars appear for tab overflow, they still remain on the left of the tab strip and are not scrolled out of the visible range?

My humble opinion is that they should be pinned to the far left, since they are meant to be easily accessible and persistent at all times. (Alex, I think you meant to write 'they do NOT get lost when viewing a large number of documents in separate tabs.')

There is a very recent extension that implements this type of tab pinning:
Tab Utilities - https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/59961
I have tested it out, and the 'pin tab' feature works quite well, although the pinned tabs should probably be wider in the final Firefox implementation.
(In reply to comment #0)
> App tabs can not
> be accidentally closed, and they do get lost when viewing a large number of
> documents in separate tabs.

Alex did indeed mean "[…]do NOT get lost while viewing a large number[…]", app tabs are meant to keep their position.

:)
> My humble opinion is that they should be pinned to the far left, since they are
> meant to be easily accessible and persistent at all times. (Alex, I think you
> meant to write 'they do NOT get lost when viewing a large number of documents
> in separate tabs.')

Most certainly agree.
I just hope it will have option to set refresh frequency. Some sites, like GMail, require to be constantly reloading to see newest added contet to them. On the other hand, sites like forums, need to be "frozen", even after colsing and opening FX again.

Talking about GMail; a new messeges counter would be nice.
Depends on: 563723
Depends on: 563730
Depends on: 563734
Depends on: 544819
No longer depends on: 563734
I filed bug 536267 a while ago (when I was a bit more inexperienced with how things work here, as you probably can tell from my wording). I think we should provide some way for sites to detect if they are being displayed in App Tab mode, to allow them to adjust their navigation, for example.
Depends on: 536267
Will App Tabs be have isolated storage (session state, cookies, HTML5 storage) away from regular tabs and other App Tabs enabling the functionality of Prism/site-specific browsers?
>Will App Tabs be have isolated storage (session state, cookies, HTML5 storage)
>away from regular tabs and other App Tabs enabling the functionality of
>Prism/site-specific browsers?

Not initially, however we could potentially pick up this functionality in a later release after we have electrolysis landed.
Is there a bug for UI to pin/unpin App tabs?
Depends on: 575561
(In reply to comment #8)
> Is there a bug for UI to pin/unpin App tabs?

see bug 574487.
Depends on: 577096
Depends on: 578544
Depends on: 579360
Depends on: 579869
Depends on: 579868
Depends on: 579874
Depends on: 579879
No longer depends on: 579868
No longer depends on: 579879
Depends on: 579871, 579872, 579873
No longer depends on: 579874
Depends on: 580512
No longer depends on: 580512
Depends on: 580512
No longer depends on: 579869
Depends on: 582370
Flags: in-litmus?
Depends on: 583172
Depends on: 583174
Depends on: 583178
No longer depends on: 583172
Depends on: 583284
Is it expected that the "close other tabs" context menu item is not available when you have focus on an app tab?
Marcia, I believe it was changed in bug 577121 to be desired behavior for app tabs, so yeah.
Depends on: 582678
For which milestone is Home Tab targeted?
(In reply to comment #12)

I presume beta5+ seeing as how it doesn't yet have an owner and there isn't a clear indication of how it's supposed to act.

I thought the Mozilla Labs challenge was supposed to decide the direction
http://design-challenge.mozillalabs.com/winter09/
No, that challenge was for post Firefox 4 Home Tab.
Depends on: 583299
Depends on: 585316
Blocks: 585445
Depends on: 585712
Depends on: 587400
Depends on: 587576
Depends on: 587589
Depends on: 587650
Depends on: 578553
No longer depends on: 587650
Depends on: 588011
Depends on: 588227
Depends on: 588230
No longer depends on: 588227
Depends on: 588736
why app tabs  need an address bar?
(In reply to comment #15)
> why app tabs  need an address bar?

see bug 585445 for that discussion
Depends on: 589109
Depends on: 582669
Depends on: 590130
Depends on: 590972
Depends on: 590993
Depends on: 594378
Depends on: 594131
No longer depends on: 587589
Depends on: 579154
Depends on: 598598
Depends on: 579482
Depends on: 590297
Depends on: 606319
Depends on: 609495
No longer depends on: 585712
Depends on: 625016
Depends on: 626101
Depends on: 625329
No longer blocks: 585445
Depends on: 585445
No longer blocks: 596535
Depends on: 641320
Depends on: 645393
No longer depends on: 645393
As app tabs finnally landed in firefox 4, and I find the new about:home clear, polish but not very useful, I have drawn in a schematic way what I think would be an useful welcome/home page to be always displayed in an app tab. I took some inspiration from fennec welcome page and chrome's home.
I have some web programming experience and a few with mozilla, so I could try to make an addon if this bug has not been abandoned.
No longer depends on: 590297
No longer depends on: 579482
Depends on: 655934
(In reply to comment #17)
> Created attachment 524180 [details]
> Proposal for home tab structure
> 
> As app tabs finnally landed in firefox 4, and I find the new about:home
> clear, polish but not very useful, I have drawn in a schematic way what I
> think would be an useful welcome/home page to be always displayed in an app
> tab. I took some inspiration from fennec welcome page and chrome's home.
> I have some web programming experience and a few with mozilla, so I could
> try to make an addon if this bug has not been abandoned.

I would like to see an addon of your schematic designed as I am running the nightly build and there is still nothing about the home tab yet. I like your design and would like to see what it looks like in firefox.
I am a bit irritated if the work on this bug is in progress or not.

What is the current status? Will there be a Home Tab in Firefox within the next 1 or 2 releases or not? Or are there any test builds?
(In reply to comment #19)
> I am a bit irritated if the work on this bug is in progress or not.
> What is the current status? Will there be a Home Tab in Firefox within the
> next 1 or 2 releases or not? Or are there any test builds?

The latest ux build occasionally has this and can be obtained from http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-ux
how to change the url for home tab?

if I set the homepage, both homepage and home tab are opened.

I only want my home page opened in hometab when firefox start.
Depends on: 698253
Depends on: 737735
No longer depends on: 585316
No longer depends on: 588230
No longer depends on: 641320
No longer depends on: 698253
Depends on: 1505014
Flags: in-litmus?
Summary: [meta][project] Home Tab and App Tabs → [meta] Pinned tabs
Depends on: 1512354
Depends on: 1515666
Depends on: 1552808
Alias: pinnedtabs
Depends on: 579874
Depends on: 1597395
No longer depends on: 1597395
Depends on: 1582027
Depends on: 1582197
Depends on: 1401484
Depends on: 1613519
Depends on: 1591778
Depends on: 1420601
Depends on: 1545611
Depends on: 776669
Depends on: 605111
Component: General → Tabbed Browser
Priority: -- → P3
Depends on: 1665477
Depends on: 1687190
Depends on: 1721605
Severity: normal → S3
Depends on: 1799159
Depends on: 1808684
Depends on: 1880199
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