588162 - Add an animation or visualization when using Switch-To-Tab with multiple Tab Groups

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, defect)

Description

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Currently in [1] when using 'Switch-To-Tab' of a tab that exists within a different group, the browser window will immediately jump to that tab group, removing all previously opened tabs on the tab strip and display the currently open tabs in that group. This works as expected, but the action performed can leave the user wondering why their tabs disappeared without realizing that they just jumped to another Tab Group -- no animation, no indication, very quick. The instant jump may be misleading or unclear as to what just happened.

At the very least, the instantaneous jump between Tab Groups when using Switch-To-Tab should be visualized by either seeing your tabs fade away and your other tab group tabs reappear, or some other indication on the browser of the current Tab Group. 

STR:
1. Create two tab groups with an assortment of tabs
2. In the first tab group, open a new tab and use switch to tab to switch to a tab in the second tab group
3. Notice the immediate jump

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0b4pre) Gecko/20100817 Minefield/4.0b4pre

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

The use case here is when a user wishes to open a duplicate tab that is presently open with the same url in one or more multiple groups (unknowingly perhaps). The expected behaviour is to Switch-To-Tab in the current group, but alas, we jump to another Tab Group in an unexpected fashion.

Comment 2

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

This can even be as simple as automatically opening up the Tab Groups window and automatically selecting the tab for the user so we see the what just happened [1].

[1] Only with Switch-To-Tab across groups

Comment 3

[Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine [:mitcho]]

This would indeed be a nice enhancement, but it will have to be after fx 4. Punting to the future.

Comment 4

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Panorama has been removed from Firefox 45, currently in Beta and scheduled for release on March 7th. As such, I'm closing all existing Panorama bugs.

If you are still using Panorama, you will see a deprecation message in Firefox 44, and when 45 is released your tab group data will be migrated to bookmarks, with a folder for each group. There are also a few addons offering similar functionality.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal for more info.

We're removing Panorama because it has extremely low usage (about 0.01% of users), and has a large number of bugs and usability issues. The cost of fixing all those issues is far too high to justify, and so we'll instead be focusing our time and energy on improving other parts of Firefox.