596073 - Need a way to deal with tabs in windows that haven't started Panorama

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, defect, P3)

Description

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

In bug 595236, Aza needed to be able to manipulate tabs in other windows, some of which have not started Panorama (and therefore don't have .tabItems). For this, he created a helper, TabUtils, that can operate on either a tabItem or a xul:tab. Dietrich has proposed that this is not the best way to go, so I'm opening this bug to discuss. Some options: 

* Rearchitect so those routines always operate on xul:tabs, and if you have a TabItem, pass its .tab into it. 
* Once Panorama has been started in one window, automatically start it in all other windows, so you'll never be in a situation where one window has an active Panorama yet the others don't.

Another thing to keep in mind is that even when Panorama is started, app tabs have no .tabItem.

Comment 1

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Ian, how important do you think this is for Firefox 4.0? I know from an architecture stand point it is useful, but nothing seems to depend on this bug...

Comment 2

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Adding this to beta 9 as a nice-to-have.

Comment 3

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Ooops, applied this to the wrong bug. Rolling back and waiting for Ian's input.

Comment 4

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

Yeah, we can do it post 4.0.

Comment 5

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

Removing myself from this bug.

Comment 6

[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.