622124 - remove tabscrolling behavior and modernize tabwidth

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[chris hofmann]

Bug 574654 to Remove browser.tabs.tabMinWidth and browser.tabs.tabMaxWidth in favor of CSS happened in Firefox 4 and  created a lot of controversy. 

but one things that came out of controversy and discussion was to surface the fact that Firefox tab scrolling behavior now lags usability of other modern browsers, which don't require users of any level of proficiency to have to scroll to tabs left off screen when the number of tabs grows beyond 8-10 tabs. 

(see conment https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574654#c50 )  

We should experiment with things like Marcio Galli's "fisheye tabs" experiment on the Labs Chromeless browser project and maybe other ideas to figure out how to help users out of the situation where they need to scroll to view the contents of tabs.   As a user hovers over each tab, the summary content of the tab (favicon/title) expands to provide a larger and more readable hint about the tab's contents.  Fisheye tabs supports the idea that UI elements should be made prominent when a person is using them, but then "get out of the way" when not in use or needed, leaving just a hint of how to return the element to prominence.  

Panarama helps a bit to overcome the desire to view tab content without tab scrolling but also might be overkill when the number of tabs is in the 8-18 range and seems more suited for case where users need to organize 25-30 or more tabs.

Comment 1

[ff4-temp]

My comment from last week seems to have disappeared.  Here's the essence of it:



Why not simply revert the patch from the referenced bug above that broke the functionality to begin with?  It'd make everybody happy, plus Dao would then be able to stop whining about people spamming the 'bug' he created to break FF...

Fisheye is annoying IMO on Mac OSX.  The reason I want minimum/maximum tab widths won't be fixed by it either.  The rationale (if you can call it that) for removing the functionality in FF4 seems to be to make the code easier to test.  How is developing a whole new set of **** just to avoid reverting a 10-line change making it simple/easy to test?

If you guys want something actually useful for the tab bar, drop me an e-mail.  I thought of it 20 minutes after the first FF browser with scrolling tabs, it would reduce/eliminate scrolling tabs, and have never seem a browser/add-on that incorporated it.

IMO, if users want a scrolling tab bar, why not let them have it?  The ability to customize something like a browser is a good thing.

Comment 2

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Isn't this a dupe of bug #597564 ?

Comment 3

[ff4-temp]

Nope - the change intentionally made in 597564 is what everybody is complaining about.  Apparently all the complaints are enough for the FF devs to consider building and incorporating an entire new system of tab handling (which is what this bug is about) rather than simply backing out the change that broke it to begin with.

Comment 4

[chris hofmann]

I would sumbit that just about most all users suffer from the side effects of tab scrolling, or at aleast all those users that have more than 7 or 8 tabs open in any window.

bug 597564 and Bug 574654 is about the most technical advanced user that are complaining and have know some easy solutions to fix the problem they observed. 

if we fixed the general problem, there would be much less complaining and need to fix the problem advanced users are complaining about.

Comment 5

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

But bug #597564 is against tab scrolling... like this bug

Comment 6

[ff4-temp]

I highly doubt if users 'suffered' from the effects of tab scrolling all that much.  Even so, why not leave these options in and simply change the default value to be very small so that all the tabs open could feasibly be 1 pixel wide to make all of them fit.  With the functionality removed by 'bug' 574654 put back in, people who don't like such behavior could easily change it back to behave normally again.  I guess I still just do not understand why you insist on restricting how people can customize Firefox in this way...

In respect to the users who care about this change, I hope you realize that you just lumped my 72 year old father who needs to call me every time he wants to print a web page with a frame on it into the 'most technical advanced user' group.  He upgraded to FF4 (which I'm very impressed by as he usually isn't that computer savvy) and then called me in a panic when 'it won't work right anymore' - basically, he can't tell what tab is which because they're too narrow.  He looks up reflections/interpretations of the daily scripture, each of which opens in a new tab when you click on them.  I uninstalled FF4 and he's also back to using 3.6.

Comment 7

[ff4-temp]

Just FYI, Chrome is adding a tab scroll feature. :) 

http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=80945

Comment 8

[heraldo]

Any possibility to revisit this for Photon? Bug 1355919 introduces new scrolling animations, perhaps we could get a pref to disable scrolling as well?

Comment 9

[Thomas Staudinger]

Is the recent change in minimal tab width connected with this endeavor? I just noticed it today; when many tabs are open I can only see the favicon and part of the first letter of the page title, which is useless to me. I would at least like an option to change the minimum tab width.

Comment 10

[YF (Yang)]

(In reply to Thomas Staudinger from comment #9)
> Is the recent change in minimal tab width connected with this endeavor? I
> just noticed it today; when many tabs are open I can only see the favicon
> and part of the first letter of the page title, which is useless to me. I
> would at least like an option to change the minimum tab width.

https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74983i/new_minwidth_default_in_todays_nightly/

Bug 1404465 - Add back `browser.tabs.tabMinWidth` and set the default width to 50