782238 - Tabs not easily accessible

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[djprius]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0
Build ID: 20120601045813

Steps to reproduce:

  On 7" tablet with 4.0.3 (and latest Nightly), in landscape orientation just 2 or 3 tabs are visible without scrolling.  And scrolling in the "tight" space is not easy. 

  This is unacceptable since I, and I suspect others, usually have at least 5 or 6 tabs open -- and jump from one to another during the day.

  Although this is not technically a bug, it is a critical aspect for me -- and I suspect others.  Unless tabs are shown (like Chrome) or many are easily viewed (like Opera Mobile), I will unfortunately choose another browser -- because easy tab selection is about the most important feature of a browser for me.  (I have been a user of FF and TB since the beginning and am a strong supporter of the Mozilla projects: open source, standards driven, independent of self-serving vendor.)

David

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Ian any thoughts?

Comment 2

[Ian Barlow (:ibarlow)]

We're actually exploring some UI right now that changes the tab scrolling direction from vertical to horizontal when you switch to landscape mode. In fact Sriram and I were already planning to hack on this during our work week. 

If it works out well, it would be a more efficient use of space and expose more tabs at the same time on screen -- which, conveniently, is also what David happens to be looking for here.

Comment 3

[djprius]

Some 'tab' observations, perhaps obvious, but offered since I've spent the last couple months using a 7" Android trying Firefox, Opera Mobile, and Chrome.

1. FF tabs show 'thumbnail' and URL (whereas Opera shows just thumbnails and Chrome just URL).
2. FF thumbnail is too small to read (on 7" screen).  Opera size thumbnail is much easier to recognize.  If FF retains thumbnails, need to enlarge size.
3. Seems unnecessary to have both thumbnail and URL.
4. Tabs with URLs are more compact and recognizable, but maybe not as "cool" and not as "tablet-like"as thumbnails.

 Nothing earth-shaking, but some observations by an ordinary user (me).

David

Comment 4

[Dmitry Gutov]

I'd like to point out that the 4 tabs visible when switching in portrait mode isn't much either. Basically, you waste a lot of space to the right of thumbnails when showing page titles.

I tried to find a way to use the "tablet" mode, with tabs to the left of all content, but apparently it's disabled for 7 inch devices.

On a related note, as a new user, I found the lack of quick "next tab", "previous tab" and "close tab" actions puzzling.

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.