Tab drawer as alternative to tab bar

[gracious1]

Here's something I haven't seen discussed yet in this forum, but I think would be a cool feature for Pale Moon in future versions, namely:

Allow the user to choose an alternative form of tabbed browsing, in which the tabs are displayed vertically in a drawer on the side of the window (including optional thumbnail pictures of the pages), which would open and close as the user needed.

Here's a screenshot of what I mean, from a browser called Omniweb, which implemented this feature a decade ago:


When I used the Omniweb browser many years ago on my MacBrook Pro, I was pleased to have this feature. (I am not aware of any browser currently that implements tabbed browsing exactly in this way).

And you can have it without the thumbnails, just the names of the web pages, for when you have a lot of tabs open (from an old Omniweb manual):


I would find this feature to be very convenient now, as my laptop screen is small, and wider than it is long, and there are quite a few pages where I have to remove most of the toolbars to see the page properly. If I had tabs in a drawer on the side, that could slide in and out as needed, that would improve the display of content.

I realize that you have a full plate, but I hope that this is something you might consider working on.

[Moonchild]

There are already extensions that allow tabs to be placed in the sidebar, so you should probably look into using one of those.

[half-moon]

IMO, vertical tabs do not belong in a browser, or even a file manager for that matter. Not everybody has wide-screen Ultra 4k monitors, some us have lower res monitors and vertical tabs take way too much of our screen space.

[gracious1]

I have a small laptop monitor myself. Hardly 4K or top-of-the-line and all that. But it is wider than long, so I would find tab drawers that slide out to be of benefit.

There are several sites that I visit that I must hide practically all the toolbars to see the page properly. For example, there is a language-learning site where I need to see everything from top to bottom and do so at a resolution where I can read the text! So if I could get rid of the tabs along the top that would be of big help to me. And frankly, most sites I visit I find myself in this predicament. My vertical space is insufficient.

As far as taking up too much screen space for other people's system configuration, I did say that it should be optional.

Since Moonchild says they exist, I will look into tab drawer extensions, but I still think it would be a nice optional feature to have natively. So I made my request.

Cheers.

[Andrew Gilbertson]

There are several sites that I visit that I must hide practically all the toolbars to see the page properly. For example, there is a language-learning site where I need to see everything from top to bottom and do so at a resolution where I can read the text!

Try pressing F11, which will turn on full-screen mode. (And F11 a second time to get out of full-screen mode.)

[gracious1]

Try pressing F11, which will turn on full-screen mode. (And F11 a second time to get out of full-screen mode.)

Oh, that is handy.
Thanks.

I started a new thread about this issue in the Browser Extensions area since that seemed a more appropriate place if this is to be solved through an extension rather than an added feature in PM. You can see what I found there.

[Moonchild]

Ultimately, if a website becomes unusable below certain resolutions that should be generous enough to allow the content to be displayed, then that is a point of attention the web designers of the site need to think about as well to improve usability.

[Falna]

I am not aware of any browser currently that implements tabbed browsing exactly in this way

You can use Showcase in it's 'Showcase Sidebar' mode for the 'with previews' effect: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/showcase/

[gracious1]

Ultimately, if a website becomes unusable below certain resolutions that should be generous enough to allow the content to be displayed, then that is a point of attention the web designers of the site need to think about as well to improve usability.

Yes, that is something I intend to write to the web designers about. There is a lot of wasted whitespace which forces me to use more screen than is really necessary to carry out the exercises.