Firefox Tab Center Prototype

This is a concept for advanced tab management, side tabs and pulling together tab related features in one place. It is not a completed spec. The discussion happens in bug 989383.

Further Explanation

Modes

Tab center has two modes that can be toggled in the preferences: Tabs on top and side tabs.

• Tabs on top: Tab center is hidden by default and can be opened using a toolbar item. It can then be closed by either clicking that item again, selecting a tab, or by clicking anywhere inside the web page.
• Side tabs: Tab center is opened all the time and serves as a side tabs implementation. Tabs on top are hidden.

Displaying tabs

• Usually, tabs are represented by a thumbnail, the tab title and the URL of the page
• If those list entries fill up the entire height of the window, they start to shrink as new tabs get opened
• Once the thumbnail becomes too small, it switches to displaying favicons instead
• The URL is hidden if there's no space for it
• The list will become scrollable only after the items have reached their minimum height

Tab groups

• Tab groups are represented by a maximum of three thumbnails
• When there are more groups than can be displayed in tray, that tray becomes scrollable in horizontal direction

Restoring tabs

When restoring tabs (either from recent tabs or from other devices), the following will happen:

• Tabs-on-top-mode: The tab is added to the tab strip and tab center closes automatically.
• Side-tabs-mode: The view jumps back to »Current Tabs« where the restored tab is added to the list (and displayed in the content view)