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Firefox GUI News

Firefox Tab Candy Alpha 189

Posted by kdawson from the making-tabs-sweet dept.
Nunavut writes in with a note from TechCrunch on Aza Raskin's latest Mozilla goodie, Tab Candy. "Be sure to watch the video for a full overview — from the looks of it, it seems as if Tab Candy is sort of like Apple's Expose feature mixed with their Spaces feature, both of which are baked into OS X. For those who don't use a Mac, basically these features allow you to zoom out and get a bird's-eye-view of all your windows (or tabs, in this case) that are open — and you can also arrange open windows (or again, tabs, in this case) in certain spaces so they're clumped together. This allows you to more easily find what you're looking for with so many tabs open." Here's Raskin's blog post, the download link, and the FAQ.
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Firefox Tab Candy Alpha More

Firefox Tab Candy Alpha

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  • Open? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fusen ( 841730 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:14AM (#33020364)
    Am I the only one that opens up tabs to read the content and then closes the tab after doing so? I don't really see why someone would have like 20+ tabs constantly just sitting open.

    • Re:Open? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Knoeki ( 1149769 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:16AM (#33020378) Homepage
      I keep tabs open for certain sites. A bunch of sites (forums, etc) that I want to check regularly, and some other things I'll want to have a look at now and then.

    • Re:Open? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:24AM (#33020400) Homepage

      Yes.

      (If that's all we wanted to do we'd have stuck with the 'back' button).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by S.O.B. ( 136083 )

        That would be true if the back button restored the state of all pages properly.

        Sites that make use of collapsible sections do not always maintain their previous state when you back up to them. For example, I do this with Wikipedia and the collapsible section after the external links. As I check out the various links it saves me having to reopen the collapsible section every time which can quickly become rather tedious.

        Also, a search results page is often problematic backing up to.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Joe Jay Bee ( 1151309 )

      Thus speaks a man who has never experienced the addictive tab-craziness of TV Tropes [tvtropes.org] ;)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by vlm ( 69642 )

      Am I the only one that opens up tabs to read the content and then closes the tab after doing so? I don't really see why someone would have like 20+ tabs constantly just sitting open.

      You're just lacking good examples of things to keep "permanently open".

      "tabs" that I never close on my ipod touch, my ipad, or firefox:

      Local NWS weather radar direct link (radar.weather.gov/Thumbs/???.png where ??? is your local three letter code that has nothing to do with IACO airport codes)

      Local NWS 7 day forecast for my home, a rather complicated (bookmarked) URL.

      A vhfdx.net ham radio "activity map" for the 6 meter band on my continent, at least during Es season (which probably makes zero sense to non-a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Fusen ( 841730 )
        I probably should have clarified what I meant in my original post, but I didn't mean that I don't use tabs, I use tabs all the time. At the moment I've had 4 open for the last 2 hours. I use google reader and queue up all the feed items I want to read and then go through and read them, I also do the same on forums so I do have moments when I have 20+ tabs open at one time. The point I was making was why would you leave those 20 tabs open AFTER you've read the contents of them? Leaving enough open to justif

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by vlm ( 69642 )

          The point I was making was why would you leave those 20 tabs open AFTER you've read the contents of them?

          They change. I agree, useless for a static or semi-static page, but my local radar updates every few minutes.

          I don't really see the point in leaving the page open using any resources for something that changes once a day

          The resources used round down to zero. The cost of my time is not so cheap.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by danwesnor ( 896499 )
      If you close it, eventually you have to open it again. It takes like 0.08375 seconds to open a web page these days. Some people just aren't as patient as you are.

      • You are off by two orders of magnitude in your time estimate - and that's assuming no WiFi/phone data crapouts or whatever leaving pages unloaded anyways.

        Opening tabs in the background is a way to avoid having to watch pages load - particularly if you're browsing for images that are multiple megabytes in size, or sites that are too popular for their bandwidth, or sites Japan, or just when your connection is busy with torrents.

        Compared to the time used viewing such pages or files the loading time can be

    • i usually have like 30 tabs open at work. they are for documentation, information on certain APIs, etc. when i'm done with the task i'm working on i just close them all. i use TreeStyleTabs for this, it's an awesome way of managing tabs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MacGyver2210 ( 1053110 )

      AMEN to that. I watched this guy wantonly open tabs to things he probably would only glance at, and then complain there's too many tabs.

      Hey, instead of Tab Candy(which seems like a hell of a lot of work to organize tabs while browsing) how about you just learn to properly use a tabbed browser?

      Most people can manage information well enough in their head that they don't need 15-25 tabs open at once.

      On top of that, it's actually faster to just open a second copy of the browser with a different group of tabs th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Omestes ( 471991 )

        Hey, instead of Tab Candy(which seems like a hell of a lot of work to organize tabs while browsing) how about you just learn to properly use a tabbed browser?

        So the only proper way of doing things is your way? When I'm trying to research something (currently Windows 7 terrible wireless transfer rates to samba), I will open a TON of links in new tabs, then browse through them, quickly deleting the ones that don't work, or look dumb, moving the ones that might need more time over to the far left, and reading

    • You aren't the only one. But you are in a dwindling minority.
    • I do the same thing. Same with programs on the desktop. But I grew up in a time when resource management was important, so I'm aware of the memory that each unused program or tab is taking up. I suppose I could spend a few bucks and buy more memory, but it works for me.

      I've built my Firefox tab bar with the sites I use the most, so most of them are only two clicks away (one for the folder, one for the site). Those I use more are the easiest to get to, those that I rarely use take a little more effort. S
    • Well, I have quite a few tabs open every day on my system. Around 100 - 120 or so. Our help desk ticket system is RSS based. Using live bookmarks I can open all the tickets when I get in into each of their own tabs, that's about 20 to 40 tabs (depends on the day we're having.)

      Next I open up all my Google tools, gmail/wave/docs/newsgroups/etc... That's about 10 tabs. Then I pop all the unread stories of Slashdot into slashdot (that's about 10 to 15 tabs, depends on what kind of news day it is). Do t
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hb253 ( 764272 )

      Nope, I do the same. Clean desktop, clean browser, I hate screen clutter.

      I have a hunch that many of those who open tons of tabs are resource intensive in other parts of their lives.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey ( 83763 )

      That's my style too. (I also make sure my C++ objects are always free-ed up too.)

    • Am I the only one that opens up tabs to read the content and then closes the tab after doing so?

      No, you're not. I do that too.

      I don't really see why someone would have like 20+ tabs constantly just sitting open.

      I feel the same way, not only about tabs but about programs on the computer. When I am done with a program, I close it. For example, once I finish reading Slashdot today, I'll close my browser and not open it again until I need to go to another web page later, even if "later" is only five or ten minu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Cylix ( 55374 ) *

      While I work I actually do have several pages of things open. In fact, I could easily group several things and still have a section for screwing around.

      I liked the ability to save groups of those tabs and then re-pop them back open later. I do that now with the "save and quit," but this would ultimately be a more fine grained approach.

      Thinking back now... I actually close out a lot of things constantly to simply get back to a clean slate. If I could close one group and re-open it later that wouldn't be too

    • Well, just as an example... I often have something like the documentation to three to five Qt objects open at once, as well as some Qt forum or code example, as well as the OpenSceneGraph and Boost documentation for 1-N libraries, Gmail, our internal e-mail, Google Docs, 1-3 of our internal ticket tracking pages (depending on which projects I'm working on/using at the time), probably a few scattered tabs to mailing list archives to try and understand how a specific piece of code I'm using is SUPPOSED to wor

  • Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now, give me a feature which autosizes the thumbnails on the thumbnail view automatically, weighted by how often I go to the site.

    • I think Safari's "Top Sites" allows you to pick how many sites you want listed, auto-sizes the page previews and arranges them by most visited (you can also 'pin' a specific site to a specific spot). I'm sure this stuff is available in other browsers too.

  • Reinventing the window? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kangsterizer ( 1698322 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:26AM (#33020412)

    When I want to group tabs, I make new windows. In fact i rarely have more than 5 tabs per window, then 2-3 windows open. It's easy to navigate and organized, and also happens to be the way it's supposed to be done in current operating systems.

    Maybe I"m just old school.

    • Re:Reinventing the window? (Score:5, Funny)

      by sakdoctor ( 1087155 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:39AM (#33020490) Homepage

      Let's see, I've got multiple workspaces, with multiple instances of firefox running, and each has one or more tab.

      But something is missing. It's just not fine grained enough.
      If only tabs could have tabs!

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by jginspace ( 678908 )
        Tab Kit? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5447/ [mozilla.org]

      • Humour aside, this problem of tab groups got solved yonks ago with the TreeStyleTabs extension. Tabs are in a vertical tree, indented to show their relationship to one another, and the position -- and relationships -- between tabs can be adjusted by dragging and dropping tabs.

        It basically does all that this Tab Candy thing claims to do, but much more effectively and without needing swanky eye candy. Plus you can see all your tabs all the time; you don't have to zoom out.

        Not that Tab Candy doesn't look nea

        • I use TreeStyleTabs and it's better than nothing, but it's far from optimal. I don't like giving up a sixth of my width to keep everything in view, and it doesn't play nicely with all websites--sometimes you have to hide the tabs in order to see a whole video frame, other times text goes off the right side of the screen without a horizontal scroll bar to see it, etc. I recently tried the Top view, more like a conventional tab bar, but then the trees expand horizontally which is confusing and not useful.

          I

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by selven ( 1556643 )

        Yo dawg, I heard you like tabs...

    • That method works to some degree. The problem is that it requires a good memory of what's open and where it is. This feature seems to give you a graphical snapshot of everything which, for some people, would make finding an open tab faster given that a) they don't have to remember where is is and b) it allows their brain to process graphical rather than textual information.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by je ne sais quoi ( 987177 )
      That's what I thought at first when I watched the video also. However, there's one big difference -- tab candy seems to remember your groups of tabs, but is still flexible about creating and destroying them, and it will be searchable. If you're using virtual desktops and sets of windows, you can group those, but I always found the groupings to be clumsy and my workflow changes often enough that just calling one desktop "e-mail" and other "ssh session to X server" just doesn't work. Similarly, with a brow

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )

      Tab itself are already a reinvention of the window, what this add-on does looks closer to reinventing the bookmark. As the way one can organize the tabs into categories and stuff is much closer to what you get today with bookmarks, then what you can do with tabs. Which raises the question how that is going to work in practice, as in practice I don't consider tabs to be permanent 'links' to webpages, but temporary containers, i.e. does your whole carefully created layout go down the toiled if you decide to u

    • I admit I came to this video with the same reservations but there was some stuff in there that got me exited: sharing tabs with other users by drag-n-drop, even better: doing the same with other devices and multiple simultaneous profiles, which for some reason they buried somewhere in the middle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clintp ( 5169 )

      A quick poll of the users in the house, and ... yeah, we all do the same thing and it works quite well. Slow news day?

      Lots of tabs got you down?
      1. Drag a Firefox tab of onto the desktop, you get a new window.
      2. Drag related tabs onto that new window.

      Look! Grouped! The tabs retain their individual histories as well.

  • This looks very much like what is coming in out in Gnome Desktop (Gnome 3) as well. As someone who generally has 40 or 50 tabs open, I'm looking forward to it. If it allows me to search tabs quickly with a hotkey and a couple of words like Mozilla Ubiquity did I'll be extra happy.
    • Sorry, I keep say Gnome Desktop when I mean Gnome Shell. Gnome shell uses a very similar approach with desktop windows.

  • Tree Style Tabs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Leynos ( 172919 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:28AM (#33020434) Homepage

    The "Tree Style Tabs [mozilla.org]" add on is great for managing your browsing. It gives your tabs context, lets you collapse groups of tabs and move tabs from one group to another. That, and having the tabs vertically arranged lets you have far more on screen at once and make better use of a widescreen monitor. Solving many of the problems addressed by Tab Candy.

    I'm really surprised more people don't use it. It's the one thing now preventing me from switching to Chrome.

    • I use this addon as well, and it's as good as it gets. It's simple and intuitive and when you have several tabs open, it's much better (specially when reading API docs that have one separate page per function call).

    • I use Tree Style Tabs and combined with Vimperator. Never going back.

      This guy made ubiquity which I like too, judging from the video, they have a big sense of direction which is nice.

      • Unfortunately Ubiquity is...dead? At least I haven't read anything related to it in months (judging from Planet Mozilla and other sources).
        I loved it, except for it not being really portable (had strong issues with multi-OS/portable installs because of using absolute paths). But, alas, some commands grew obsolete with time, it wasn't being updated for recent versions, bugs, etc... A real shame, it was a lovable little tool with a lot of potential. Didn't Ubiquity start to fade (except for its fans) around t

    • I'm really surprised more people don't use it.

      Vertical tab lists and other sidebars really need a monitor at least 1280px wide. Some people such as myself have an old 1024x768px monitor or a netbook with a 1024x600px monitor, and more and more web sites are designed to run maximized across the entire width of such a monitor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by doti ( 966971 )

        Tree Style Tab is about more than displaying tabs vertically. The hierarchical arrangement of the tabs is even more useful.

    • In fact, Tree Style Tabs is very similar to this Tab Candy thing: both are (among other things) hierarchical visualizations of tabs. With Tab Candy it's more of a flat hierarchy, though he does introduce meta groups at a later stage. Anyway, the big difference is that Tab Candy uses an expose mode to manage the tabs, while Tree Style Tabs manages them in the boring favicon + title way. The expose thing looks great, but I'm not sure if it's suited all that way to managing tabs -- tab thumbnails never did any

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Zerth ( 26112 )

      chrome --enable-vertical-tabs

    • Try Tab Kit too one time -- it's got less fine-grained control for rearranging the tab tree, but it highlights unread tabs in a different colour and this state persists across sessions (for which I use SessionManager).

  • I ran opera for a while and it had this nice preview feature where it would give you a thumbnail of frequently visited sites. I stopped using it because there are some places I go to which I don't want to appear, even as thumbnails, when there are people around who might take an interest. Some of them have really crappy eyesight, which is a godsend, but I don't like relying on things like that.

  • What about the Firefox Showcase extension? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SpzToid ( 869795 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @07:48AM (#33020530)

    Saw the video of TFA and it seems Showcase does The Job, and is 'mature' as well; while not requiring so much manual intervention (which others might value as a Good Thing). I've been using it for at least a year and really like Showcase.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1810 [mozilla.org]

  • I would definitely like to use that at home.

    But something tells me that Fx4 would be as dumb and useless as Chrome is - for work. At work I need something reliable and flexible to accommodate all the silly needs of the intranet web apps. Chrome's lacking bookmarks (no bookmarks menu; no bookmark shortcuts; no keyword search), poor/non-existent keyboard shortcuts and silent updates (which constantly screw up the most visited sites tab; silently break extensions) ruined my experience with it on pretty muc

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anaerin ( 905998 )

      But something tells me that Fx4 would be as dumb and useless as Chrome is - for work. At work I need something reliable and flexible to accommodate all the silly needs of the intranet web apps. Chrome's lacking bookmarks (no bookmarks menu; no bookmark shortcuts; no keyword search), poor/non-existent keyboard shortcuts and silent updates (which constantly screw up the most visited sites tab; silently break extensions) ruined my experience with it on pretty much all occasions I have tried to use it. Way too primitive, way too dumb, way too unmanageable.

      Whatchoo talkin' bout, Philips? Chrome has Bookmarks. If you hit the little star in the address bar, it bookmarks the current page (And allows you to customise where that bookmark is saved). When you open a new (empty) tab, the bookmark bar is shown by default as part of the "New tab" page. This behaviour can be overridden by right-clicking the bookmark bar on an empty tab and choosing "Always show bookmarks bar", which them promotes it to it's typical place just under the address bar. And Chrome does have

      • Thanks a bunch. Really. Google is even better than Mozilla at hiding functionality. (Though Mozilla definitely has better community and documentation: finding tips and tricks is easy, if needed at all. about:config takes care of 90% of issues.)

        That leaves though another major hole: silent auto-updates. Year ago there was no option to be prompted on updates. Neither Chrome has yet a semi-decent release notes: even if it's going to suggest an update to me, it is nearly impossible to know what the update m

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Anaerin ( 905998 )

          That leaves though another major hole: silent auto-updates. Year ago there was no option to be prompted on updates. Neither Chrome has yet a semi-decent release notes: even if it's going to suggest an update to me, it is nearly impossible to know what the update might bring as there are no release notes whatsoever. Here I'd love to be proven wrong again.

          I found some here [blogspot.com], though I'm sure Google would recommend that you use the Stable release branch if you don't want things breaking.

          Another minor nag: Chrome opens page in a new tab, next to the current tab. Is it possible to make the new tab to be open as last one? I have in office three standard tabs open and for convenience I keep them as first three. From this first three tabs I open other pages/tabs. Now in Chrome the order gets messed up very quickly and one has to rearrange tabs constantly to keep the first three important tabs in the place where I expect to find them. Is there any option to disable that and make tabs behave as in pre-Fx3.5? (Fx has an about:config option for that.)

          Chrome opens tabs the way it does to try and keep a rudimentary history going, grouping related tabs together. You will be pleased to know, however, that there is an extension [google.com] made just for people who don't like this, to enable "Firefox-like" tab ordering.

          • I found some here [blogspot.com], though I'm sure Google would recommend that you use the Stable release branch if you don't want things breaking.

            I have seen those. Yes, they are mostly useless as official releases pushed silently to users are concerned.

            Chrome opens tabs the way it does to try and keep a rudimentary history going, grouping related tabs together. You will be pleased to know, however, that there is an extension [google.com] made just for people who don't like this, to enable "Firefox-like" tab ordering.

            Well... it kind of ... works: tabs jump around as one opens them. I'm not sure whether it is better than nothing. It spares the menial work of bringing the tabs back in order, but the funky animation side-effect is sure confusing.

            N.B. FireFox since 3.5 (or 3.6?) adopted the same tab ordering as the Chrome. But they provided an about:config option to manage it.

            Anyway, I see that Chrome is getti

  • Tab Mix Plus (Score:4, Interesting)

    by veganboyjosh ( 896761 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @08:20AM (#33020646)
    Until recently, my internet experience called for no more than 10 tabs to be open, ever. I've started a new job which calls for a lot of browsing on a lot of websites. The other day I got up to 80 tabs open at the same time.

    I'm a huge fan of the Tab Mix Plus Firefox add-on. It allows you to have multiple rows of tabs, and even set unread tabs and current tab to a different colors. Very helpful for visually seeing what's been read, where the new tabs are, where the actual tab is for the page you're on, etc. Especially when there's 20+ open tabs on your screeen at once.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122/ [mozilla.org]

    • I use Tab Mix Plus in combination with TabGroups Manager. [mozilla.org] Typically I am running with 3000+ active tabs in 50ish group tabs, 6 windows (all I can keep track of in my head)-- but only 6 or 7 of those group tabs open and taking memory/processor-- TabGroups Manager suspends the rest.

      TabGroups Manager is a "hidden gem." In comparison, Tab Candy seems simply purposeless to me!

      • I'll check that out. It sounds like it could be useful.

        What, pray tell, do you do which you need 3000+ tabs for? If you're working an 8 hour day, that's about 8 seconds per tab for the entire day. That's once you have them up and running. The startup/load time should you accidentally hit "refresh all tabs" must be insane.
  • now if all the web apps I'm required to use at work would work in firefox...
  • The OS X-only, Webkit based (japanese) browser, Shiira [shiira.jp], has had this "tab-sposé" feature for years. It was written during a period when Safari "showed promise" but was nowhere near properly usable, but doesn't appear to be well maintained at the moment, which is (imo) something of a pity.

  • This is a good example... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Coppit ( 2441 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @09:45AM (#33021032) Homepage

    This is a good example of a solution devised by an engineer. Somehow they think that peering at icons, dragging and dropping them, and organizing them into a hierarchy is really something the average user would want to do. The average user will find this solution worse than the problem. A better solution is to simply do what Chrome does and open new tabs next to the originating tab. It doesn't solve all the world's problems, but it's automatic and solves a couple of them.

  • Stability? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by the-bobcat ( 1360969 )
    While I like the idea and can easily imagine the fun/productivity of this on a touch based machine, what happens when a single tab goes haywire and crashes everything? I wish the Firefox devs would take the idea from Chrome and implement individual tab processes. With multi-core machines ever on the rise I can't see why not.

  • It would be great if the videos were available in WebM so I could actually see them. It is supposed to be the new Firefox standard after all.

  • *BLOAT*!

    I do not WANT more complexity and eye candy built into Firefox. It is getting larger, using more memory, harder to control (and lock down), and using more CPU all the time. Can't they add this kind of stuff with extensions??? Or perhaps split Firefox into two versions- one fat and one small?

    If this keeps up, I will have to look for another browser that fills Firefox's original mission- small, fast, efficient, simple, multiplatform, open source, and expandable.

  • I don't see the point of this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GreatBunzinni ( 642500 ) on Sunday July 25, 2010 @10:57AM (#33021410)

    The example which is given in the video from TFA to try to demonstrate the need for this tab candy nonsense is how a clumsy user can fill a tab bar with countless unrelated tabs. Yet, from the example which was presented, there is absolutely no need for that sort of crap. Let me explain.

    In the example the user starts off with a browser window which already has tons of tabs, which is already in itself a sign that the user doesn't know what he is doing. From there, a case is presented where the user suddenly feels the need to start a new search, which happens to be completely unrelated to anything that he was already doing. Well, in that scenario, the user could very well do the very same thing that any semi-rational user does when he finds himself on that very same situation: open a new browser window dedicated to that search and go crazy with the search results. There, fixed. There is no need for this tab candy crap, searches/online tasks are perfectly compartmentalized, the tab bar is clean and cluttered, the navigation to/from opened pages becomes simpler... Everyone wins.

    Now, let's look at what this tab candy crap brings to the table. So a clueless user who is perfectly incapable of organizing his workflow finds himself with a single browser window with dozens of opened tabs. He suddenly feels the need to open another dozen tabs to perform a completely independent task. According to TFA, the solution to his problems comes in the form of this tab candy crap. Yet, the only thing that it is capable of doing is offering yet another needlessly cumbersome step to do nothing more than provide a different, resource-expensive way to present to the user the tabs which he has opened.

    So, in other words, this tab candy crap is nothing more than a window manager built into a browser. I mean, manually group tabs? List the tab groups which are currently opened? Put some tabs on the foreground while putting others on the background? Present the user with small icons representing the opened tab? If you replace "tabs" with "windows" you are describing pretty much any window manager out there. So why exactly is it a good idea to build a window manager into a browser?

    • So why exactly is it a good idea to build a window manager into a browser?

      Because, like it or not, the OS of the future is the browser.

    • I don't see the point of this, either.

      If I have temporary research that requires dozens of tabs, it seems a waste of time to manually arrange them into a tab group that you're going close anyway. A few clicks? You can already create a new "tab group" with a quick Ctrl+N. Drag-n-drop? You can already drag tabs between Firefox windows and even drag a tab off and create a new window.

      Hell, you can even have Firefox open your previously open windows and tabs when you start it up.

      The demo was flashy, but the just

    • Perhaps the time has come to realize that what's on the web has become the desktop apps and redesign the window manager accordingly.

      I know, keep the web in the browser, etc.

      Right?

    • "clumsy user", "clueless user", "semi-rational user", "a sign that the user doesn't know what he is doing", ...

      If you have ever conducted user studies of browsing behavior, you would see that the tasks that Aza describes are exactly the ones users perform in the real world. Why do you think it's unexpected for a user to pause a current browsing session and look for something unrelated, and wish to keep that search session separate from the previous one?

      No, simply a new window would not be sufficient, because pretty soon, you end up with several different windows, and not all of us have the luxury of 30" displays to

      • "clumsy user", "clueless user", "semi-rational user", "a sign that the user doesn't know what he is doing", ...

        If you have ever conducted user studies of browsing behavior, you would see that the tasks that Aza describes are exactly the ones users perform in the real world. Why do you think it's unexpected for a user to pause a current browsing session and look for something unrelated, and wish to keep that search session separate from the previous one?

        I don't know if you are purposely trying to put words in my mouth or if you simply failed to understand what has been written. Either way, if you take the time to both read what I've posted and make an effort to understand it, you will realize that nowhere it was said that "it's unexpected for a user to pause a current browsing session and look for something unrelated", nor did I said anything in that sense. In fact, once you've read and understood what I've said you will notice that I've said that "the us

  • That is my question. I had to downgrade to the 3.5 line after the 3.6.7 update the other day. I tried the latest 3.6.8 as well, and it too crashes the moment it hits a page with flash. 3.5 works just fine.
  • I'm willing to bet that the people posting in this thread about always having 20+ tabs open, with things like java weather trackers running in them, are the same ones that complain about Firefox's "bloated" use of memory.

  • What about bookmarks? Bleh to tabs, I don't wanna have a hundred of them open anyway... I DO wanna have thousands of bookmarks, and Firefox is just no use in that regard, never has been, and judging from the stuff they get excited about, never will be.

    What a joke. It's a browser for the masses alright.... the drooling excitement in the second half made me cringe haha.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IANAAC ( 692242 )

      I DO wanna have thousands of bookmarks, and Firefox is just no use in that regard, never has been

      Don't know what your set up is, but mine can and does easily handle thousands of bookmarks.

      I have XMarks installed and make heavy use of tagging. What really makes it useful though is Gnome-do. Searches are really quite quick.

      In fact, Gnome-do has become indispensable to me for many programs, not just Firefox.

  • I avoid the tab scrolling by using the tabmixplus extension and enabling multi-row so when the tab-bar is full a new tab bar starts below the first, and no tabs scrolling out of view.
  • Judging by the responses, I take it that not many people here have thought of The Humane Interface [wikipedia.org], which was written by Aza's father Jef. Tab Candy looks like it is influenced by the Zoomworld idea Jef had in mind in the book and was starting to develop with the Archy interface. The last few minutes of the video, particularly zooming out ad infinitum and syncing with physical devices and other external resources illustrate this. It even operates on the same concepts - spatial thinking and incremental find.

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