this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
22 points (100.0% liked)

Firefox

19025 readers
192 users here now

A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
k_o_t@lemmy.ml
22
Votes Wanted: Proposal to allow 2 sidebars (one for tabs, one for extensions) (connect.mozilla.org)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
14 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

ℹ️ Edit

come on guys. 30 likes, 14 people gave a kudo? What kinda like is that? "Cool bro but not gonna make an account lol" IF YOU WANT THIS, GIVE IT A REAL LIKE

If you want, vote for my proposal to allow 2 sidebars in Firefox!

Firefox gets vertical tabs and a sidebar, cool huh? And you can open pages as sidebar popups, for example a small dictionary page, or a notepad or whatever else!

But when using vertical tabs and these site popups, it looks pretty ugly and pushes the main site to the edge.

Having a sidebar and a vertical tab bar would fix this.

Current state and mockup as images attached.

This is how it currently is: the sidebar and the vertical tab bar are the same. Placed extensions are unintuitive and popup windows (like Mozillas SideView or dedicated extensions) are next to the tabs, pushing the main website even further to the side

current state

This is how I would like it to be. A sidebar and a tab bar. Extensions go on the sidebar and the tab bar is just for tabs. The browser view is centered and clean.

(Tbh I would like tabs on the left but I am too lazy to edit the mockup)

top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] DogEarBookmark@reddthat.com 7 points 3 days ago

Found the Ultrawide monitor users lol. Voted for ya!

[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Upvoted it. The inability to use a sidebar (local LLM chat) on the other side with vertical tabs or at all when using sideberry together with their changed stance on selling user data made me move to Zen browser.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Zen allows sidebar and tabs on other side?

The simpler proposal would not make Sidebery work, because it is a sidebar popup and thus either that or the other things display.

So that would need 2 real sidebars

[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, I have tabs on the left and sidebar opens on the right.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Damn. Probably because they have their own tab implementation right?

[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Indeed. It uses some of the vertical tabs features in Firefox, but adds workspaces (~tabbed tab window) that you can assign default containers (like banking, personal, shopping) to. Tab groups are missing, but are being worked on. Don't expect nested tabs or trees like Sideberry or TST offer though. Honest disclosure: the implementation is not fully polished yet. The location where new tabs are opened or their remembered location after closing/opening the browser is not consistent.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I tried it, it is not the same. It seems to use the sidebar, and this popup thing hovers over the site instead of reducing the browser display area.

There is a Zen Mod to auto hide and show that popup, I fiddled around with it today and it was pretty amazing.

But also a bit broken, the popup didnt display anymore, the tab workspaces work really well but I can't remove the weird duplicate icon at the bottom.

Overall way better than FF though, WAY better. If I can fix those 2 things I will absolutely switch, this is next level

[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That popup you mention sounds like the zen web panel rather than the sidebar. In total that gives 3 concepts: vertical tabs, a floating web panel next to that and the sidebar. I like what they're trying to do, but it's not all polished yet with some odd UI glitches or things requiring (re)configuring like the toolbar. That combined with bad font rendering and missing tab groups made me switch back to FF for now...where I now disabled all usage data sharing options.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

There are tab groups! There are 2 buttons for some reason, but otherwise they are better than FF.

So you say that sidebar popup can be opened on the opposite side? Not in my experience.

[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 1 points 15 hours ago

No, there are 'workspaces' -accessed via the buttons on the bottom of the vertical tab bar-with their own tabs, but you can't group tabs within one workspace (yet). And yes I can open the sidebar -which is not a popup- on the other side. The thing that's popping up on the left next to the tabs and overlays the site is what Zen calls the web panel.

[–] azdle@news.idlestate.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Idea Not Found

Tried creationg an account and still don't see it.

[–] boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Weird, still not published then. I can see it, which was not possible at first either so I assumed that it was online.

Anyways will post again in a day or so

[–] Niquarl@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I can see it when clicking in the link. And if I click on the thumbs up it asks me to log in. Muqt be published now I think

[–] azdle@news.idlestate.org 3 points 3 days ago

Yep, I'm seeing it now too. 👍