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Google Developer Says Chrome Team is Working on a Scrollable Tabstrip For the Browser (techdows.com) 82

If you're a tab-hoarder, and you use Chrome browser, Google may have some news for you soon. The company is working on a scrollable tabstrip to make it easier for users to navigate through tabs, a developer was quoted as saying. Peter Casting, who works on Chrome UI, said, "scrollable tabstrip is in the works. In the meantime, try shift-clicking and ctrl-clicking to select multiple tabs at once, then drag out to separate Windows to group tabs by Window." TechDows, which first reported the development: We're expecting this as the related bug, the 'UI: tab overflow' bug created 10 years back, reports opening too many tabs causes add tab button (+) to disappear and tabs do not scroll then, the expected result has been mentioned as 'scrollable tabs.' Further reading: Google is raiding Firefox for Chrome's next UI features.
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Google Developer Says Chrome Team is Working on a Scrollable Tabstrip For the Browser

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    I usually run out of memory before I run out of room for tabs.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      They already added an easy fix for this: the close button.

      Don't keep all your tabs open. If you want to come back to a page later, bookmark it and close the tab.

      • Personally I use bookmarks for long-term things, pages I expect to still want a year later. The bookmarks UI is appropriate for that type of use.

        I tend to leave tabs open for things I'm likely to want to look at later today, or this week. I end up with a lot of tabs open, which isn't ideal.

        What I'd like to have would be something like bookmarks but quicker to add, and especially remove, things from the "read later" list. Just have an X next to the entry so removing it is one click just like closing a tab.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    They made and then discontinued a few months later...?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      This is why I still use Firefox/Waterfox. The answer is simple with our wide-screen monitors: vertical tab support. Just re-enable it (but better) from what you used to have.

      But noooo reusing old code doesn't get some engineer/manager promoted. Gotta invent something new. Smh...

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Between this and skipping TWO ads in YouTube, these guys are amazing

  • Searching through hundreds of tabs or just typing your search into a new one?

    I have a better idea. Why not reserve one tab (maybe the leftmost one) for searching open tabs? Then you won't have to scroll through them- just enter a key word or two on the tab search tab and the browser will switch to the tab you're looking for. Or even just use a hot-key that tells the browser that whatever you type after the hot-key is a search term for the open tabs.

    Or better yet, don't keep dozens or hundreds of tabs ope

    • I love your ideas.

      Even better; a key stroke combination to associate a number of tabs with the combination.

      That is, once entered those tabs load automatically.

    • by dissy ( 172727 )

      Searching through hundreds of tabs or just typing your search into a new one?
      I have a better idea. Why not reserve one tab (maybe the leftmost one) for searching open tabs?

      The addon "List Opened Tabs" lets you do both. You can put its icon anywhere (mines on the right, but left works too), and lists out tab titles in full, and has a search box.
      I don't think it has a hotkey built in though.

      Or better yet, don't keep dozens or hundreds of tabs open at once.

      You can't tell me what to do!

    • just enter a key word or two on the tab search tab and the browser will switch to the tab you're looking for

      Firefox already does that, using url suggestions. Chrome kind of does it but in a crappier way that has trouble with text not at the beginning of the url.

  • You need a non quantum browser to use it but it gets my tab addiction fixed. Shame Google took so long as they were working on more trackibg mechanisms instead.
  • by AbRASiON ( 589899 ) * on Friday November 23, 2018 @08:52AM (#57688038) Journal

    Firstly, introduce the right code for duplicate tab blocking.

    I'm basically an ADHD browser, 100 tab average, 200 bad and 400 extreme.

    When I open a new middle click Gmail tab, my fourth one of them, cause I lost the other 3. Use "pull to location" code, that will bring the existing open tab from it's spot to my new tab location, maybe refresh it.
    That alone will save me a heap of hassle.

    Fixed tab width so I can read tab names.
    Some kind of tree or similar option to see what is what. .........

    .

    • by Lorens ( 597774 )

      Not opening duplicate tabs (unless I really want it, which I sometimes do) is a feature I've wanted for a long time!

      As for fixed tab width, I'd prefer a button to list all my tabs with the full name in some dropdown, for use when there gets to be so many tabs that the titles disappear. An automatically maintained folder in the tab or bookmarks bar would be perfect.

      I've spent the last week editing and copy-pasting between several dozen Google Docs and spreadsheets, and both these features were sorely missed.

      • Firefox handles duplicate tab opening flawlessly. At least it used to wth the plugins I had installed.

        The pull to tab (my name for it) was perfect. Go collect the dupe tab and pull it to the location where you're now song for it.

        Listing all your tabs used to be an add-on for Firefox called "tabs menu"

        Some of these add-ons work for Chrome but unfortunately, they're not exactly as good as they were in ff

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Task bars and window managers have already solved this a long time ago

  • by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Friday November 23, 2018 @08:57AM (#57688058)

    I want an option to put tabs on the side, along the left or right. We all have widescreen monitors, but very few pages actually need the full width of the monitor. We should have the option of putting tabs vertically along the side of the monitor to make more efficient use of space.

    • Switch to Vivaldi. Same Chromium rendering engine, but with sane and configurable tab management. You can have vertical tabs on the left or right, or tabs along the top or bottom of the window if you want.
    • You're using your widescreen monitor wrong. Tile two windows side-by-side. Read documentation in one half, edit code in the other.

      Of course, in that configuration, the only reasonable solution for tab hoarders is (a) grouping into several windows, and (b) multi-row tab bars.

    • Have you tried or considered the Vivaldi browser? Putting the tabs on the side (either side) is an option.

    • I want an option to put tabs on the side, along the left or right. We all have widescreen monitors, but very few pages actually need the full width of the monitor. We should have the option of putting tabs vertically along the side of the monitor to make more efficient use of space.

      Yes! This a thousand times! One of the main reasons I am so entrenched in Pale Moon is because it's the only browser I know of that still has the feature*. It's essential to me, particularly when you can group them, expand/coll

      • by theCoder ( 23772 )

        I'm also a big TST fan, and I've been sitting at FF 56 for a while because of incompatibility. But just recently I downloaded FF63 and was able to get TST working in it. It has been ported to the Web Extensions API as a sidebar. However, there are a few customizations you have to do manually to make it work really correctly. To get the full experience, you have to add the following to chrome/userChrome.css in your profile directory:

        /* Hide horizontal tabs at the top of the window */
        #main-window[tabsint

    • by mea2214 ( 935585 )
      Tree Style Tabs plugin does this for Firefox. Been using that for a decade now. Wish Chrome had a similar plugin.
  • by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Friday November 23, 2018 @09:18AM (#57688118)

    Why do people have hundreds of open tabs at a time? I honestly can't imagine the use case for this.

    Sure I have a large collection of bookmarks, but at most I only have a handful of tabs open at any time (any more and its because I didn't close a tab after I finished using it) and I know I cannot focus on more than a couple of things at a time.

    Should I just be yelling at clouds and telling the kids to keep off my lawn?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      For me it's usually because I'm working on something specific so I'll have maybe a dozen tabs related to that project that I flip through. Then I get another project but I don't want to lose my place with the previous project so now there are a dozen more tabs. Then another thing comes up that I have to work on, dozen more tabs.

      As I complete projects I do close out the tabs but still at any given time I may have half a dozen things I'm working on and each one has a dozen tabs. Some projects take years to co

      • by OzPeter ( 195038 )

        For me it's usually because I'm working on something specific so I'll have maybe a dozen tabs related to that project that I flip through. Then I get another project but I don't want to lose my place with the previous project so now there are a dozen more tabs. Then another thing comes up that I have to work on, dozen more tabs.

        Is your work web-centric, or is it just that all of your reference materials are web-centric? (FWIW I work with actual desktop programs with very little web related work flows - only when I need to look up a specific vendors product from time to time etc)

        But it seems like you have a set of well defined tabs for each project that you work on. So why can't you just do on a per project basis "save bookmarks to all open tabs", close them down and do an "Open all bookmarks to new tabs" when you need them again

        • by OzPeter ( 195038 )

          D'oh .. Only after replying I understood your comments about Firefox's previous functionality.

        • by dissy ( 172727 )

          Is your work web-centric, or is it just that all of your reference materials are web-centric? (FWIW I work with actual desktop programs with very little web related work flows - only when I need to look up a specific vendors product from time to time etc)

          I'm not the same person you replied to, but I follow a very close usage that just works best for me.
          Especially when researching something new, I both want to learn all of my options as well as be able to follow the breadcrumb trail back to a point if some options turn out dead ends.

          Hundreds of tabs is not, to me, ever a persistent state of things, but a given project or idea may both be fairly long running (weeks to months) and I do tend to have more than one in progress at a time (for example, days to week

        • And what happens when your computer/browser/whatever crashes and burns? How do you easily recover if you don't have the bookmarks to the tabs all neatly stored away?
          On Mac OS the browsers restore all tabs automatically.

          Manually opening 100's of tabs would suck big time.
          Automatic recovering of all tabs is also a pain. After all: they usually get all reloaded and not loaded from the cash.

      • Talk to management about how getting interrupted makes projects take longer. You will find that is true. Then get a prioritization system in place. And set a maximum of 2 active projects, no more interruptions till one of them is complete.

        That's a far better solution.

    • I don't like bookmarks. Because they are not visible on screen, in my experience they become write-only memory: write bookmark, never think about it again.

      I've got a bunch of long-term projects going on, each with a number of tabs. Having them as tabs serves as a constant reminder of unfinished business, which is something I need. Maybe this is a flaw in how my brain works, but I haven't found a better workaround than this.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Some people once had desks completely covered with stacks of papers, even if they weren't relevant to the current task. These are those people, but now in the digital age.
    • Why do people have hundreds of open tabs at a time? I honestly can't imagine the use case for this.
      I open for every search a new window, and then open interesting search results in new tabs. It is quite easy to have more than 100 tabs open that way. I probably have at the moment 15 youtube tabs open ...

  • Bookmark and close your damn tabs.
    Wanna know why your system is running slow, you have 20+ tabs opened.
    • My system is not running slow.
      About 20% CPU usage, 2770 threads, 271 processes.
      Probably 200 of them are browser tabs.

  • multi-row tab bar, i'm waiting :)
  • This is the reason I use Firefox.
    I do electronic design and often have 100 tabs open.
    Chrome had experimental vertical tabs then some dweeb developer decided no one needed them.
    Do it now. Type in tree style tabs into FF and live a more productive life!
    Not my windows start menu also love as a vertical tab, which makes sense since Hollywood forced us all to 16:9

  • Not only do I have multiple windows open, each with anywhere from 10-80 tabs open, but one of those tabs is a "Restore previous session" tab, which if I clicked on would open another several windows, each with multiple tabs... And one of THOSE tabs would be a "Restore previous session" tab... It's recursive for me.

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