
A Classic Extension Reborn: Tree Style Tab - clouddrover
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/12/webextension-tree-style-tab/
======
Narretz
I find it interesting that the gif shows the Tree Style Tab extension without
the default Firefox tab bar, but at least in FF57, the tab bar can only be
hidden with a custom userchrome.css, so the otu of the box experience is
flawed at the moment. This is at the moment my biggest gripe with the
extension, and I think the interview / article could have shown the default
state of the extension, and pointed out that an API for hiding the tab bar is
at least being worked on:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447)

~~~
jamoes
I don't understand why they don't just create an API that allows extensions to
modify userChrome.css. It seems like this would solve a lot of the complaints
people have about the new extension framework, and it would be a way better
experience for non-tech-savvy users.

~~~
baby
because they're inconsiderate of Tree Style Tab users. They could really well
include a setting to disable the tab bar on top, but they're not doing it.

There are no security reasons for not having such a setting. None.

~~~
Manishearth
Tree Style Tabs is used by like half the folks working at Mozilla.

I doubt that's the reason.

~~~
baby
For some reason I really doubt that statement.

~~~
Manishearth
I work at Mozilla.

~~~
baby
Then care to explain why we still can't hide the top bar as a setting?

~~~
ripdog
It's happening (as a WE API) but it's taking a while because they're doing it
properly, and a lot of the browser expects the tab bar to be visible.

------
lunchables
It was the first extension I installed when I switched from Chrome to Firefox
57 (Nightly, at the time). Then I used the userstyle css document to remove
the tab bar at the top. As a non-web developer I've been extremely pleased and
haven't had any desire to switch back. I also prefer Vimium over cVim, the
Chrome extension I was using for vim keybindings.

The developers of Tree Style Tab have really done a great job.

~~~
manaskarekar
I did this exact same thing but did not see an easy way to reassign the F1
shortcut to toggle the tree style tabs at a quick glance.

I looked through the source code (manifest.json) where it was defined but
didn't go looking for how to have the changes seen by firefox, if I were to
just change it.

    
    
        "commands": {
        "_execute_browser_action": {
          "suggested_key": { "default": "F1" },
          "description": "__MSG_sidebarToggleDescription__"
        }
      
    

Any answers to my laziness would be appreciated!

~~~
catach
F1 should work by default.

~~~
manaskarekar
Sorry, I meant I want to change it from F1 to something else.

'Ctrl + Shift + E' to be specific. Thanks!

~~~
catach
Ah! Yeah, you'll need to sign and reinstall after any edits. Not hard, but
certainly some friction.

Edit: whoops, obsolete link. Fixed.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Pu...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Publishing_your_WebExtension)

------
aw3c2
His dev post with a LOT of detail is linked:
[http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/latest/blosxom/mozilla/extension/tr...](http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/latest/blosxom/mozilla/extension/treestyletab/2017-10-03_migration-
we-en.htm)

Any other if one can donate to him?

~~~
tsuresh
He doesn’t want to accept donations. See -
[https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/761](https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/761)

~~~
piro_or
There are two reasons, the first is there. The second reason is my job. I'm
employed as a support engineer for company-use of Firefox/Thunderbird for
11-12 years, and the knowledge and trust are based on my addon development
experience. So, I think I already monetized from addons and donation looks
like a double-dealing for me now. (So after I retired I may accept donation,
if Firefox and my addons still alive.) Anyway, I just say thanks to all!

------
yoodenvranx
Tree Style Tabs are nice but what I _really_ need is multi-row tabs with some
of the features from the old Tab Mix Plus extension.

There are some ways to do multi-row tabs with userChrome.css but it is just
not the same.

~~~
CosmicShadow
100% agree, I held out for so long before being forced to upgrade my Firefox
because losing multi-row was like cutting off a leg. I don't know why there
isn't a simple checkbox to make tabs create new rows, if I don't like the loss
of space, I'll close tabs, but now I can't seen what tabs are open because of
these dumb left-right arrows and no space! I miss Tab Mix Plus!

~~~
yoodenvranx
You can use this as a base for your own multi-row-tabs experiments:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/7dclp7/multirow...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FirefoxCSS/comments/7dclp7/multirow_tabs_in_ff57/)
I use a modified version of this and I am kinda happy. With a real extension
it could be much better but for now at least it's better than the standard tab
bar.

If anyone has a better guide/config: Please post it here!

~~~
MiddleEndian
There are other tab behvaiors that TabMixPlus offers including going to the
last used tab on close, open in foreground tab in the context menu for links,
scroll wheel to cycle through tabs, and some other things I take for granted
and then get disoriented when I use FF57.

Without those, it's painful. I will stick to the older Firefox (or maybe an
alternative like Waterfox) until it becomes impossible to use new sites with
it, or if somebody (myself included) reimplements these features in a way
compatible with FF57.

~~~
yoodenvranx
> scroll wheel to cycle through tabs,

This is the single most infuriating thing for me and I just don't understand
why this is not a standard option, especially since it works perfectly fine by
default on Chrome!

~~~
catach
Probably because it's used for scrolling the tab strip when the amount of tabs
is so high that their width stops shrinking and further overflowing tabs are
clipped from the strip area.

Relatedly, if you use Tree Style Tab there's an _extending_ extension that
adds proper mouse wheel scrolling: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab-mouse-wheel/)

------
dredmorbius
As much as browser tabs are a broken band-aid,[1] TST is a vital and
tremendous improvement over flat horizontal tabs, and absolute clobbers Chrome
for productivity. With the performance improvements of Firefox 57, there's
absolutely no question which browser is superior.

The wonderful thing about TST is that they create an inherent structure to
ones tabs: those opened from the same root create a subtree, can be expanded
or collapsed collectively, or moved, or deleted, as a group.

The power and flexibility this gives over Chrome's abysmal tab management is
simply staggering. For whatever the reasons, Google has been pursuing the
minimum viable user,[2] with highly predictable results: advanced users are
crippled through a brutally insufficient interface. My experience on numerous
bugs and issues filed against Chrome confirms that Google have no interest in
addressing this.[3]

That said: I'd really like to see a description of the "Container Tab"
concept, as I can't make heads or tails of what this is supposed to be, do, or
be used for.

Otherwise, congrats to the Firefox team. I'm enjoying the new features and
capabilities, and the mainstreaming of TST.

________________________________

Notes:

1\. A view I apparently share with Adam Stiles who invented the things, though
his comments on same were on such a clickbait-laden site I never bothered
linking it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/256lxu/tabbed_browsing_a_lousy_bandaid_over_poor_browser/)

2\.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyranny_of_the_minimum_viable_user/)

3\. I've launched a Denial of Feedback attack on Google for its various
products. I no longer file bugs or report issues. I encourage others to join
in this attack.

~~~
babuskov
> For whatever the reasons, Google has been pursuing the minimum viable user

Probably because this covers 95% of the total user base. Most people are not
developers and only get confused by extra features. In fact, most people I've
seen using the browser have no idea what browser is and find even basic tab
interface complicated.

~~~
loopbit
Babies can't eat a lot of food that adults eat while adults can eat baby food.

Should that mean that the only available food is baby food?

~~~
eicossa
But there are a lot more adults than there are babies.

~~~
loopbit
Then let's ban baby food?

------
djsumdog
I'm currently trying out FF57 with the TreeStyleTab plugin and css fix. I
switched to Vivaldi a while back, mainly due to performance issues.

Vivaldi was faster, but has a lot odd bugs, it's not OSS, and has no real
public bug tracker.

After some recent UI lockups, I decided to try FF57 again. Most of the
extensions I use have been ported, but after just a day or two, I started to
hit real performance issues again. I'm not ready to give up on FF yet, but I
do feel like many of the performance improvements might have been overrated.

~~~
ConfucianNardin
If you're looking for performance, don't go with Vivaldi, at least if you use
many tabs.

With many tabs (>= 100 or so), it becomes really sluggish. For example,
opening a link in a new tab can take approximately five seconds. Chrome, which
it is based on, does not have this issue. Chrome is however unusable (with
many tabs) for other reasons (lack of lazy loaded tabs essentially causing a
DoS for many minutes when starting it, at least on Windows).

~~~
kodablah
Shameless plug: try
[https://cretz.github.io/doogie/](https://cretz.github.io/doogie/) which is my
Chromium-based browser with trees. It is not the most mature thing out there,
but I use it for most things. But geez, that process-per-tab of Chromium
approach can really blow up your memory.

~~~
hateduser2
If you can get LastPass support this becomes a real option for me! I also like
gmail notifications but I can always get that elsewhere.

------
ww520
Upgraded to Firefox 57, many extensions that work before didn't anymore,
especially the Session Manager and a little extension that cleared cookies of
the current website, which is badly needed for web development. After waiting
for a while and nothing seem to come up, I've finally broken down and started
writing extensions. The new WebExtensions api is not so bad. I was able to
whip up a prototype after a day. The API has restriction due to the security
model but there are ways to get around to get the job done.

~~~
WorldMaker
The Firefox Dev Edition Dev Tools has a Storage tab which among other things
lists cookies and right clicking Cookies has a Delete All menu item.

~~~
ww520
I want an one-click button on the toolbar to clear the site cookies. Plus it's
a small enough scope project to let me try out the WebExtensions development
process.

------
jvzr
I went back to Firefox for Quantum after a very long hiatus — mainly Chrome
then Opera (Blink) — and TST was a main factor of my switching. Once it's
customized to my liking, it's even better:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/CdhN4](https://imgur.com/gallery/CdhN4)

On a MBP, it looks like the sidebar rests on the side of the screen, embedded.
Looks very neat, seamless

~~~
nixonpjoshua1
What settings did you use to get that dark theme on the extension?

~~~
jvzr
Since the most recent version of TST, the author has added a barebones style,
which can be customized at-will thanks to the custom styles textarea in the
addon's settings. I've fired up the Browser Toolbox to get all the correct CSS
selectors and then customized things to my liking. I've shared a gist on the
addon's github issues with a version of my custom styles. I've since added a
few things. I could create a new gist if you are interested

~~~
stevenhubertron
Found the original gist for those interested:
[https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jvzr/9015c395b2b49e101669...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/jvzr/9015c395b2b49e1016692597d6583d25/raw/d88b9ca5144470baf4456be4a52c1917ac06a616/theme.css)

------
AndyMcConachie
So basically he recreated something that already existed because Firefox broke
their userspace and he was forced to. The fact that Mozilla advertises this as
progress is just weird.

Perhaps I'm just grumpy that I upgraded Firefox and my favorite extensions
broke. There was no warning, they just broke because Firefox broke their API.
And I mean I get it, I actually wrote a rather complicated plugin for Firefox
using WebCrypto.

[https://github.com/smutt/HOBA](https://github.com/smutt/HOBA)

But that doesn't mean I'm not peeved that after a seemingly innocuous upgrade
most of my installed plugins broke.

~~~
damnyou
Firefox's userspace is webpages, not extensions. Extensions before 57 are like
out-of-tree kernel modules. Extensions after 57 are a lot more like userspace,
though!

~~~
AndyMcConachie
I understand what you're saying. It's not fair to compare Firefox's API to
UNIX userspace. Fair point. But that doesn't really change my argument.

~~~
setr
I think the key part was

>Extensions before 57 are like out-of-tree kernel modules

Its not that you shouldn't compare firefox api to unix userspace, but that
firefox's api equivalent in unix is not userspace, but out of tree extensions.

In which case firefox isn't at fault for breaking api promises it never made;
extension authors are at fault for not keeping pace

And firefox never promised you, the user, that the extensions would work in
all versions of firefox; rather the extension author (may have) promised that,
when they shouldn't have (because they weren't in a position to uphold it).

If the firefox api isnt the equivalent of unix environment, then firefox isn't
wrong to break extensions. Its just part of the natural lifecycle of the
application, unless firefox changes that stance, and does make extensions part
of their promise.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Worth keeping in mind when reading this where the interview is being hosted
and who the interviewer is.

If he were not being interviewed _by Mozilla_ , I have to wonder if he might
have voiced some additional complaints or criticisms.

~~~
piro_or
I'm the interviewee and here is my raw opinion:
[http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/latest/blosxom/mozilla/2017-12-07_f...](http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/latest/blosxom/mozilla/2017-12-07_firefox-
quantum.htm#topic2017-12-07_firefox-quantum) (*Note: written in Japanese, very
long article.)

As I wrote in the article, indeed I worried about death of addons in last 2
years. But, from various viewpoints I analyzed Mozilla's statements around
addons, and finally I decided to forget past and shift my mind moving toward
to make things better. So the story of the interview is almost correct.

~~~
DonHopkins
I really appreciate you writing up and sharing your migration story and raw
opinions, as well as all the great code you've written. Thanks you!

I've done some xulrunner app development as well as IE ActiveX control browser
extensions in the past, including various implementations of pie menus, and I
would like to learn more about the latest Firefox, Chrome and Safari
extensions APIs, so I can implement pie menus properly for those platforms.

That's why I'm so happy to be able to read your migration story and raw
opinions! Reading about you experience is even more valuable than reading the
source code itself! Thank you again! ;)

I've implemented pie menus in jQuery for web pages [1] [2], but they really
need to be rendered with transparency in their own arbitrarily shaped popup
overlay windows, so they're not confined to the browser window, like I was
able to do with ActiveX controls in C++/MFC and also X11/TCL/Tk back in the
90's [3], and with NeWS in PostScript back in the 80's [4].

I noticed that Safari extensions have an API for creating popover windows
called SafariExtensionPopover [5] [6] [7]. But they must be rectangular, and
the documentation doesn't mention how their position is defined (but I presume
they appear beneath the cursor or invoking toolbar item). So there doesn't
seem to be an obvious way to position or shape them. (Could you get the
popover's window, and set its position pixel-perfectly regardless of borders?)

As far as I can tell, Safari's popovers are only good for traditional linear
menus that pop up below the cursor or toolbar item, because you can't even
control their position to center them on the cursor like a pie menu requires.

Do you know if there any way to create a pop-up window in any position or
size, and even to set the background color transparent, so I can make
arbitrarily shaped and popup windows? Even rectangular overlapping popup
windows would be better than having to clip them to the window frame.

Do you have any suggestions for how I should approach the problem, please?
What kind of browser extension API do you think could be designed or modified
to support arbitrarily shaped pop-up windows for pie menus and other
techniques (like tabs sticking out the edge of the window [9], for example)?

(The X-Windows SHAPES extension [10] is a terrible example of the worst
possible way of doing that! ;) )

[1] [https://github.com/SimHacker/jquery-
pie](https://github.com/SimHacker/jquery-pie)

[2]
[http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/JQuery_Pie_Menus](http://donhopkins.com/mediawiki/index.php/JQuery_Pie_Menus)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnC8x9x3Xag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnC8x9x3Xag)

[4]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4)

[5]
[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/To...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/AddingPopovers/AddingPopovers.html)

[6]
[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariextensions/s...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariextensions/safariextension/1635366-createpopover)

[7]
[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariextensions/s...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariextensions/safariextensionpopover)

[8]
[https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/53646](https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/53646)

[9]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8042726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8042726)

[10]
[https://hn.svelte.technology/item/15325226](https://hn.svelte.technology/item/15325226)
(search for XShapeQueryExtents)

~~~
weaksauce
You can use native messaging to send a message to a script or executable that
crates that arbitrary and transparent window. Nothing inside webext allows you
to do exactly what you are looking for though from inside the webext.

------
CWuestefeld
Before the WX version, we were able to use a GUI to choose the style for the
fonts in the tabs (or maybe that was in Tab Mix Plus, which hasn't been
ported?). We no longer have that feature.

I was finding that it was hard for me to pick out which tab was active, but
found that the extensions options provides a mini-editor for giving CSS to
customize its rendering. OK, it wasn't hard to find that - it's just at the
bottom of the Options window. But I thought I'd offer my settings, where I
render the active tab larger and in a bigger font, and some other changes make
it more usable for me. Maybe that will save somebody a few minutes in figuring
it out themselves.

    
    
      .tab.active .label {
        font-weight: bold;
        font-size: 14px;
      }
      .tab.active {
        height: 26px !important;
      }
      
      .tab.unread .label {
        font-style: italic;
      }
      .tab.discarded {
        opacity: 0.75;
      }
      
      :root {
        --tab-height: 20px !important;
      }
      .tab {
        height: var(--tab-height) !important;
      }
      
      .tab:not(:hover) .closebox {
        display: none;
      }

~~~
oblio
Most likely it was Tab Mix Plus. Nothing in Firefox lets you choose individual
fonts for UI components. It's all or nothing: either content or whole UI.

------
neves
How do I turn off the default tab bar as demonstrated in the article?

BTW, This extension is really great. Everyone should give it a try. Perfect
for heavy users of the middle mouse button.

~~~
mariusmg
Add this to you userchrome.css profile file :

#TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }

#sidebar-header { visibility: collapse; }

~~~
gkya
Where is that file supposed to be placed at?

~~~
0xJRS
you may have to manually create this btw. I had to create the dir and file by
hand and then restart FF.

~~~
gkya
Wow thanks, the directory was absent in my profile, and I was thinking maybe
my version doesn't do this. It's all nice and (slightly more) spacious now!

------
Karunamon
_But, with WebExtensions, authors can just say, “It is impossible due to the
API limitations.” I think this is a very helpful and important change in
WebExtensions._

That was a punch in the gut. Now the intentional gimped-ness of the new API is
being held up as a positive?

I want off this world.

~~~
piro_or
The interview article is mainly for addon developers, this is the reason of
the answer for the question. In past days I was a "people pleaser" and I
didn't say "no" from my frailty, then my old addon became too fat, and finally
dead. I hope that addon authors publish long-living small addons instead of
short-live too much addons.

The sentence in the interview means that now there is a boundary of
responsibility between addon and Firefox. If a feature request is impossible
to be implemented due to API restrictions, it have to be solved by Firefox
itself. Thus if I have strong motivation to implement a new feature requiring
new API, I still file a proposal of new API, and I think other addon authors
also should do it based on his demand.

------
walkingolof
The Vivaldi browser ([http://vivaldi.com](http://vivaldi.com)) has a feature
like this built in that works so good I've disabled the tabs altogether.

Window Panel: [https://help.vivaldi.com/article/window-
panel/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/window-panel/)

Note: No affiliation with the Vivaldi browser, just a happy user.

~~~
wlesieutre
Have they added syncing yet? I tried it months ago and liked the browser fine,
but with how many devices I use it's just not feasible to do bookmarks locally
in 2017.

~~~
rhabarba
I wrote my own self-hosted cross-browser Xmarks alternative which happens to
work on Vivaldi but is currently only tested on Firefox. Turns out cross-
browser WebExtensions are not quite as easy as I thought. Alpha-state code and
website: [https://www.ymarks.org](https://www.ymarks.org)

------
baby
Piro also wrote Text Link! Mozilla you should hire this man to implement Tree
Style Tab into Firefox by default.

------
benlower
Impressive that Piro has personally created more extensions than exist for all
of Edge...

------
likelynew
See this too: [https://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-
webextensions...](https://www.downthemall.net/re-downthemall-and-
webextensions-or-why-why-i-am-done-with-mozilla/)

------
ChoGGi
_Q: On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the easiest, how difficult was it to
write to the WebExtensions APIs? In general, it was a 2 or 3. WebExtensions
APIs are simple enough and clear for extensions that just add a new button,
sidebar, or other unique feature to Firefox. However, there are some
undocumented behaviors on edge cases, and they might be closely tied to a
specific Firefox release you’re working on. If you’re writing extensions that
change Firefox’s behavior, you will need to dig into those undocumented
behaviors._

Sounds like the same pitfalls as writing a XUL extension...

------
xaedes
Can you select multiple tabs and copy urls of the selected tabs?

Sidewise (similar extension for Chrome) and Vivaldi TST (yes Vivaldi now also
has TST!) allow this.

Firefox TST didn't the last time I checked. But it is a really useful feature!

~~~
catach
Author of TST has a companion extension that provides tab multi-select and url
copying:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-
tab-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/)

------
hawski
By default it did not retain tab groups after restart. Is this as intended? I
uninstalled it because of this.

I have my hopes in Simplified Tab Groups [0]. It was also faster on my old
ThinkPad T42p, probably because of the lack of animations. However it's not
yet ported to Web Extensions

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-
groups/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-groups/)

~~~
sp332
Isn't that normal Firefox behavior? In Options, click When Firefox starts...
Show your windows and tabs from last time.

~~~
hawski
I have this already.

------
wyuenho
This extension makes me sad. Not that this extension isn't done well, but I
think the existence of it, and that it's on top of HN reflects a sad state of
UI in our browsers.

Let talk about tabs. The reason that tabs exists is because we don't want to
switching between windows when we have multiple tabs open. But think about it,
why are tabs any better? When I have about a dozen tabs opened on Chrome, all
I can see is a tiny favicon. Any more than that I only see an (x). Firefox and
Safari are a little better in that their tab bar scrolls, but still only
slightly.

The reasons we open multiple tabs is primarily for cross-referencing, and
secondarily "preview", i.e. the intermediary state of article quality
evaluation, the state between I-dont-want-to-open-this and I-want-to-save-
this-for-reading-later, and/or I-like-it-so-much-I-want-to-bookmark-this-for-
eternity.

How are tabs, tab ordering, top sites, tab preview thumbnails, tree tabs and
any of these incremental "improvements" on tabs going to help us do xref and
eval articles?

For cross referencing, I typically open one "root" page, and then drill down
to the rest. For this use case, a hierarchical arrangement of pages is
probably a good idea. An MRU and/or stack on top of that is even better
because maintaining a tree traversal ordering in the head all the time is
hard. Too bad FF took this one feature that doesn't scramble my thinking
process away years ago. I know there's control tab, but that's not good enough
because that's a "cross hierarchy" mechanism. As soon as I click on a tab that
belongs to different "group", MRU is messed up. I really want MRU by groups.

To address this, I need to address why I'd click on a different tab in the
middle of xrefing a group of tabs. This is usually because I'm taking a break,
so I press Cmd-T and introduce a new group. The problem with how tab orderings
are typically done now is, what the break is over, I still have a bunch of
"pages" opened waiting to be evaled, but I do want to get back to the previous
grouping. How do I do that now? My tab bar is full of tabs in various
different states now. To solve this problem, I can open a new window and put a
new group there, but the problem is, the screen is not that large a laptop,
and I frequently maximize my browser. So any extra windows are just going to
be hidden in the back and I'll forget about them until a month later.

I don't really need an actual side bar that takes up screen space all the time
to show me the hierarchical relationships of tabs. I mean, it's only useful if
MRU doesn't do what I want.

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the 40 year-old GUI pattern just
doesn't work for browsers anymore.

~~~
veli_joza
Vertical tabs in tree structure is currently the best way to use web,
especially when you pair it with auto-unloading of inactive tabs. I'm also
disappointed that nothing better appeared in last few years. Developers seem
to be extremely conservative about UI. With WASM it seems that browsers will
take over most of OS functionality and the UI is getting in the way.

IMO we should ditch tabs, bookmarks and history. They all implement the same
thing - a way to reach a place you've visited before. And they all require to
be micromanaged in specific ways. The browser already knows which sites I've
visited recently, and all the backtracking and branching I did. This
information could be visualized as tree so that I can backtrack to any node
and resume browsing on a new branch. The browser should also be doing memory
management so that revisiting recent site is as fast as switching to another
tab. And while we are at it, why not allow full text search across recently
visited sites?

~~~
posterboy
"the best" is an exageration. The web is named so for a reason: it's a graph,
not strictly hierarchical. Which is rather difficult to represent in a list
format.

For wikipedia e.g. I really want to have a graph instead of a linear history
view, in at least 2 dimensions: ordered by time of visit and connection to
related articles. I'm kinda ashamed I never got around to make this in 10
years.

------
manaskarekar
There was another add-on called Toolbar Autohide that used to hide the Toolbar
+ Addressbar and worked like a charm.

You could set the sensitivity, height and other tweaks to control the
collapsing of the hidden bars.

Using undecorated windows, that left me with nothing but a window of the web
page. No addressbar, no tab bar but available at a quick mouseover.

I hope there's some way of achieving this in FF Quantum.

I already have the TST plugin with the F1 key toggle and hidden tab bar.

------
skykooler
Is it possible to change the key that summons it? I'm using F1 for other
things and don't see an option in the preferences.

~~~
mnarayan01
Note that the shortcut is equivalent to hitting the "Tree Style Tab" button in
the main toolbar, so if you're like me and want to show the tabs all the time
you don't need to worry about having a keyboard shortcut.

If you do need the shortcut, AFAIK your only option is to edit the extension.
Modify the manifest.json file in the root of the XPI around:

    
    
      "commands": {
        "_execute_browser_action": {
          "suggested_key": { "default": "F1" },
          "description": "__MSG_sidebarToggleDescription__"
        }
      }
    

Unfortunately, actually installing your changes requires a decent amount of
arcane incantation (particularly if you're not using Nightly) --
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Pu...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-
ons/WebExtensions/Publishing_your_WebExtension) describes how to do it if you
want to go that route.

------
kodablah
The one feature I've missed in the new version is click-drag across the close
buttons to close multiple tabs in one fell swoop. Tbh I'm not sure if it was
TST or multi-tab handler extension that used to provide that feature.

~~~
piro_or
It is a feature of Multiple Tab Handler, and its WebExtensions version is
already available. [https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-
handle...](https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/multiple-tab-handler/) The
combination of these two addons works like legacy TST + MTH.

------
tempodox
For the record, I don't like the chromeification of Firefox at all. But, if
they force me to use Chrome anyway, I might just as well use the original. I
expect them to be bought by Google any day now.

------
rhabarba
The last big features missing from Firefox are tab tiles and the ability to
"run" an executable download directly. The WebExtensions API does not allow
either of them anymore.

------
anigbrowl
Love TST, though I wish it would fellow the light/dark theming preferences.

------
thomastjeffery
Is there a way to toggle the tab bar when the Tree Style Tab sidebar is
toggled?

------
ju-st
It isn't possible to move the sidebar to the right? Prior to FF57 there were
apparently some addons but none is available at the moment.

~~~
ChrisSD
It is possible to move the sidebar to the right. There's an option on the
drop-down menu called "Move Sidebar to Right".

------
dunk010
Yayayayayayay! Been hoping for this for ages. Awesome!

