
Coming to Chrome: a new way to use tabs - bkudria
https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/manage-tabs-with-google-chrome/
======
akersten
Neat, and works well for the toy example with 4 tabs open. I don't really
think it would work as well for the "tab collectors" as they think. They seem
to be aware of this too, since none of the screenshots in the post have
anywhere near what I would consider a significant amount of tabs open.

I use the tree style tab extension on Firefox[0], which I cannot live without.
Horizontal tabs become useless after about 15 of them are open. Tree style, 50
tabs are just as easy to navigate as 5. I really wish browsers would build
this in as a native feature.

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

~~~
maciekmm
Shameless plug. I made the ContainerTabsSidebar firefox addon[0], which is
inspired by the TST. It groups tabs based on firefox privacy containers, which
means every container has an isolated cookie store. I'm a tab hoarder and
developed it to work for such "use-case".

It's very similar to the groups presented, but displays tabs vertically.

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

~~~
baxtr
This feels like tabs are becoming bookmarks

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Tabs are bookmarks that can keep their state. Normal bookmarks have only the
URL, and any parameters that go in the URL, but discard the rest, like your
position on the page, your navigation history, or what you are doing in a PWA.

Tabs don't discard data, bookmarks do. Sometimes you just want the landing
page and a bookmark is fine, other times you want the extra data and a long-
lived tab is needed.

~~~
baxtr
Many tabs refresh after no activity

------
barryvan
This seems to be a mixture of the "collections" feature from Firefox Mobile
(Beta/Preview) and Firefox's container tabs, but without the security /
isolation benefits.

From what I can tell, the main benefit seems to be in relation to identifying
similar-looking tabs. It's unfortunate that they didn't bake in the same
security and isolation benefits of Firefox's container tabs, or the "put aside
and come back to it later" functionality that (old) Edge and Firefox Mobile's
"collections" bring.

I'm also not sure how adding _more_ to the tabstrip will improve utility in
Chrome, where tabs so quickly become impossible to manage because the strip
doesn't scroll.

~~~
mkj
A bit tinfoil hat, but could it be an attempt to head off Firefox Containers
which would be a threat to Google Cookie collection? That's certainly my main
use case for containers, using Google Music without telling the rest of the
web about my Google account.

~~~
metroholografix
[https://github.com/atomontage/chrome-
private](https://github.com/atomontage/chrome-private)

~~~
floatingatoll
This looks very useful, but it combines valuable profile management work with
disabling various web features per the author's opinions. Sadly, disabling
those features by default makes it significantly easier to fingerprint users
using this script (which is precisely the opposite of its intentions).

So I forked it and set those features to be disable-if-requested rather than
disable-by-default, so that people who just want to manage separate profiles
have an option that doesn't make them easier to fingerprint:

[https://github.com/floatingatoll/chrome-
private/](https://github.com/floatingatoll/chrome-private/)

~~~
metroholografix
Forking to switch a bunch of command line arguments around seems excessive to
me. You can simply write a wrapper script that passes the arguments in the way
you want them to be passed.

Enabling those options does nothing to improve fingerprinting resistance, it's
a completely bogus argument.

Disabling them however, in combination with the recommended extensions that
are in the README plus custom user agent handling, does bring tangible
benefits.

Finally, fingerprinting resistance isn't mentioned once in the README. It's
simply too hard a problem for me to claim that this simple script intends to
solve it. You can however use the script as a foundation that you can build
custom strategies on top of. More than adequate for that purpose.

~~~
floatingatoll
Forking permits me to efficiently git rebase against upstream when there are
changes, using rerere to remember easy conflict resolutions. A wrapper would
not work as two of the options cannot be removed from the command line (and
the author refused a PR that would have permitted such a wrapper).

~~~
metroholografix
I am the author. Flash support in Chrome is going away soon (but even if it
didn't) I am not going to be publishing any code with support for that crap
baked in. However, it is understandable if you disagree.

Re: referrer option, as I explained, it's a nop. So no point in having extra
code for that there either (I really should remove it).

~~~
floatingatoll
I had to use Flash two weeks ago to get a food handler’s permit online due to
pandemic and terrible horrible choice from a list of 20 options, so I am
unusually positioned to disagree from personal basis. I do agree that it
should die and I can’t wait for it to do so either!

------
bbx
It seems to me I’m in the minority by being a minimalist here? I have at most
10 tabs open. Same for Sublime Text open files. I regularly close all but one
tab/file just to reset my cognitive load. This does force me to rely on the
history from time to time, which I must say is a true pain in Chrome. You
can’t even search or filter by date. Also, revisiting a page will move it up
the top of the list, which is annoying because I lose all previous instances
of when I visited the page.

As for the grouping of tabs, there’s always been a way to group them: a new
window. I wish there was a feature to drag+select a group of tabs and send
them to a new window. I guess this new feature tries to solve the same
problem.

~~~
flear
> I wish there was a feature to drag+select a group of tabs and send them to a
> new window

There is! Press CTRL while clicking individual tabs OR press SHIFT while
clicking the first and last tab you want to move to a new window. Selected
tabs appear slightly brighter. Then, just drag. This works in Chrome and
Firefox.

~~~
lukasdanin
I wish I could upvote you twice. Whenever I need to separate my tabs from the
main window I have to adjust them individually, which is a real pain if you
have more than 10 tabs open.

------
cybersol
I have a dream. What I really want was likely not possible when tabs were
invented, but should be now.

I want least recently used tabs to automatically fade away, but still be fully
known and searchable the way that 'search my computer' or 'google search'
works. With search filters like last hour/day/week/month. And it seems like
history should be kept per tab, not altogether.

This way I keep a minimal-to-medium number of active tabs, but have all those
magical things-to-do, pseudo-bookmarks, or other things that cause open tabs
to grow and grow available via a quick search interface, auto-magically.

~~~
scep12
The great suspender will get you part of the way there.

~~~
mkarliner
Agree, need it a lot because of Chrome memory hogging.

------
bad_user
I use Tree Style Tabs in Firefox, but I have mixed feelings about it.

It should help me visually find tabs, but truth of the matter is that it
doesn't. Horizontal tabs become useless after 10 tabs opened, indeed, but
vertical tabs become useless after 30 tabs opened.

Opened tabs also consume a lot of memory. It's why I now use Auto Tab Discard,
which works, but then gets in the way because by Ctrl-Tab-ing you end up
hitting inactive tabs that you did not want, which are then reloading and it's
annoying.

What does help me in finding tabs is tab search via the address bar. In
Firefox it works great, you can also prefix your query with a `%` to limit
your search only to opened tabs.

Chrome also provides a way to search open tabs. It's not as good as Firefox's
and you have to enable it yourself, but it's fine [2].

[1] [https://add0n.com/tab-discard.html](https://add0n.com/tab-discard.html)

[2] chrome://flags/#omnibox-tab-switch-suggestions

~~~
scriptsmith
Your situation sounds similar to my own. The following two extensions have
helped me solve the '30 tabs' problem:

TabSearch does the same thing you're doing with the search bar, but with fuzzy
searching and more customisability which makes finding tabs a bit easier.

Close Discarded Tabs is a very simple extension I wrote for myself that acts
as a sort of garbage collector for Auto Tab Discard. You can customize Auto
Tab Discard to discard tabs in a way that purges irrelevant tabs to your
liking, and then if you notice the list of tabs looks a bit overwhelming, just
click the trashcan and all the discarded tabs are closed. If you want to make
sure you don't close a tab you wanted, just quickly scan through the list and
click any that you want to keep.

TabSearch: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tab_search/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tab_search/)

Close Discarded Tabs: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/close-
discard...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/close-discarded-
tabs/)

~~~
bad_user
Hey, thanks for "Close Discarded Tabs", it's precisely what was missing :-)

------
gkoberger
Maybe I'm wrong (EDIT: seems I'm wrong!), but I feel like the people with
dozens of tabs open (guilty) aren't the ones who use organizational features?

Also, it's a hidden feature, but you can already Shift+Select a group of tabs,
and close/move/etc the whole group.

~~~
benrbray
Wrong! I have a very sophisticated system for managing my tabs. I'm very
breadth-first when browsing the web and I also switch contexts a lot. Tabs are
like a big Todo list for me.

For a while, I would get really frustrated when chrome would crash and close
all my tabs, but recently I found a ln extension that keeps track of my tab
history as a big tree! Yippee!

~~~
overlordalex
I use tabs exactly the same way! I also use windows for context switches.
Right now on my work machine I have one personal window, and 5 other windows
of 10-20 tabs each.

Closing a window after doing all the "TODOs" is insanely cathartic

~~~
shmoogy
You get to clear out your TODOs? I'm very envious of you.

------
qubex
What I find hilarious about tabs is that it’s basically a full
reimplementation of a multitasking interface within a MDI (Multiple Document
In Window) context: we came up with windows for different applications and for
different documents within that application, and then for the browser we went
back and revised the conventional wisdom.

~~~
kevsim
I guess nothing stops us from running one tab per window but I have to say I'm
not keen to go back to that. What we be the advantage there over tabs in your
opinion?

~~~
DonHopkins
Why WOULDN'T you want to be able to use tabs on all of your windows?

And why WOULDN'T you want to be able to move any tab to any edge (top, bottom,
left, right) of any window?

And why WOULDN'T you want to be able to group and stack and tile tabbed
windows from different applications together?

~~~
abjKT26nO8
What I would like, is Emacs/Vim-style buffers. When you don't have one open,
it's completely invisible. When you want to switch to it, you perform an
incremental search for its title. No need to hunt for things on the screen. A
lot faster and a lot more tidy wrt what's currently visible on the screen. No
distractions.

~~~
grapenut
If you're willing to go whole-hog, I've had good experiences using EXWM for
this.

------
macrael
LOL "tab groups" AKA "windows". You can have this life today! When you have a
tab that doesn't fit in with the others, pull it into its own window. When
you're done asking google a question, close the window to close all the tabs
associated with it. Use cmd-` to cycle through windows and expose to find a
specific one!

I am happy to see them doing something new with tabs, I'm just sad that so
many people seem to have stopped using the oldest GUI metaphor in the book in
favor of monolithic browsers.

~~~
snowwrestler
This is what I do, but for me it only works because window management is so
quicky and easy with Expose gestures on my Mac.

Doing the same approach on Windows drives me crazy and I end up wanting to
have all my tabs in one window so I can find them.

------
crazygringo
I'm always very happy to see UX innovation, so kudos to Chrome for that.

However, I just don't quite see the point of this particular feature.

If you only have a handful of tabs open (like the 4 in the example), you
hardly need to bother to categorize them.

While if you have a ton of tabs, you can already use different windows (one
for personal, one generally for work, one for a specific project, etc.).
Shift-selecting and dragging multiple tabs at once makes it pretty easy.

What "tab collectors" seem to universally like truly is tree-style tabs, so
you can see the titles of your 40 tabs and see which one opened which. I
suppose I can just hope that maybe they're taking baby steps toward that?

------
romwell
Great, yet another Opera browser feature finally becoming mainstream! It only
took a decade[1].

[1][https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Opera-11-Launches-Tab-
Sta...](https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Opera-11-Launches-Tab-Stacking)

~~~
kactus
This is still the best implementation of this feature and no other browser has
gotten it right, yet. Even Blink-based Opera now fails in this regard.

------
Vinnl
As a hoarder, tabs act somewhat as low-effort bookmarks: instead of having to
explicitly bookmark sites, I have to explicitly not-bookmark them (i.e. close
the tab). In other words: "organising" my tabs is the default and takes no
extra effort. Additionally, when I'm done with something, cleaning up is
really low effort as well: I close several tabs in a row, and can relatively
quickly judge which ones to close.

In other words: this just seems way too much effort for me...

------
zonk_
Reminds me a little bit of Vivaldi's Tab Stacking feature [0]. Yet, it looks
less useful, especially for tab hoarders as mentioned in the other comments
here. But progress is progress and maybe we'll end up with something better
than the Tab Stacks in the end.

[0]: [https://help.vivaldi.com/article/tab-
stacks/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/tab-stacks/)

------
Nemi
See this is a good idea but suffers from a UX problem: it is just way too
cumbersome to create a new group and add new tabs.

When I am on a roll I just want to hotkey a new tab open an start typing a
search query for something. ctrl-t and type is just too fast and keeps me in
the zone.

What if they added a new hotkey for opening a new tab in a new group? ctrl-g
is taken, so something like ctrl-shift-g? Whatever it is, you get the point.
Open a new tab in a new group. All tabs opened from a group stay in that
group.

So, say I open a new tab group to search for something in google. I then read
through the results and middle-click several items to open in new tabs. All
those tabs should stay in the group. That way I can easily jump around to
other tab groups and see what group had all the references to my question. I
can then do this for several topics and keep things straight.

------
yoavm
Shamesless plug: I've built a tiny WebExtension for Firefox that I believe is
the fastest way to jump between tabs ever, with the keyboard. It's for those
of us who have more than 15 tabs open.

You basically click a one key, and then fuzzy search through your tabs until
there's only one option left, and the tab opens. Alternatively you enter the
tab number and it opens. It's probably one of my most useful weekend projects.

[https://github.com/bjesus/teleporter](https://github.com/bjesus/teleporter)

~~~
databhishek
This is actually really nice! While I don't have a lot of tabs open at once,
dragging my mouse over and clicking is really tedious. Even though the Firefox
address bar allows you to switch to already open tabs, it's still not
seamless. This is great for noticing the name at a glance and switching
quickly.

~~~
yoavm
Thank you! Super glad you liked it.

------
wyldfire
> tab collectors who have...significantly more

Guilty as charged. I have a hard time saying goodbye to some of those tabs
sometimes. Tab minimalists react in horror. Meh -- they're missing out.

> Now, with a simple right click, you can group your tabs together and label
> them with a custom name and color.

I'm afraid that this might just free enough pixels to allow me to collect yet
more tabs. ;)

~~~
nieve
Don't feel too bad about your tab hoarding, I'm at 3 windows with 4630 tabs
and I'm pretty sure I'm closer to a stress test than a user. Chrome can't
function with 1/20th of mine and Firefox runs smooth and fast. Restarting with
loading all the session data takes seven or eight seconds total. It can't just
be the different multi-process models so I'm pretty sure that the Chrome team
can do better.

~~~
Zancarius
I think I found my kindred spirit! I have one Firefox instance presently at 3
windows and 3379 tabs and another with 10 windows and somewhere north of 2300
tabs. I wouldn't dare do this under Chrome/Chromium.

On my system at least, I've noticed that Firefox _does_ get less responsive
around 8000+ tabs. Mostly it's just the start up that complains.

Sometimes I'll get annoyed and mass-bookmark/close tabs (filed under date of
closure). Do you ever do that or do you usually filter through things on an as
needed basis?

~~~
errnoh
Oh, there are kindred spirits here. I've recommended this on other tab-related
discussions but Tab Stats is one of the few Firefox addons that have been
worth using as a tab hoarder. Allows me to see which pages are open in
multiple tabs and then deduplicate them if needed, or just looking at (or
closing) open tabs based on domain.

(I'm not affiliated with the creator and it's not without its own annoyances,
but still easily recommendable to anyone with thousands of tabs open)

~~~
Zancarius
Awesome.

I don't find it _too_ tedious to go through and nuke things I know aren't
useful long term (they're usually shunted to a separate throw away window for
this reason!), but there's no easy solution for tab deduplication. What you've
linked looks like it fits the bill!

Thank you!

------
russellbeattie
Tab minimalist here... It won't help _the others_. They just don't pay
attention to tabs. It's like a mental blind spot for them... Maybe an outright
disorder. They just keep opening new tabs every chance they get. I once sat
over someone's shoulder and watched them continue to click the same link in a
message over and over again to look at a JIRA while we were debugging
something. Every time, it just opened up a new tab. And they just didn't care.
That was how to open up that bit of info. 10, 20, 30 tabs... They just kept
piling up. I almost lost my mind This is a techie, mind you, not some random
office worker. It was mind boggling.

What Chrome really needs is an auto close feature. Default to like 10 tabs
max, with the option to increase for power users. Oldest tabs without any
activity get whacked automatically. The world would save gigawatts of power
overnight.

~~~
jmchuster
You'll create an infinite number of tabs if you have the following rules:

\- if you will open multiple links from a page, keep that tab, and then open
each link in a new tab

\- each tab is a train of thought -- don't overwrite a tab's train of thought,
always open a new tab to keep your trains of thought distinct

\- only close a tab once you know that train of thought is fully complete

\- don't interrupt your current train of thought just to evaluate if an
earlier train of thought is complete (and therefore whether you should then
close that "tree" of tabs)

AKA garbage collection for your mind, that only allows you to run stop-the-
world when no other processes are running

~~~
hawski
That's exactly how it is with me. Also it is often more convenient to open a
new tab and search again for something then to find it in one of already
opened tabs.

It would be perfect if beside Google search results the browser would show tab
results (with full FTS) and history results. I would prefer to have it there
instead of search bar's completion.

Then if tabs would really be just history of opened tabs the browser could do
some LRU GC.

~~~
jmchuster
Firefox location bar searches through your open tabs and it was way too
annoying, had to disable it. So I guess I actually missed another rule:

\- your current train of thought always needs to be in the rightmost tab OR it
can be the leftmost tab if you have a current working set with like just 5
tabs

the latter of which is what then leads to an infinite number of windows...

Which is why on top of the built-in "close all tabs" and "close all tabs to
the right", I also installed plugins for "close all other windows" and "close
all others tabs and all other windows".

------
pmontra
Others already wrote about Firefox tab groups and containers. I do use
containers but I use a different way to group tabs.

I'm using Ubuntu with Gnome shell customized to look like the old Gnome pre
2014, or was that 2012? I have a virtual desktop per customer and one Firefox
window per desktop. One "customer" it's my own pet project of the moment and
another one is where I keep my email, WhatsApp web and Telegram desktop and
other social media in their own private container tab. So I group per window
and I need less functionality from the browser because I rely more on the OS.

I believe that Gnome calls those desktops Activities but I disabled nearly all
of the Activities related stuff. I have hotkeys to move to desktops and I use
them like old school virtual desktops, a fixed number of them. IMHO yhe less
the screen moves the better it is.

------
msoad
When I feel I have too many tabs Open, I simply close the entire window. I
don't understand tab hoarders. I've watched them use browsers and they almost
never revisit those hoarded tabs. They actually start from a new tab and
search or type in a URL when they want to go back to previous tabs.

Chrome should make this behavior more obvious to do. Like LIFO queue for tabs
which popped tabs turn into history entries and keep a max number of tabs
visible.

~~~
basch
The problem with history is it loses spacial relativity. How does one tab
relate to another. Which sites opened which tabs.

Tabs are a poor but semi-adequate way to preserve the relationship between
urls, by understanding their distance from each other and the rules of how
they open.

Another thing tabs do, is allow you to designate what NOT to return. If you
use something like GoToTab [1], it will specifically NOT return results that
have been closed. Merging everything to history doesnt give you that
separation between "not relevant in the future" and "maybe relevant in the
future."

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goto-
tab/hjfkaobgk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goto-
tab/hjfkaobgkmaeomgdhmhhipdbjdhhjkoi?hl=en)

~~~
Izkata
> How does one tab relate to another. Which sites opened which tabs.

> Tabs are a poor but semi-adequate way to preserve the relationship between
> urls,

I recommend Tree Style Tab [0], which fully preserves this relationship. When
one tab opens another, the child tab automatically becomes a child in the
tree, making the whole thing very self-organizing. Also being a tree, the
parents can be expanded/collapsed, if there's a group you're putting aside for
the moment.

That's for Firefox, at least. It looks like there's a few that other people
have made for Chrome [1][2], but I can't speak to how well they perform.

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

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-
styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style-
tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo?hl=en)

[2] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-style-
tab/oic...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tree-style-
tab/oicakdoenlelpjnkoljnaakdofplkgnd?hl=en)

~~~
basch
But how does that preserve the relationship after I want them to no longer be
tabs? The convert tabs to history or tabs to bookmarks destroys that
relationship data.

------
chrisyeah
A great next iteration would be to let users fold/unfold those groups, so that
you only have one visible "tab" per group in the top bar.

This would really help the "tab collecters" (like me, who had to close 78 tabs
some weeks ago).

~~~
richrichardsson
I can't see any benefit really to this new feature they announced without what
you're suggesting.

If they add the ability to collapse groups, then I would probably use it,
otherwise I can keep my tabs just as organised without a need for some colour
hints.

~~~
chrisyeah
Same. I was really excited first when I saw this feature. After installing it,
I barely use it now. It helps a bit for a first overview, but my tab bar is
still super full.

------
_ZeD_
Soo it's just a label thing? Can you hide groups and show them later? It seems
to me chrome is still behind Firefox and his tab group extension

[https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/simple-tab-
group...](https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/simple-tab-groups/)

------
makecheck
From the screenshots it seems they give space priority to the name of each tab
group instead of the tabs themselves (when space was already at a premium). In
one example, 3 tabs were barely intelligible yet the group name was fully
visible.

It would be better to have:

\- An alternate short name or icon that is automatically used when there is no
space (common?).

\- Relocated tab group name, e.g. small text “above” the tabs instead of
stealing space from the tabs.

\- An option to have no name at all, relying on other distinctions only (some
people are color blind so you always need a non-color option; maybe different
patterns of border lines, or shapes?).

------
teilo
As much as I like this, why is it so hard to have tab management that just
works? I have six pinned tabs that I always want up. Important things like
Gmail, Calendar Drive. Stuff that should never change. I don't want to have to
remember to open links in a new tab from pinned tabs. It should know that
pinned means pinned.

Perhaps if they enabled group persistence? I'm hoping this rather obvious
feature is in there.

My solution has been to use a tab manager with a saved session that I can
always recall when my pinned tabs break (such as when Chrome crashes, and
loses my session entirely).

~~~
aesthetics1
One of the great features in Chrome is that you can open your recently closed
tabs with CTRL+SHIFT+T. This will bring back an entire window full of tabs and
even works between reboots. I usually have a dozen tabs open and when I
reboot, I simply open up Chrome again, CTRL+SHIFT+T, and I am right back where
I was.

------
ygra
I liked what IE ... 8? has done abck in the day where opening a new tab from
another one will create a colored group, so you kinda have automatic grouping
that allows you to tell at a glance "Oh those all belong to the same tvtropes
tab rampage, but I'm looking for that other thing now I was looking at
before".

~~~
frosted-flakes
IE8 through IE11 had the coloured tab groups.

------
ernesth
Opera was doing this ten years ago. They used to call it Tab Stacks[1]. Note
that Vivaldi has this feature[2]. Or is this chrome feature different?

[1]: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2010/11/hands...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2010/11/hands-on-opera-11-tab-stacking-vs-firefox-panorama/) [2]:
[https://help.vivaldi.com/article/tab-
stacks/](https://help.vivaldi.com/article/tab-stacks/)

------
wazoox
Nothing can beat Tree Style tab in Firefox. You can make "folders of tabs" and
whole hierarchies. For "tabs collectors" like me who have 40 tabs always open
this is a must.

My current setup : I have 5 pinned tab on top of the tree.

Below I have a "github" group of tabs.

Below I have a set of tabs opened on different parts of an app I'm working on.

Below is a group of documentation tabs.

Below is another group of articles I plan to read at some point.

Below I have the HN tab, with a tree of articles and comments.

I can't imagine going back to horizontal tabs. This is just much too good.

------
john_moscow
This is nice, but what I really don't get is how come the most popular browser
in the world in 2020 not have an native option to go through the tabs in the
most-recently-used order.

This is major productivity improvement compared to ctrl-tabbing the tabs in
their physical order. IIRC, multi-tabbed IDEs figured it out somewhere in the
90s and it has become a de-facto standard since then. But nope, Chrome doesn't
support it, making the Ctrl-Tab hotkey effectively useless if you have more
than a handful open tabs.

~~~
TMWNN
The _only_ extension that I've seen implement this closer to right is CLUT
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clut-cycle-last-
us...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clut-cycle-last-used-
tabs/cobieddmkhhnbeldhncnfcgcaccmehgn) (specifically, the "Quick switch" and
"Normal switch backward" keybindings). Every other one I've tried does not.

I only wish that a) it would visually display the tab history the way Firefox
does, and b) being able to shorten the Normal switch backward timer, so I
could use that only.

------
murat131
I'd love if a browser supports horizontally and perhaps vertically splitting
the browser window/tab like you can in iTerm or tmux or terminator and let us
view multiple pages at once in a single browser window area. Whichever page is
active owns the address and toolbar.

~~~
Deemos
Vivaldi has this feature.

------
elfchief
I'm pretty certain that I'm not going to be using any new tab organization
feature, if it requires me take explicit action to get the benefit. If I was
reasonably capable of organizing my browsing, I wouldn't currently have 468
tabs open to start with...

~~~
baby
Check tree style tabs.

------
newscracker
In my experience, Chrome has never been the browser for people who want to
open more than a handful of tabs and keep them around for sometime. It becomes
sluggish and makes the whole system sluggish. I see similar issues with the
new Microsoft Edge (based on Chromium) and Brave (also based on Chromium, but
somewhat better).

“Tab collectors” is a derogatory term to describe anyone who needs to do some
research on some topic and needs to open up tabs, links from them and figure
out the topic(s) they’re dealing with. Yes, this can devolve into a collector
situation if not managed well. But not everyone who has a need for it has to
be insulted this way, especially from technical users, where daily work can
easily turn into opening several tabs and windows at once.

That Google Chrome isn’t designed or optimized for heavy usage will not go
away just because they throw a new feature to group tabs. You may be able to
group them, but will the browser be any less sluggish with the addition of
this feature? That’s what I’m interested to know. For users of a few tabs, tab
groups may not be as useful since they’d already be doing the grouping with
windows. For users with many tabs, tab groups isn’t going to be useful as long
as the browser can’t handle many tabs.

~~~
kwanbix
I have tried it already and it is of no use for me. I want a way to group tabs
in different Chrome windows and assign the Chrome window a name, so that I can
have: Work Window, News Window, Personal Window, Communication Window, etc.
and in each of the windows the related tabs. Today I can do that, but each
"chrome-window-icon" shows with the name of the tab that is open, and not the
"chorme-window-name" (Work window, etc). In Windows 10 I used an app to rename
the instances of Chrome but I cannot find a solution under Linux (Ubuntu).

------
RHSeeger
I just want the title bar back, above the tabs, on the mac. It's so
frustrating trying to move/select the window with a tiny sliver available to
click on.

~~~
wingerlang
Top right seems to always have space.

You can also drag any window from any side by dragging perpendicular to the
resize direction. It’s still small but I never heard anyone complain about
precision there.

And then there’s window manager if you’re a power user.

I also think you can move any window with three finger via system settings.

~~~
RHSeeger
> Top right seems to always have space.

Top right isn't always visible when trying to click a window to bring it
forward

> You can also drag any window from any side by dragging perpendicular to the
> resize direction. It’s still small but I never heard anyone complain about
> precision there.

Interesting, I hadn't seen that before. It's still a small space and annoying
to grab, but it's better than now knowing about it.

> And then there’s window manager if you’re a power user.

Not sure what you mean here.

> I also think you can move any window with three finger via system settings.

I use a mouse and full keyboard. I've never been able to interact with the mac
well without them.

~~~
wingerlang
> Not sure what you mean here.

I mean automatic tools to move windows. I use BetterTouchTool with a lot of
custom gestures to handle my windows. With this I mean for example swiping
with 5 fingers to the left moves and resizes the window to take up 25% of the
screen on the left side. And so on so forth. I rarely drag my windows around
anymore, it's second nature at this point.

> I use a mouse and full keyboard. I've never been able to interact with the
> mac well without them.

With BetterTouchTool (I just tried this) I can set e.g. fn+mouse click to
toggle a move state on a window. So the window you tapped (anywhere within)
will now follow your mouse until you click again.

It can also simply teleport your window to wherever you fn+clicked.

There are unlimited options within this app by itself.

~~~
RHSeeger
I'll check it out, thanks. Though I still think just leaving the title bar
alone would be a simpler solution. Plus, it means you can see the title, which
is nice.

------
kebman
I use about a gazillion tabs. My biggest problem is losing them, or having to
re-open them after a restart. Though sometimes a fresh start can be relieving.

My next biggest problem is running out of memory when running other programs
alongside Chrome. Perhaps it's due to how I like watching YouTube a lot, which
seems to suck my RAM dry. I have 16 gb RAM, but even then I sometimes get
hiccups, and the culprit seems to be Chrome. Not sure what to do about it,
aside from closing tabs.

I know it's probably a bad habit to open several programs as well, but using
the Adobe package together with a browser is kind of a must, at least if
you're juggling several projects at once. Same for programming, but Sublime
Text is hardly a resource hog.

If this works between sessions, and perhaps even between computers, AND it
saves memory, then I'm sure I'll fall in love with it. I've had other
solutions suggested to me, but installing yet another plugin is not appealing
to me. Though after reading this thread, I think I'll perhaps give Vimium a
try.

------
sprinfo
The Vivaldi web browser[0] found a great solution to this problem years ago.
Tab stacking, tab tiles, and native tab hibernation. I've been rocking it for
3+ years now, and I've got to say it is the best browser out there.

[0]: [https://vivaldi.com/](https://vivaldi.com/)

------
justapassenger
It’s sad that operating systems gave up, before even trying to, to properly
organize content with windows managers.

There’s really no good reason why browser needs to have tabs, and have that
exclusive ecosystem, not available to rest of the apps on the system. I’d love
to be able to group and manage my windows as easily as tabs.

~~~
snazz
Sway and i3 let you use tabs nearly anywhere you can use windows. I'm not a
huge fan of tabs outside of the browser anyway, but it works well.

------
tsp
The concept is totally flawed. Having 10+ tabs open is as chaotic as it was
before. Too bad, Google missed a chance to solve a problem many people seem to
have. At least here on Hackernews I am reading from time to time that people
have the same problem I have – tab hoarding.

So far only one third party extension helped me with this – Workona [1]. It
makes it possible to switch between tab groups. The downside is that the
company behind it has a complete overview of browsing behaviour and at some
point they want a monthly fee (6$ / month) for the unlimited account, which I
am going to pay if no better solution comes around.

I also tried Firefox tree view, but it is missing the feature to switch tab
groups.

[1] [https://workona.com/](https://workona.com/)

------
jpswade
This is fixing the wrong problem. Tabs aren't broken, browser history is.

When I tried to find a web page from a certain date a few months ago, it was
almost impossible to find.

I actually think Internet Explorer used to have quite a good history. That's
what we need, not better tabs management.

~~~
Someone1234
It is even worse in Firefox, half my history is just outright missing. It is
like it only saves the final page each tab was open to instead of anything I
browsed using that tab in the interim.

Not to mention the UI for Firefox's history is pure garbage of the worst kind.
The fact I have to go three menus deep just to open the history screen is bad,
the fact that it isn't a screen and some kind of dumb pop-out /thing/ that
cuts off content is terrible. No time-stamps either, or way to organize the
flow of browsing (e.g. under what tab/window it was open in).

If it worked correctly it would still be bad. But it doesn't work correctly
making it the worst part of Firefox right now, it has been broken for over a
year.

PS - The history-missing bug is still active as of right now. Half of the
pages I visited this morning just outright aren't listed at all. I was
searching on google using a site: modifier and middle clicking open dozens of
tabs, almost none are listed only the root searches.

~~~
turnipla
> The fact I have to go three menus deep just to open the history screen is
> bad

History is never more than 2 clicks away:

    
    
        - Open Library button, click History
        - Open History menu (macOS)
    

However, yes, core browser functions seem to be stuck to what they looked like
in the year 2000 for most browsers. Only Safari basically tries to reinvent
its UI every couple of years.

~~~
Someone1234
On mine (Windows) it is:

Menu -> Library -> History -> View History

Which is four clicks by my count. In either case it is too many and the UI you
get at the end is like a 1990s reject.

They should just make it a full tab like Chrome has.

------
hossbeast
Vertical tabs, Chrome. Come back to me when you have Vertical Tabs.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Chromium Edge is getting vertical tabs, and from the screenshots it looks like
a decent implementation. At the end of March, the blog post said it was coming
to the Edge Insider Preview "in the next few months".

Animated screenshot: [https://46c4ts1tskv22sdav81j9c69-wpengine.netdna-
ssl.com/wp-...](https://46c4ts1tskv22sdav81j9c69-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2020/03/67cf527900048a6d657f159efd3146bf.gif)

Microsoft blog post (scroll down to #2):
[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/03/30/the-t...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/03/30/the-
top-10-reasons-to-switch-to-the-new-microsoft-edge/)

~~~
baby
No nesting :/

------
polote
Who is this for? I don't see anyone who can use it. If you have less than 10
tabs you don't need to group them, and if you have more than 10 you will spend
your time having them in the good group.

And at the end what is the benefit oh having groups?

------
rasz
Tab groups, and only 10 years after Opera!
[https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Opera-11-Launches-Tab-
Sta...](https://www.practicalecommerce.com/Opera-11-Launches-Tab-Stacking)

------
baby
Why don’t they just put tabs on the side? It makes no sense to me. Tree style
tabs has solved this issue a long time ago.

------
aljgz
Anyone who keeps many tabs open and is a keyboard centric user, how can they
use chrome? In Firefox, when I press ctrl-tab, it takes me to the most recent
tab. In Chrome, this takes me to the next tab.

I'd expect chrome to have an option to change this, but no, you need add-ons,
and those just offer other hotkeys.

Nowadays, I keep my tabs open in, if I need another identity (like my work-
related account in a cloud provider), I use opera. Chrome is only for: any
site that only works in chrome + debugging my own web development activity

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
> In Firefox, when I press ctrl-tab, it takes me to the most recent tab. In
> Chrome, this takes me to the next tab.

Coincidentally, this drives me nuts with Firefox and is always the first
option I disable. If I open 10 tabs from a single page, I want to be able to
cycle through them with the keyboard easily. Having CTRL+Tab go to the most
recent tab completely ruins that.

~~~
LocalPCGuy
Yup, I disable "tab = most recent" both in IDEs and Firefox right off the bat.
I don't understand it at all.

------
ggregoire
Am I the only one to use windows as tabs groups?

Shift + click on tabs to select multiple tabs, then right click > "Move Tabs
to New Window".

~~~
tgb
That's what I do, but I still keep only a small number of tabs open in each of
a small number of windows. But FYI you can just drag the tab(s) down and
they'll form a new window.

------
buremba
It looks cool as a person who has at least 20 tabs open in Chrome almost
always but it would be much better if we could also use different profiles in
the same Chrome window.

As they demonstrated, people usually would like to use labels such as work,
personal, etc. but it's not really useful if I can't log in my GSuite and
personal Gmail in the same Chrome window.

------
logicallee
I'm in the tab collector category, but after I read something I don't need it
sticking around in my autocomplete. If I want it saved I add it as a bookmark.

For this reason I just use incognito mode. On Android, every so often Chrome
decides to just discard all my open incognito tabs. (This is also described
here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQuestions/comments/40fe10/in...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQuestions/comments/40fe10/incognito_tabs_automatically_closing/)
.)

Could you fix this bug. Namely, please do not discard open incognito tabs
without confirming with me.

I am sure I don't discard them accidentally (by closing the browser or
something) as I am quite careful not to throw away my reading. I wish Chrome
would do the same, and be more careful about just throwing away whatever I'm
reading.

I feel this is as good a place as any to leave my comment so it is noticed.

------
kmclean
Are these separate containers (like Firefox containers) or just some UI to
visually group certain tabs?

~~~
TheArcane
The latter

------
kbos87
Everyone I work with seems to always have about a million tabs open at all
times, myself included. Maybe they’ve figured out a way to manage them, but
for me, it’s hard to keep them from becoming anything other than a
disorganized mess. I use a couple of plugins that really help like the Great
Suspender for managing memory use, and the this looks like it will definitely
help. The thing that puzzles me is that this seems like an obvious step
progression in tab management - but it’s also the first real move to help
people with a widespread challenge that’s been around for many years. Is this
the rate of improvement we should expect from Chrome?

------
lord_erasmus
I feel like the hidden that feature that allows you to select and move
multiple tabs is severely underrated. I'm a tab hoarder but not disorganised,
I tend to work on multiple things at a time and what I'll do is everytime
there's more than 4-5 tabs on a specific project, I'll move them to a new
window and hide the rest. That way, I'm not bothered by the other subjects in
my view and the current "workspace" is still easily manageable. I fail to see
the point of this change this late in the browser history as it would surprise
me if powerusers didn't already have their own way of managing tabs

------
drukenemo
My greatest problem with Chrome and tabs is its tendency to “forget” pinned
tabs when restarting. I’ve lost pinned tabs quite a few times and don’t trust
Chrome to keep them. This never occurs with Safari and Firefox in my
experience.

------
remarkEon
Cool, something similar exists in Firefox (with an extension). Still not going
to switch to Chrome, though. I have the Chrome browser open once or twice a
week because, as one can imagine, gmail works better in Google's browser - but
once I finish fully migrating everything to protonmail and my own @ I'll have
no reason to ever use a google product again (run a NAS I can access remotely,
collaboration in Microsoft Office works "good enough" and tbh I prefer the
version controlling for what I need it for, DDG is at least at parity with
Google search and is frankly better for images).

------
greggman3
I just wish the OSes would alt-tab through all tabs in all apps instead of
just top level windows. Yes, other forms of tab organization might be useful
but my productivity would go up more if I could more easily swap between the
last 2-8 things I did in a consistent way.

As it is sometimes alt tab works, some times it doesn't. It all depends on
what the last few things I did were and is therefore infuriatingly
inconsistent.

I tried "Witch" on MacOS to fix this but it's got its own set of issues since
it's having to hack around to do its job.

------
mozey
Or use this strange hack to group tabs: "File > New Window"

------
mrtksn
This looks nice but in my experience, it is unrealistic to have Chrome with
many tabs open on a laptop. The machine would slow down, drain the battery and
force me to close tabs before I need to classify them. Did that change too?

IMHO a feature as a tab limiter would be more productive for me at least,
forcing me to close or archive tabs before opening new ones. I have ancient
tabs of great finds that at some point I need to decide what to do with but
never come around and don't really remember what was so great about that tab.

~~~
crucialfelix
The Great Suspender is essential for that:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspende...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-
suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en)

~~~
mrtksn
Thanks, it looks like there's a Safari version too. This may change things!

------
flobosg
I've been trying to control my tab hoarding in Chrome by limiting the amount
of open tabs with the xTab extension[1]. It seems to help, even though I can
bypass it by opening another window. As a side effect of this my browser
windows tend to be organized by topic.

[1]:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xtab/amddgdnlkmoha...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xtab/amddgdnlkmohapieeekfknakgdnpbleb)

------
pkamb
I hope this does not change the usability of large numbers of tabs in Chrome,
which are still completely usable when they shrink down to Favicon size.

In contrast to Safari, which never shrinks tabs below ~1 inch and instead
changes the tab bar to an awful horizontal scrolling/carousel view.

Safari tabs are completely unusable past around 15 tabs when it starts hiding
and resizing the tabs on the edges. It's the main thing preventing me from
switching from Chrome to Safari.

------
yxhuvud
Sigh. Just give us proper tree style tabs already :/

------
tuananh
I would love if Chrome can assign a domain + account to a group automatically.
Without this, I don't think I can make use much of this feature.

------
fun387lm38
Downloaded the Chrome Beta for Linux and this doesn't work: Nothing about tab
groups or colors when you right-click on a tab.

------
ilSignorCarlo
Just learned about this Min[0] browser yesterday.

It uses the concept of "tasks" to organize tabs. Still haven't really tried
it, so can't really recommend, but since it's not really well known (I guess)
I thought it was worth sharing.

[0]: [https://minbrowser.org/](https://minbrowser.org/)

------
oerpli
I would like tab-management to work as follows:

\- Export Tabs as list. Format could be something like URL;TITLE[;GROUP][;...]

\- Import list as Tabs: The inverse

Then I could use existing tools (xsv,fzf,vscode,excel) to do whatever I like
with my tabs. Some things may be lost (cache, scrolling position...) but I
wouldn't care as they don't work anyway with modern websites.

~~~
morsch
Tree style tabs supports exporting tabs/trees as lists. I don't think
importing works, though.

------
mikece
I don't see anything here that isn't possible with OneTab except that the tabs
are all open. At least with OneTab I can (manually) move tabsets between
Chrome and Firefox as well as between machines: [https://www.one-
tab.com/](https://www.one-tab.com/)

------
pombrand
This should really have the option to collapse the tabs in each group (only
showing the colored dot or group name).

------
s-km
Tested this out a few months ago, got real excited when I saw they had a beta
thing for it but was let down that you couldn't collapse and expand tab groups
down to just their titles. The functionality should even be there-ish already,
since pinned tabs collapse down to just the site's favicon.

------
dmitshur
What I would find very helpful is if Chrome on macOS could reopen all its
windows on their original spaces—rather than all on the same space—when it
needs to restart to install a new version.

Having all Chrome windows from many spaces for different tasks re-appear all
on top of each other is quite frustrating.

------
rayrag
It looks good when it's only few tabs, when you have more than 20 tabs you
don't even see a favicon. I don't understand why tabs don't have minimum
width. In firefox you always see favicon and first tree letters and there are
arrows that help you scroll through tabs.

------
Tyrannosaur
I miss Opera 12's tab groups. [https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/9738/opera-how-
to-stackgroup...](https://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/9738/opera-how-to-
stackgroup-similar-tabs/)

------
Wowfunhappy
I thought Google was pausing non-security Chrome updates during the COVID
crisis, what happened to that?

~~~
snazz
This feature has existed for a long time under chrome://flags. They skipped
Chrome 82 for COVID:
[https://www.chromestatus.com/features/schedule](https://www.chromestatus.com/features/schedule)

------
andrewstuart
I have needed "the tab problem" solved for many years.

I've tried and never stuck with any third party solution.

I work in specific "modes/projects" and each mode has several tens at least of
tabs open.

It would be great if I could somehow switch between work modes and see all the
relevant tabs for that mode.

~~~
Non24Throw
Control+N a new window for each mode is what I currently do. Then
Super+<backtick> to cycle through them (if you’re on a Mac)

It’s not perfect though. If you accidentally open a few tabs in the wrong mode
there’s no easy way to transfer them. And I’ll often forget that another
window is open in the background

~~~
aembleton
If you are using Tree Style Tabs and they are all children of a parent tab
then you can just drag the parent tab over to the other window.

------
72deluxe
I find tabs in Safari and Chrome fairly difficult to navigate when using them
(I have many open and scrolling through loads isn't that useful); I find
Safari's overview mode (pinch out on iPad or Mac) far more useful because you
can see what you're after.

------
skavi
This looks great. Definitely feels like something that should have existed for
a while.

Hopefully this will encourage some “tab collectors” to convert their groups to
bookmark folders.

I use Safari on my Mac, but its behind in tab management. I especially miss
being able to drag multiple tabs at once between windows.

~~~
saagarjha
Interestingly, moving multiple tabs is one of the few places where Safari on
iOS can do something that Safari on macOS can’t.

------
Shaddox
What's a good browser for personal use nowadays? I have Firefox on my desktop
but on mobile the experience is very lacking, with many pages downright
breaking. I'm currently trying out brave which seems to at least block ads and
tracking.

------
y42
I am a tab minimalist, but still i am looking forward to this. Been using this
in the official release for a while now (activate it via chrome:flags). Only
thing i am missing is persistency (keep the group if tabs are closed) and some
kind of collapsing.

------
chrischen
I use tabs essentially as low-friction bookmarks/todo items. I'd use bookmarks
more if it were as low friction as just keeping the tabs open.

I definitely don't enjoy having a bunch of tabs crammed in a horizontally
constrained space.

------
moogly
Those labels leave even less space for actual tabs. This looks very misguided
to me.

------
simzor
This is great. With this comes to Firefox. I guess Firefox has a kind of
similar feature (Containers), but this new Chrome feature looks way nicer,
even though it might not have containerization.

------
forgingahead
Great, more free persona classification for their advertising engine

------
gnusty_gnurc
For the love of god, google, please give me vertical tabs. It's been years.
I'm happy using Firefox or Vivaldi, it pains me whenever I have to open
Chrome.

------
appleflaxen
The web browser is essentially an operating system within your operating
system.

This update is making the browser-os work more like a window manager.

tabs are to chrome as application windows are to OSX.

------
KKPMW
The way to deal with tabs for me is to be a "tab ascetic". Majority of the
time I have only a single tab open. Sometimes 2. With 3 it gets uncomfortable.

------
ken
This works for Google because they want you to only use Chrome. That's how
Google engineers work.

For the rest of us, it's a reminder of how increasingly troublesome it is that
window managers are tied to the OS, and (on 2/3 of the major OSs) locked down
so any third parties that want to innovate here are limited to doing it only
for their own application.

This looks like just the sort of thing Dan Ingalls meant when he said "We in
computer software insist on stepping on the toes of those who came before us
instead of climbing on their shoulders".

------
Lorin
As a tab collector this is useless to me. I rather have a way to automatically
move certain domains to specific, separate windows to keep things organized.

------
notaplumber
This type of separation would be better served with having multiple chrome
user profiles. Like one for "work" and one for "home".

------
fao_
My favourite part is how they're taking something firefox had for years and
then removed, and presenting it as an innovation!

------
rezeroed
Nope. Not much use. I've discovered Opera has workspaces, unfortunately
limited to five, but exactly what I want for tab management.

------
saagarjha
Using space in the already crowded tab area might not go over all that well.
Couldn’t they have moved the tab group indicator to not be inline?

------
warpech
I still dream of a web browser that manages to combine browsing history,
bookmarks, tabs and multi-device sync in one interface.

------
philonoist
Vivaldi is too sweet to let go and switch to chrome. They are at least 10
years ahead in tab management and it is enlightening.

------
maverick74
Amazing. Chrome discovered the wheel!!!

Oh wait... no it hasn't! Firefox already had something similar, only more
advanced!!!

------
leephillips
The one enhancement I wish Chrome would make to their tabs is give me an
option to make them less than ½-inch high.

------
maxbaines
Wow all you 'many tabbers' I only ever have about 4-6 tabs open before I feel
cluttered and close some.

------
RMPR
At first glance it seems like it's the Multi container extension of Firefox
without cookies isolation

------
skocznymroczny
I usually stick to 5-6 tabs at a time. I don't understand how can people deal
with 40-50 tabs or more.

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
I'm with you. I don't like it when I have more than a few open at a time. I
also don't like having unread email or chat messages because of the same
impulse. They're to-do items that haven't been done yet so I deal with them
and move on.

------
xyst
Time to order more RAM for this bad boy

------
ggm
Move tab one left. Move tab one right. Move tab far left, move tab far right.
Keyboard acceleration?

------
0mn1
If you want to use Chrome(ium), but also have modern features and privacy
focus, just use Vivaldi.

------
fomine3
I'm happy to see tab hoarder folks here. I should improve hoarding system.

------
in9
this seems to me like another opportunity for chrome to be a memory hog,
specially with the extra UI features.

But I am glad to be proven wrong here. Judging by the comments there seems to
be a use case for a lot of the user base.

------
101404
Ff container tabs but without isolation?

Isn't that what the window manager is for?

------
luckman212
> There are two types of people in the world

He lost me on the opening sentence.

------
FalconSensei
What's the use of the groups if they don't collapse?

------
maelito
I hope this comes to Android as well, in desktop or tablet mode.

------
Aweorih
Something like a group collapse feature would be nice here

------
bangonkeyboard
Why doesn't my down arrow key work on this page?

~~~
saagarjha
blog.google breaks it, as has been noted before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22949003](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22949003)

~~~
bangonkeyboard
Found it. In
[https://www.blog.google/static/blogv2/js/all.js?version=4.3](https://www.blog.google/static/blogv2/js/all.js?version=4.3)

    
    
      {key:"onKeyDown",value:function(t){var e=t.preventDefault;this.isToggle(document.activeElement)?(e(),!this.header.isKebabOpen&&this.header.openKebab(),this.getFirstLink().focus()):this.isLastLink(document.activeElement)?this.isLastLink(document.activeElement)&&e():(e(),this.focusNextLink())}}
    

There's a logic error in the nested ternaries: event.preventDefault() is
called in every branch.

Fixed:

    
    
      {key:"onKeyDown",value:function(t){var e=t.preventDefault;this.isToggle(document.activeElement)?(e(),!this.header.isKebabOpen&&this.header.openKebab(),this.getFirstLink().focus()):this.isLink(document.activeElement)&&(e(),!this.isLastLink(document.activeElement)&&this.focusNextLink())}}

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mvkel
Here’s an idea: make the list of tabs vertical

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larkinrichards
Is this a new method for Google to keep tracking cookies active? I know many
people who leave tabs open for months. Using tabs for “read later” seems
questionable, performance wise.

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mkarliner
Useless. I need to be able to collapse groups

~~~
vntok
Don't be so dismissive. Collapsing groups is coming up, you can even enable
its preview version through a chrome flag.

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KingOfCoders
Why don't they give me vertical tabs?

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chadlavi
what's the use case here that's better than just having separate windows for
separate concerns?

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rtalvar
I hope they port this feature to Brave.

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DroitThemes
Alwz prefers firefox over chrome.

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heyflyguy
Oh what memory will we use!

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Yoric
Hey, Firefox tab groups!

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fatfingers
will there be an option to disable this? it's ugly

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kalium-xyz
Folders are back?

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modzu
how about close to the left?

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aledthemathguy
innovation in 2020

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quanlou
oh now they learn from firefox, but maybe grouping like this would easier for
them to do the ads targeting

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metroholografix
While Google finds new ways to offer reduced functionality, here's how I use
tabs in Chrome:

[https://github.com/atomontage/osa-chrome](https://github.com/atomontage/osa-
chrome)

~~~
Hitton
That actually seems like rather convenient, if I were emacs user on Mac, I
would give it a try.

That said, you gotta agree that this time google actually adds functionality
that might be useful to some, unlike more common _scrap-important-adblocking-
api-to-screw-everyone_.

