
Tree Style Tabs - gamma-male
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
======
nneonneo
I use TST extensively to manage hundreds of tabs, and it is a real joy. FWIW,
these are the customizations that made TST much more usable for me:

1) Very importantly, hide the horizontal tab bar. You get some vertical screen
space back, and you aren't distracted by two ways of showing the same tabs.
You'll have to edit your userChrome.css (see e.g.
[http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&pri...](http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&printable=yes)
for details on how to find it), and add something like this:

    
    
      /* Hide tab bar in FF Quantum */
      @-moz-document url("chrome://browser/content/browser.xul") {
        #TabsToolbar {
          visibility: collapse !important;
          margin-bottom: 21px !important;
        }
    
        #sidebar-box[sidebarcommand="treestyletab_piro_sakura_ne_jp-sidebar-action"] #sidebar-header {
          visibility: collapse !important;
        }
      }
    

There are a few variations; this is the one that works well for me on Mac. The
second block also hides the sidebar title for TST, which saves space in the
tab bar.

2) I customize the tabs themselves to make them more compact, thus letting me
see more tabs. This CSS can be placed in the TST addon preferences under the
"Advanced" section.

    
    
      /* Compact tab layout */
      :root { --tab-height: 20px !important; }
      .tab { height: 20px !important; }
      /* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */
      #tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; }
    
      /* Show title of unread tabs with red font */
      .tab.unread .label {
        color: red !important;
      }
    
      /* Add private browsing indicator per tab */
      .tab.private-browsing .label:before {
        content: " ";
      }
    

I highly recommend this addon, and it's a major differentiator for me between
Firefox and Chrome.

~~~
ekianjo
Its weird that Firefox cant provide a single button in the preferences to
remove the horizontal tab bar.

~~~
feanaro
It's part of their new philosophy not to make anything configurable or
anything "advanced" easy, unless you're jumping through some hoops.

I still can't get over the fact that they removed the ability to view
individual cookies and their values from the browser.

~~~
Vinnl
No, it's part of the philosophy that this particular feature led to users
suddenly being without tab bar and basically having a broken browser. Although
I do believe they're still weighing that against the benefits of being able to
use TST without needing to go through extra hoops.

You can still view individual cookies and their values: open the dev tools,
then the Storage tab.

~~~
ekianjo
> feature led to users suddenly being without tab bar and basically having a
> broken browser

That's a stupid reason if thats what they care about. Just make it part of the
about:config at least if you are so worried about "dumb users".

~~~
sp332
It's not so much the users they care about but the fact they have to deal with
all the support requests, plus the complaining on social media that Firefox is
dumb and bad. At some point it's net-negative for the project. So sometimes
they open functionality to extensions instead of having it easily available to
users, like the option to disable JavaScript on pages.

------
leemailll
I always feel this should be included in Firefox default settings. Vertical
space is an asset on modern monitors especially on laptop, this extension is
the reason Firefox is the default browser on my machines

~~~
gamma-male
I have no idea why Mozilla is ignoring this extension. This is definitely
something that should be a core feature.

~~~
pletnes
They did a «pilot» experiment recently but apparently decided it’s not
important enough. That code is available as another extension (don’t recall
the name, perhaps tabcenter).

~~~
gamma-male
They should get their priorities right. Their test was really bad compared to
TST

~~~
vnw
They are busy putting ads in your browser and siphoning your data to ad
companies.

------
gamma-male
I don’t understand how people browse the web without this extension. That’s
the number one reason chrome is not usable for power users. I’m also wondering
why this is not natively supported by both firefox and chrome.

~~~
TylerE
and I don't understand how people have more than about 10 tabs and stay sane.
Do you people like... not use bookmarks at all?

Heck, most of the sites I visit on anything like a regular basis I only need
to type in the first letter or two and they auto-complete.

~~~
zhte415
I don't use bookmarks. Tabs are for things I want to read today or at least as
long as the browser session's open (could be multi-day, but all in a chain of
thought). If I don't get round to them I let them die under the justification
"couldn't have been important enough" rather than carry baggage.

I have a personal wiki where I save links together with self-made notes and
links/references associated with it. This provides a persistent record that is
richer than that which bookmarks can provide, and can be accessed from any
device that I happen to be on (my own devices, or devices that aren't my own,
or links shared to others).

For regular sites, I too type in the URL and it usually autocompletes.

For myself, bookmarks have always fallen into a middle ground that I don't
have much use for.

~~~
gamma-male
Wow. This is me. TST + personal wiki + pocket

~~~
mirceam
What did you use to create your personal wiki?

~~~
srikz
Not OP but I would highly recommend TiddlyWiki[1] as a personal Wiki

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

------
ttsda
I've been using TST for many years and it's really the killer feature that
keeps bringing me back to firefox.

For those running on older machines who still like having a big tab hierarchy
with stuff to check later, there's the "Auto Tab Discard" [1] extension which
will discard older tabs from memory while keeping the tab itself, with
optional exceptions for pinned tabs, tabs with filled forms, ...

Unfortunately there are still some websites that force me to have Chrome
installed, biggest culprit being Facebook which is completely unusable on my
2014 MBP through Firefox.

[1] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-
disc...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-discard/)

~~~
agumonkey
I recently realized that chromium is a memory hog, with 50 tabs most of my ram
(8G) is gone; while firefor nightly is around 1G, 1.5G maybe with a similar
load. I guess this is gonna shrink memory usage even more.

~~~
ttsda
It does seem to use more memory, but at least on my Mac it uses a lot less
CPU. For firefox it just takes one bad tab (gmaps, gmail, facebook,
youtube/embedded youtube) to grind the whole system to a halt, all these
things work fine on chrome, and use almost no CPU on safari.

~~~
therealdrag0
I feel like everyone has their own anecdotes about this. Surely some third
party has done controlled performance profiling on the major browsers? That
would be very interesting.

------
kevinmgranger
I used to be a heavy TST user, but lately I've gone in the exact opposite
direction. I now use Max Tabs[0] to limit how many I can have open at a time.

It works wonders for my focus, and I find that whenever I sigh and have to
close tabs to open a new one I need, I can easily find ones I didn't really
need.

If you're curious, no, it doesn't count pinned tabs-- so any web apps you like
to keep open won't count against your limit.

0: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/max-tabs-
web-...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/max-tabs-web-ext)

------
TACIXAT
I use a similar tab layout in Vivaldi and it's amazing. Page titles are wide,
stacking them vertically along the side makes a lot more sense.

~~~
aembleton
Last time I tried Vivaldi, it only had one dimension for the vertical tabs -
middle click on a link and it just gets added to the list of tabs.

With TST, I get a second dimension - child tabs are indented in underneath
their parent, so that it is clear where they come from. This is the reason
that it is called a Tree.

~~~
TACIXAT
Yea, there is one more level of nesting, you can group tabs but it is a manual
effort. I mostly use that when I want to collapse a bunch of pages relevant to
a single project that I'm not working on. What problem does the knowing where
the tab came from solve?

------
CharlesW
For folks using Chrome, check out Tabs Outliner if you like This Sort Of
Thing™. I can't imagine using Chrome without it.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

~~~
WalterGR
Tabs Outliner doesn’t remember the hierarchy of your tabs between browser
sessions. Every time you quit and then start Chrome, you end up with a flat
list of tabs.

That’s a huge non-starter for me. Not fit for purpose.

I installed Sidewise Tree Style Tabs a few hours ago and it seems solid so
far.

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

------
yardshop
This is the first thing I install when setting up a new Firefox. Next is Tab
Groups or Simple Tab Groups. I will create a tab group for each major
category: Common (email, HN, news, daily sites), Python, Powershell, specific
groups per project, then have 30 to 40 tabs per group. At work I have further
groups for Support, Purchasing, research for specific projects, etc.

I use Chrome for web development jobs sometimes and really miss the vertical
tabs and hierarchy. Everything squinched together across the top just feels
cumbersome and less manageable.

------
larozin
Used it before and it was slow and buggy. I found a better way to manage open
tabs: stash them into bookmark stacks using simpler extension.
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-
stash](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-stash)

~~~
mercer
I use OneTab for Chrome, which is similar. If I didn't have that I'd probably
switch to FF, but OneTab is good enough for my browsing habits.

~~~
emmanueloga_
Plus one for OneTab on Chrome. I also like the "Share as WebPage" feature
(example [1]), which I end up using to share links with myself, in different
devices, most of the time :-)

1: [https://www.one-tab.com/page/PPPJag1tSsm1NFAWgaOUjw](https://www.one-
tab.com/page/PPPJag1tSsm1NFAWgaOUjw)

------
unholythree
I like this, but I visualized it differently. I assumed the tree style tab bar
could be placed horizontally and each tab could be a drop down tree from
there. I'm not sure if that would even be possible but I'd prefer that
arrangement. I rarely maximize my browser so horizontal space isn't just dead
space for me.

~~~
yardshop
This is sort of what you get when you put folders in the Bookmarks Toolbar,
but the links within them are just lists and not trees. This is how I manage
my bookmarks.

------
hiccuphippo
The one thing I don't like from extensions like this is that the inner window
ends up in a non-standard width/height and I can't help but think how many
sites could track me across domains just by checking for that.

------
needle0
This (well, actually, I use the simpler Tab Center Redux as I have no need for
hierarchical complexity) is the biggest reason I kept using Firefox during its
pre-Quantum dark years, still do now, and never once switched to Chrome.

Firefox allows fairly seamless* vertical tab implementations; Chrome does not
(IIRC they WONTFIXed the request a long time ago). Vertical tab bars are non-
negotiable for me, simple as that.

* Well, as others point out, it's now become slightly less seamless since hiding the horizontal tab bar requires a userChrome.css hack, but after you do that just once it's smooth sailing.

------
SZJX
Nobody seems to mention the plugin Tree Tabs here:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-
tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/), which IMHO
is a much better alternative.

------
andrepd
Alternative, which I personally prefer: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/tree-tabs/)

------
WaxProlix
I used this for a bit but the duplication of information from this and the
existing tab bar made it really annoying. Maybe you can hide the 'normal' bar
pretty easily and I just didn't find the setting?

~~~
gamma-male
Firefox messed up big time with their flagship plugin with their last
updates... not sure why.

------
andrewaylett
Recent Firefox has a drop-down with a list of all open tabs at the right side
of the tab bar; it doesn't do the "tree" at all, but other than that has
successfully removed enough of my demand for more that I'm happy. Along with
the scrolling tab bar that lets me see at least a few close-by tab titles,
it's usable to dozens of tabs at least.

I really don't understand my Chrome-using colleagues who sit perpetually at
single-icon-wide tabs and can never find the one they're looking for.

------
nsonha
It was a real joy when I was a student doing extensive reading on topic(s),
treating tabs as a reading list, since I didn't have enough stuff to do back
then. Nowadays I find opening more than 10 tabs too counter-productive and
distracting. What I'll do when it happens is using something like onetab to
snapshot them all (with the hope of looking into it later, which never
happens) and start fresh with the ONE thing I was supposed to focus at the
time.

------
owaislone
This is great when pinning dozens of tabs. Pinning dozens of tabs only leaves
a few pixels of space for tabs I work with on the right side often making it
impossible to clearly understand the open tabs adjacent to the active one.

Is there a way to disable the main tab bar?

This comment shows the solution:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18836967](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18836967)

------
equalunique
For those who find Tree Style Tabs not powerful enough for their massive
amounts of open tabs, I recommend lots of RAM & Tabs Outliner for
Chrom(e/ium): [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggk...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-
outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en)

------
rkagerer
Is there a new hotkey for sibling (vs. child) tab?

Does this play nice with tab save/restore addons similar to Session Buddy?
(i.e. is hierarchy persisted?)

~~~
henriquemaia
Have you checked the addon options? It has a submenu for defining keyboard
shortcuts.

------
maciekmm
Shameless plug. If you are using firefox's container tabs. I have created an
addon inspired by tree style tabs that shows tabs under their container.

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

------
foreigner
Has anybody tried the "Sidewise" Chrome extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-
styl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewise-tree-style-
tabs/biiammgklaefagjclmnlialkmaemifgo?hl=en)

Looks like it has tree style tabs, among other features.

~~~
yardshop
I used it for a while but didn't like that it was a separate window, and it
also seemed to duplicate my tabs. Might be worth a try again because I do miss
the tree style tabs in Chrome.

------
mitchtbaum
Let us remember that these UX patterns are not browser specific features, but
Tile/Window management features.

[https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must-
die](https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/04/why-tabs-must-die)

------
4n0m4ly
Just yesterday i was thinking that it would be great to have tree style tabs,
and here it is

------
blitmap
I use this addon, but I wish it showed as an actual tree (not an indented list
of buttons). Also, there's some space to the left that can be reclaimed if
you're not using tab groups.

~~~
yardshop
There are a couple appearance options (Vertigo and Sidebar) which don't have
the button outlines, may be closer to what you are after. They also don't have
the dotted branch lines that some tree controls have. There is also a "No
Decoration" option where you can add your own style rules in the Advanced
section.

------
clubm8
How well does this play with Multi-Account Containers?

~~~
ttsda
Very well! Even shows a little coloured strip on each tab, and respects
regular tab hierarchy.

~~~
zimmund
I found the indicators too narrow, so I made this CSS change (in TST config):

    
    
      /* Better highlighting of tab container */
      .tab {
        padding-right: 12px !important;
      }
      .contextual-identity-marker {
        width: 6px !important;
        border-radius: 2px;
        margin: 2px;
        opacity: 0.75;
      }
    

Hope it's helpful for someone else :)

------
gdanov
hi, the CSS mentioned here has been serving me well for a while, but since
~month I don't see the RYG buttons anymore. After some experimenting I
realized these buttons are rendered only with the native titlebar or with the
tabbar. Having toolbar with address, search, etc. and the RYG buttons seems
impossible now.

anyone else experiencing this problem?

------
vfq
Anybody knows if something like this is possible in Chrome?

~~~
vickychijwani
There's a similar, though not quite as good, Chrome extension called Sidewise.
Unfortunately Chrome itself is not as extensible as Firefox so there are
issues in Sidewise, the most glaring being that the list of tabs appears in a
separate window and Sidewise snaps its position and layout to match your
Chrome window using some heuristics.

All that said, just use Firefox. It's a much better experience and after
Quantum it's on par with Chrome in terms of UI performance.

~~~
vfq
Sidewise... I already tried it, and it is nothing more than a bad hack... I
guess we'll never get that.

Firefox has worse performance than Chrome and I don't trust Mozilla, so
unfortunately using Firefox is not an option for me.

~~~
doliveira
What lead you to trust Google more than Mozilla or even put them in the same
level of trustworthiness?

~~~
vfq
The decisions taken by the Mozilla Corporation for the past years make them
look like they've completely lost control of themselves. I don't feel like I
can trust them at all. I don't want to know what they are going to pull off
next week, so I've decided they won't execute any more code on my machine.

------
cocolos
Anyone know of a way to bookmark the tree structure in TST?

~~~
chrismorgan
Right clicking on a tab, I have an item `Tree Style Tab → Bookmark this
tree…`. I use Firefox Nightly; this _may_ be a Nightly feature, I don’t know.

~~~
cocolos
It saves the tabs but it doesn't keep the hierarchy. I will try Nightly.
Thanks!

~~~
chrismorgan
Ah, it’s specifically the hierarchy you’re asking about. No, it doesn’t seem
to save that.

------
Rainymood
Nice, when are we gonna get tree style ads ;)?

