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The choice between a horizontal tabbar at the top or tabs in a sidebar isn't really a global user preference to me. Placing tabs on the side or top depends on what I'm doing, case to case.

For example, if I have many tabs, I may want them on the side. If I want to "immersively" browser one or two sites in one window, I may want to tabs on top. When I'm developing with the dev tools on the right, I may also want to tabs on top to maximise the remaining horizontal space for the site.

I realise this would require a small (icon?) button in both states, but I imagine there may be more tab-related settings or actions coming in the future, so this could be a typical three dots ··· icon with all those secondary features grouped underneath.

  • Vlad replied to this.

    walmink Basically you want this as a part of the Window switcher menu (as a an option with a checkmark "Use Vertical Tabs" for example?)

    • joe likes this.

      I think you just want a quick way to toggle between vertical and horizontal tabs. You can do this with cmd-ctrl-v.

        5 months later

        The vertical tabs are a very useful feature when dealing with a large number of tabs, particularly when researching or working with disparate issues. However, as we divide work areas into multiple named windows such as Project Alpha and Project Bravo, some windows need vertical tabs a lot more than others. Some sessions suffer from having vertical tabs enabled. How can we handle both tab-heavy and tab-light sessions?

        Problem

        Enabling vertical tabs result in vertical tabs being enabled in all windows. While a default for new windows would be nice, it can be frustrating to constantly switch between enabling and disabling vertical tabs. This can occur when you have narrow windows with specific content such as documentation or other pieces of reference material, where vertical tabs do not fit.

        Potential approach

        Tie the state of whether vertical tabs are enabled to the state of the named window session. Allows for separate windows to maintain their own configuration depending on the user's need.

        Other alternatives

        • Automatically enable/disable based on tab count or tab size. Users shouldn't have to think about this on a per-window basis. If you can't see enough of your tabs, vertical tabs should automatically be enabled. However, when should vertical tabs be disabled? The structure of vertical tabs could be useful enough to warrant vertical tabs even when the amount of whitespace lost is far greater than what horizontal tabs would give.

        • Do not store whether vertical tabs are enabled in the session, but only enable it for the current window. No need for attaching to the window session that's stored, but does still require this to be stored somewhere in memory. Might be entirely indistinguishable in terms of implementation from the main proposal.

          Thor changed the title to Handle vertical or horizontal tabs on a per-window basis .
            Merged 3 posts from Handle vertical or horizontal tabs on a per-window basis.
              5 months later

              @walmink @Thor I came to realize this could be useful (eg having one window with vertical tabs and others not).

              It is not clear thought how to do this from UX standpoint.

              Easiest would be to have setting work per window.

              What happens when you open a new window? (inherits setting from the parent window)

              What if there are no parents window (you are restarting a browser)

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