Niko
Thanks! I gave it a go with the following prototype and a written concept:
Proposed changes:
- Vertical tab bar is divided into three sections:
- Favorites
- Bookmarks
- Normal tabs
- Bookmarks and normal tabs can be grouped in folders
- Bookmarks are permanent and persist across sessions and application restarts
- Clicking a bookmarks turns the bookmark into a tab, in place (not opening new tab).
- Navigating inside of a bookmark reveals "reset" icon/button, which resets the URL to the one that was bookmarked, and navigates back to that URL.
Not shown:
- Dragging a tab to the bookmark list turns that tab into a bookmark
- Dragging a bookmarked tab to the normal tabs removes the bookmark
- Favorites work the same as now
- Making favorites a little bigger seems like a good idea, given that they are meant to be used very regularly.
- All of the above is saved per profile, so you can have different favorites, bookmarks and tabs per profile.
- Renaming tabs is also not shown, but further improves the concept so that bookmarks act as truly permanent tabs and can be customized fully. I suggest a context menu option and shortcut, and/or double-clicking the tab label. This functionality would need to exist for tab folders as well.
Similarities between tabs and bookmarks
- Bookmarks work like regular tabs: They show the saved URL directly and are marked as selected
Differences between tabs and bookmarks
- Bookmarks cannot be closed directly and have to be manually removed (context-menu or dragging out of bookmarks, see below)
- Bookmarks remember the URL that they were saved with. When the user navigates away from the bookmarked URL inside of the bookmarked tab, the change is indicated and the user can undo the change, so that they can return to the original bookmarks state.
- If a link in a bookmarked page leads outside the bookmarked domain, it should open inside of a new "normal" tab (not sure about that, but it makes more sense than not doing it).
Additional challenges
- There should be keyboard shortcuts for all the actions above, if applicable
- There should be context-menu options for all the actions above, if applicable
- This functionality has to work with horizontal tabs. I can picture a UI where the drag-and-drop functionality (as well as shortcuts and context-menu options) could be applied to horizontal tabs as well, given that the tab bar and the bookmark bar are close enough to make dragging-and-dropping possible.
- When using horizontal tabs, folders in both the bookmark bar and the tab bar cannot be tabs, and clicking them would have to open a dropdown with the tabs, instead of changing the main viewport. (This is why I think the folder request is a blocker for the bookmarks-as-tabs request, if bookmarks-as-tabs should ever be reality).
Other changes
Selected tab styling
I also made some changes to the way the currently selected tab is styled. This is not essential, totally secondary, but I think it helps distinguishing selected and hovered tabs, as well as folders.
Profile selector styling
Profiles in this concept get a color in addition to the icon (I used emojis to save time). This way you can easily see which profile you're using. While I’m sure that the styling can be further improved, this serves the same purpose as Arc’s full-on background color, but in a more subtle way. Profiles should help isolate browsing data. And because user error is the most common problem in this functionality (accidentally opening a URL in the wrong profile), I think this change is more than just cosmetic.
Motivation
@Vlad I’m very grateful you’re listening to these requests at all, and I feel like I need to justify the concept:
I agree that the way Arc realized the same concept did not feel native. I also agree that this alienated the majority of users because the mental jump needed was too big.
What I do not agree with is that this is an unsolvable obstacle. My hunch is that most people don’t bookmark URLs at all and just use tabs as throwaway resources to remember content. This leads to tab-hoarding. Using traditional bookmarks on the other hand requires context-shifting from bookmarks to tabs, and then STILL clutters the tab bar if people don’t actively tidy up the tabs.
I’ve seen some very intelligent people click around in their tab bar for a minute, constantly hit-and-missing what they are searching for in the mess of open tabs. Going vertical remedies some of that by at least showing the labels, but it does not solve the underlying issue, which is that people use two kinds of tabs:
- tabs they open and either close directly afterwards or forget about, cluttering the tab bar
- tabs they go to multiple times per session and that mostly stays at the same URL (hence the reset button in the prototype above)
The concept above caters to both types of tab uses without being too far off from the traditional way. I also think it would not alienate users that don’t use bookmarks or pinned tabs at all.
