Changes to Orion's Sidebar / Vertical tabs handling

Vlad

Hey guys, I like Arc, and I’ve been using it since it was invite-only, but I don’t think that we need to build a clone here.

I wanted to highlight this comment. As much as some people liked what Arc did, it was pretty opinionated which is why Arc ended being a niche browser.

On the other hand Orion has been built as a general purpose browser, a true user agent, built both for a techie and techie's grandma. Everything we do needs to adhere to:

Apple HIG
Acknowledging that our resources are limited and our challenge is 10x bigger than Arc's

Now since this thread is very constructive I want to acknowledge that and thank for everyone's contribution.

milos thanks for thinking this through.

Since you already made mockups in other threads:
https://orionfeedback.org/d/5377-larger-iconshow-title-for-pinned-tabs-in-sidebar-favorites-in-sidebar/
https://orionfeedback.org/d/8917-vertical-tabs-design-improvements
https://orionfeedback.org/d/8933-imagining-the-orion-panel/

This is becoming very hard for us to track and think about. The real challenge for us is when we have so many different opinions about a topic we do not know much (none in our team are passionate Arc users). This can lead to us interpretting requests in the wrong way.

I wonder if you could summarize these into the minimum amount of changes (so that it is doable by the team) that would accomplish maximum amount of desired functionality (fully acknowledging that Arc did some things well)?

laptudirm

Vlad Summarizing the last few posts here, we seem to have reached a consensus on the following issues/features:

#8917 The bigger margins will help separate the tabs better, and the chevrons being embedded in the tab icon will also prevent the tabs from jumping left to right.
#8933 Having a separate panel for all the non-vertical tab sidebars on the right hand side will make the behavior related to hiding/showing those tabs while in vertical tabs mode more intuitive, currently there are a few recurring issues regarding hiding/showing the other sidebars while in vertical tabs mode, which would all be fixed.

For now I would encourage everyone to either show support or express their concerns regarding these two issues. Once their future is decided, more divisive topics can be discussed.

milos

Vlad I wonder if you could summarize these into the minimum amount of changes (so that it is doable by the team) that would accomplish maximum amount of desired functionality (fully acknowledging that Arc did some things well)?

Sure, I'll try to make a comperhansive list of quick-win feature improvements that I think could work well for all of the Orion users. I'll add a reply to this tread in the next few days.

Vlad

janpeeters

But that can be easily circumvented by making features opt-in.

Making features opt-in is the worst thing we can do from a development standpoint. It take more time to build (you are now doing 2x, 3x... work),it produces more bugs and and it makes it harder to maintain (Orion works on macOS 10.14!). This is why we are looking for reasonable defaults and options only if we have to.

To put things in perspective:

Arc - built on top of Chromium so got the browser app framework for free. Only option for the user is vertical tabs. That's it, if you do not like you are out of luck. Team size >100.

Orion - building with WebKit, browser app needs to built from scratch (no Chromiuim equivalent for WebKit). Orion supports Horizontal tabs, Vertical tabs, Compact Tabs... Multiple other customizations avaialble. Built as fully native Mac app. Team size 5.

Let's not ask us to add more options, but find ways to remove existing options instead and have good constructive discussions that will produce sane defaults. Thank you 🙏

janpeeters

Vlad good point, thanks for clarifying the context. I Agree with you regarding the not adding options.

Vlad

laptudirm Thanks, we will wait for visuals proposal from Milos and will let community wage in.

Vlad

milos Thanks appreciate that 🙏

akaready

Tried Kagi a couple years ago. It was fast and I loved the zero telemetry. But Arc's organization... pinned tabs, folders, active tabs, spaces... was superb. And their mobile app is matching in excellence. Glad to see the sidebar being thought about here. It was my biggest turn off to using Kagi, the windows things or whatever it did with the total tab numbers instead of just giving me folders... And after spending two years with Arc, there's no way I would ever go horizontal again.

All to say, if the sidebar is done right I think a lot of Arc folks would land here for a faster and more private experience. Will return to this thread in a few months to see if there's been any progress.

Good luck folks!

evolver

For those of us on this thread that want a more Arc-like sidebar in Orion, I'm wondering if it's possible to support this new Chrome extension that delivers almost exactly that (for Chromium-based browsers: https://www.sidespace.app

MysticMiyagi

I think it's a simple solution which would solve a few things discussed.

Grateful_Guitar

Kuakeye1 I am new to Orion and a current fan of Arc. I just want to say that I too would love to see a structure similar to Arc for "tab groups". As much as I value Orion's dedication to privacy, I have been spoiled by Arc's ease of use.

alexanderhblack

This would be perfect. As another person coming from Arc, This is the feature I miss most. I'd also love to not have profiles be seperate Orion Windows entirely (which feel more like seperate apps tbh) and instead being the swipable spaces in the side bar, thus creating a unified window.

janpeeters

alexanderhblack the swipeable areas for Saves Windows are currently in the Release Candidate and work well.

Grateful_Guitar

alexanderhblack Thanks. I agree with you!

alexanderhblack

janpeeters Yup, using them right now and I adore them! Phrased it poorly, sorry. I meant I'd like the profiles to be in the Save Windows instead of having each profile be a separate instance.

alexanderhblack

voidpointer Grateful_Guitar Thanks for the agreement y'all! Yeah, it'd make my life a lot easier. I'm already full-timing Orion because I like it enough, but this is what would take it from Great to Perfect for me.

voidpointer

Zitro This and the way Arc handles bookmarks (displaying them above open tabs) is the only thing keeping me from switching to Orion. If they're implemented I'll switch 100%.

justsomefeedback

voidpointer Exactly the same here. Saw Orion hit 1.0 and rushed to install it hoping the sidebar would finally be in a better state.

I'm really eager to contribute by subscribing to Orion+ but yeah I can't daily drive the browser until theres some way to have pins "above" tab groups.

Use case: I work with 50+ clients, each with their own Space (would be comparable to Orion tab group) but all Tab Groups need quick access to the same 12 pinned/favorited tabs.

Jai-jdk

For the sidebar, will there be any chance of the profile switching being similar to Arc

Pasithea0

Any updates here?

cvburgess

+1 to say if Orion had the Arc sidebar I would switch and subscribe. Its such a HUGE productivity boon that I can't give up Arc yet. Will watch this issue and the release notes. Thank you for the hard work to keep innovating!

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