Greyscale suspended tab a regression for users with many tabs

creedatticus

yes i need greyscale so bad it was my favorite

8pac200

Hard agree, and I am a user with much fewer pinned tabs (i.e. sets of 3 to 6 that are always pinned across Saved Windows).

Showing inactive tabs with coloured favicons works against a minimalist UI that was once achievable in Orion.
The amount of additional visual stimuli created by showing suspended/inactive tabs in colour makes the Toolbar much more crowded than previously. Ironically the new version's solution solves some accessibility issues but causes different accessibility issues for others.

An option for greyscaling Favicons and showing them in colour on hover would be ideal.

A variation on this as a third option, preferably this would not be the only other option than the moon icon, could be to retain the new moon graphic (if this doesn't conflict with OP's request - thoughts @Whitey ?).

This could surface as a toggle in the Appearance menu: "Use greyscale for suspended tabs.".
Otherwise, a select menu for these three states: Greyscale. Icon. Greyscale and Icon.

Icon (Current State)

Greyscale without Icon

Greyscale and Icon (Colour on Hover)

Whitey

8pac200 A variation on this could be to retain the new moon graphic (if this doesn't conflict with OP's request - thoughts @Whitey ?).

My preference would be to have a preference to change back to the old, however I'd be happy enough if this were a compromise the developers found simplest. My main issue is I lose visual acuity when scrolling through my tabs, the existance of the icon or lack thereof doesn't really have any impact on me.

If the dev team aren't interested in this, I think the alternative might be to build an addon. I'm unsure if Orion will support an extension manipulating the tab favicons and text, however looking at existing Firefox addons it seems it should be possible:

https://onemen.github.io/tabmixplus-docs/help/display-tab/#customize-styles
https://github.com/onemen/TabMixPlus/blob/dc85af73c370aabec6c93cdc16de8817303a1509/addon/modules/DynamicRules.jsm#L132
https://kagi.com/orion/WebExtensions-API-Support.html

I expect you could greyscale the favicon using CSS and grey the text using the methods above. I'm unsure how you'd work out the state of a tab though to validate if it were suspended though.

8pac200

Whitey I hear you. I am hoping that this can be resolved natively (given that it is a matter of accessibility) without needing to involve extensions.
But if it is unfortunately chosen not to be addressed natively then it's good to know that an extension might be an alternative road, if it's possible to target/validate tabs in a suspended state.

Whitey

Hi @Vlad , understand this isn't a priority for the team to implement as a preference, but just following up if there's anything exposed that we as the community can access to offer this as an extension for those who want this functionality?

I've been forced to update recently due to my older version becoming slowly incompatible, and the browser is unusable for my purposes with only 220 tabs open (I'll often run more than this). I'm very eager to assist in any way I can to help others who this impacts. Thanks.

eirk

IMO best idea is for orion devs to implement a preference for this. THe original version wasn't too good for accessibility, as it's often pretty difficult to discern between the suspended toolbar icons.

RobOK

The moon icon is a significant distraction for me. I hope a preference is added to revert to past behavior.

emvaized

I like the new "moon" indicator for suspended tabs more than the previous "fade out" indication. But please also consider adding option for no indication for suspended tabs at all, as some users simply don't care much about suspension state of their tabs, and would rather prefer having better favicons visibility.

Vlad

We would prefer these discussions to take place in the original discussion, not after the fact. We do not have resources to do same work again or even worse, create an option for every little feature, doubling the amount of code to write and maintain across 7+ macOS versions. This is all to say that this is not likely to be changed now, given there are 2000 other open issues.

RobOK

I came back to check on the status of this, as I am running a slightly older version to not have 100 moons on my screen all the time. Yes, I went to the effort of hunting down an old version to not have this happen, it is that important to me.
You have a wonderful, super-passionate base of users here, many are engaged frequently in this forum. But many are not, I might check in monthly or less unless I have a specific thing to report.
To have the position that your user base should be scanning these forums and assessing which items affect them and join conversations is not realistic or scalable. I would not have taken from a post title about greying out tabs that I should be on the lookout for a major UI change that creates visual clutter all the time.
I understand your position and that's your choice. I want to let you know that this change would likely have me look for alternatives.
You have a great product -- thank you!

Vlad

RobOK I am aware that is an unrealistic requirement, and was just expressing frustration with listening to community for a very niche requirement, only to not get praise, but alienate other community members and the solution seems to be that our small team of three is expected to to do twice amount of work to keep everyone happy, adding an option for something as niche as this. This is obviously not scalable.

RobOK

Vlad I can appreciate where you are coming from and the frustration. Please consider this a strong vote to have the new moon icons be a preference setting.
Thanks!

Vlad

Whitey It has been a while since this, can you clarify what makes the browser unusable?

We currently show a moon icon for suspended tabs which should make it easy to identify them?

@Yannick perhaps you have a view on this?

Yannick

According to studies, the average user has between 10-20 tabs open for normal use, but this number can go up to 27 tabs for some heavy users.

So I consider that +200 open tabs is really hardcore

And even if Orion is also made for hardcore users, I prefer to keep the moon which is a better distinction between active / passive / hibernated tab.

At least for now 🙂 @Whitey @Vlad