J
jannisborgers

    • Nov 4, 2024
    • Joined Oct 25, 2024
    • 0 discussions
    • 3 posts
    • 0 best answers
    • 7 points
    • In Larger icon/show title for pinned tabs in sidebar + Favorites in sidebar

      Thank you, everyone! Adding more functionality to the prototype so that the whole concept can be further enhanced would be nice. I think the basic building blocks are in place already, though. I see a couple of contributors chiming in on this and similar topics and would like to wait for general feedback from the Orion team.

      My thoughts on the feedback:

      • Collapsible sidebar sections: I like this!
      • Global vs. profile favorites
        • My solution would be that the global favorites are mixed with the profile-wide favorites, to avoid yet another section in the sidebar. Two ways to add favorite: "Add to profile favorites" and "Add to global favorites")
      • Different styling for active/unopened/suspended tabs and ability to manually manage suspension/active status
        • I don’t understand the need for this to be honest, I think the application should manage the resources for me and not have me manually manage suspending to free up memory. I‘m not even sure what suspending a tab means.
      • Adding the reading list
        • I never used reading lists personally. It feels like a use case somewhere between bookmark and normal tab, but I’m not sure why it couldn’t just be a bookmark, given that it is managed almost the same?
      • Adding a search input to filter bookmarks
        • Super useful in my opinion! I think adding at at the top and letting it filter all sections at once would add the least clutter and still accomplish the task.
      • Adding a setting to hide sections
        • Coming from a developer, feature toggles complicate UX and development because you have to consider different combinations of available features for every decision. I propose instead that these sections are hidden if empty, and only show up if at least one favorite/bookmark/reading list item has been added.
        • To make sure that drag and drop is available if no favorites/bookmarks/reading list items exist in the profile, maybe the sections could appear on drag start of a tab, with a empty drop target area ("Drag here to add to bookmarks", "Drag here to add to reading list", "Drag here to add as favorite", etc.). I’d have to search macOS for a "native" example of this, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen something like this done by Apple somewhere.
      • Reset-functionality for favorites
        • Given the limited space, I feel like a context-menu option is the only way for this.
        • Maybe favorites can automatically reset on session end, so that you start at the same point every time you open Orion?
      • Height limits/adjustments for sections
        • I feel that this adds too much UI complexity. Multiple scrolling areas can be hard to use in combination with drag and drop, especially if nested folders are used. It also breaks the macOS feel for me.

      Safari’s implementation

      I looked at Safari after Arc’s announcement, looking for other alternatives. On iOS I use Safari exclusively because it’s working great for me. I tried it on macOS and wow is that same browser buggy.

      Tab groups and default tabs

      Tab groups in Safari are kind of like bookmarks/pinned tabs in the concept above, but even if they DO work and aren’t buggy, the way that the default tabs vs. tab groups work is confusing.

      Multiple states of default tabs

      Tabs are added in the "default" tab group (named after the profile and not removable), akin to the "normal tabs" in the concept above. But if you open a tab there in one window, it does not sync with the other window that uses the same profile. So you can have multiple windows open with the same profile and have different states. Only tabs in the tab groups are synced between windows.

      Pinned tabs

      Tab groups can contain "pinned tabs", and only these pinned tabs are locked from closing, while normal tabs in tab groups CAN be closed with CMD+W.

      Horizontal tab bar

      You can’t hide the default horizontal tab bar if you have pinned tabs inside of a tab group. Unchecking View -> Always show tab bar only works in tab groups that have no pinned tabs. Otherwise, the horizontal tab bar still exists, even though the View setting is disabled.

      Start page

      This tab is always there in every tab group, and cannot be removed. It acts as a starting point for a new tab, but I don’t understand why it’s there if other tabs are already in the group.

      – – –

      As I said, I would really like to know if the Orion team would consider any of these ideas. There are a lot of bugs in Orion that (should) have higher priority. Even with my criticism for Safari above, the solution Apple provides is closer to what I’m used from Arc than what Orion delivers. And because Orion has a different focus, as per Kagi’s marketing, I’m not sure breaking with traditional tab management like Arc will ever be considered.

      • In Larger icon/show title for pinned tabs in sidebar + Favorites in sidebar

        Niko

        Thanks! I gave it a go with the following prototype and a written concept:

        Proposed changes:

        1. Vertical tab bar is divided into three sections:
          • Favorites
          • Bookmarks
          • Normal tabs
        2. Bookmarks and normal tabs can be grouped in folders
        3. Bookmarks are permanent and persist across sessions and application restarts
        4. Clicking a bookmarks turns the bookmark into a tab, in place (not opening new tab).
        5. 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:

        1. Dragging a tab to the bookmark list turns that tab into a bookmark
        2. Dragging a bookmarked tab to the normal tabs removes the bookmark
        3. 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.
        4. All of the above is saved per profile, so you can have different favorites, bookmarks and tabs per profile.
        5. 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.

          • In Larger icon/show title for pinned tabs in sidebar + Favorites in sidebar

            I hope OP does not mind, but I’m looking for the exact same thing and only Arc does it this way. See the following video:

            1. Normal/temporary/default tabs are on the bottom
            2. Above them are pinned tabs, which persist and cannot be closed, but otherwise act just like normal tabs. You can navigate inside of them, but can always return to their pinned URL, which "resets" them.
            3. Favorite tabs are at the top, as minimized icons (similar to pinned tabs in Orion)

            Both normal tabs and pinned tabs can be grouped in folders – real folders whose function is to collapse/expand multiple tabs and which do not open a webpage. This is in contract to the first tab in a group/folder/stack acting as the "folder", which is currently the case in Orion and other browsers.

            The important part is that pinned tabs are permanent and cannot be easily closed/removed, like bookmarks (you can right-click and remove them, but not close them with a keyboard shortcut). But in contrast to bookmarks, they ARE the tabs and do not open new tabs, which would just pollute the tab bar with a lot of new tabs when using the bookmarks constantly. If you navigate away inside of a pinned tab and the URL is on the same domain, a "Back to pinned URL" button appears which "resets" the pinned tab to the URL it was pinned to.

            Orion has pinned tabs, but they appear as small icons without text, which is not viable if I want to make multiple tabs with the same favicon permanent. Also, without being able to group in folders, pinning is unfortunately not an alternative to old-school bookmarks. The folders in Arc can be nested infinitely, which makes them fully-fledged "bookmarks".

            There was a topic on the forums where you presented a UX study about grouping tabs, which I also found really good, but it seemed to be put on hold. This in combination with OPs feature request would make Orion an instant replacement for Arc for me.

            • Vlad replied to this.