Firefox 4.0: Browser Tabs on Top or Bottom?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.

hellwig

Distinguished
May 29, 2008
1,743
0
19,860
[citation][nom]blasterth[/nom]I want to put it in the left or in the right side!With the displays that become wider and wider, I'll love to have the tabs steal some horizontal space instead of the rare vertical space.[/citation]
This just In. Opera 10.5x DOES let you move your tabs to the left or right. And when you do, you get the thumbnail preview images too. Of course, I guess Opera isn't cool enough for most people these days. I'll wait a few months until the next FireFox comes out, then people talk about how cool it is that FireFox lets you move your tabs to the left or right.
 

sandmanwn

Distinguished
Dec 1, 2006
915
0
18,990
How about moving it to the bottom-bottom with the status bar???

That would become more instinctual for a windows user since the windows toolbar has all your programs laid out in tabs down there anyway.
 

johnny_5

Distinguished
May 20, 2009
72
0
18,630
[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]This just In. Opera 10.5x DOES let you move your tabs to the left or right. And when you do, you get the thumbnail preview images too. Of course, I guess Opera isn't cool enough for most people these days. I'll wait a few months until the next FireFox comes out, then people talk about how cool it is that FireFox lets you move your tabs to the left or right.[/citation]
Tree Style Tab add-on for Firefox lets you put your tabs to the side and lets your tabs branch into parent and daughter tabs that can easily be manipulated. You can have tonnes of tabs open and it will minimize clutter and maximize organization. Opera may have made a lot of innovations that other browsers have copied, but I don't care about who did what first, Firefox does things better in my opinion so that's what I use.
 

Pyroflea

Distinguished
Mar 18, 2007
2,156
0
19,960
I like that they're giving us the option for both locations, but I feel they should keep it where it is right now. However, they seem pretty convinced that on-top is the way to go, so whatever they end up choosing is fine with me.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Actually, Opera lets you put your tab bar on the very bottom of the screen as well. I've kept it there for years. In fact, you can even put the address bar 'in' the tab bar if you want. It's possible to put all tabs, buttons and fields in a single bar, on any side of the screen. You just right click a bar, select customize, appearance, and then drag and drop practically any interface element anywhere you want. Opera has had this functionality for years, and still has the most configurable interface of all the browsers by far. :)
 

zybch

Distinguished
Mar 17, 2010
481
0
18,790
I want them at the side, ala Tree Style Tabs. I'd have switched to chrome by now if there was a plugin that let me do that.
Having a hierarchical tab structure is far more efficient and visually logical than the way most browsers seem to be sticking them above the address bar in no-man's land.
 

bison88

Distinguished
May 24, 2009
618
0
18,980
They should add support for people to adjust tabs on top or bottom in 3.7 so people can test it out and have it a deep option so nobody will notice and they could get feedback at the same time. Win-Win for everybody.
 

natmaster

Distinguished
Jul 1, 2006
32
0
18,530
A few points:
1) They already made up their mind (this is for defaults, you can always easily override)
2) There is no Firefox 3.7. They decided to go straight to 4.0. You'll see they recently updated the version number of nightlies to be Firefox 4.0b2pre (beta 1 was forked earlier this week).
 

ravewulf

Distinguished
Oct 20, 2008
973
33
19,010
I like it under the address bar, but that's just my pref. Everyone should be free to choose for themselves (although I don't think diagonally would work so well)
 

Sabiancym

Distinguished
Jun 26, 2008
237
0
18,680
I want them to cascade down in a diagonal staircase from the top left of my screen to the bottom right totally obscuring my screen.
 

kelemvor4

Distinguished
Oct 3, 2006
469
0
18,780
I like the tabs on top idea EXCEPT I want the search bar outside of the tabs, and therefore consistent across the whole browser and not tab specific. Configurable to work the other way around of course.

Marcus should have included the link to get FF 4 beta imo. Here it is: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/4.0b1-candidates/build1/

3451 peacekeeper score. Almost identical to ff 3.6. I had hoped they had done something with performance.

Also, still fails to properly use ICC v4 color profiles.


I'd still love to switch to chrome if adblock+ would work. My first impression of the beta is... meh, no big deal.
 

Hunter844

Distinguished
Apr 9, 2009
61
0
18,630
I have to admit on top or on bottom...it really doesn't matter to me as long as I'm allowed to participate.


Now this whole browser thing...definitely on top.
 

belardo

Splendid
Nov 23, 2008
3,540
2
22,795
Opera's tab function flows better...

TABs
Address bar
Browser window.

IE8 is nothing but a mess.
Title bar
Address bar
Favorites bar
Tabs | Tools Bar (Tool bar eats up tab space)
Browser Window

And as with more IE8 users, there are add-on tool bars between the Address bar and tabs... Yahoo, google, ASK, junkware, etc.
 

Ed Oscuro

Distinguished
Jul 31, 2008
6
0
18,510
Heh, I've already reverted one of their changes (tabs opened next to the current - though actually it would be useful for some things I do, i.e. opening an image or document on a page), and if the default becomes putting it on the bottom I'll be changing it again. Less harm in accidentally clicking the Navigation bar than accidentally bringing another application up (say a full-screen one, though who routinely alt-tabs away fullscreen apps to go web browse?).
 

Gin Fushicho

Distinguished
Mar 11, 2009
1,777
0
19,790
End user choice please. Throw and option in there, it's not that hard to make 2 UI's that are only slightly different.

I'd prefer it if they stayed on bottom like they are already though.
 

DaveUK

Distinguished
Apr 23, 2006
383
0
18,790
I've never cared. In fact this thread is the first thing that's made me realise there was any difference between Chrome and Firefox in this regard.... at the end of the day they're both at the top I'm not bothered if one is slightly higher or not. What I do care about (and I'm sure this goes for the majority of users here) are things that actually matter such as browsing performance, stability, security, and compatibility with the pages and content I'm viewing.
 

kronos_cornelius

Distinguished
Nov 4, 2009
365
1
18,780
I am sold on the top design, it makes better sense. Putting the tabs on the title bar like chrome also helps save space and begins to turn the browser into the new OS for the Cloud.

I am really exited about the acceleration though. I hope they use OpenGL and OpenCL so the that the code works on Linux. If they use DirectX or DirectCompute, I'll switch over to Chrome instead of waiting for the port.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.