PDA

View Full Version : TabCandy, firefox's upcoming tab revolution



madjr
July 31st, 2010, 07:40 AM
At Last!

the guys at mozilla do it again, they finally "get" how people should browse tabs.

this is the killer feature that will come in ff4

check it out, here's the cool presentation.


http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/23/firefox-tab-candy/


you can even try this out now, suggest things or contribute early in for a linux build

ve4cib
July 31st, 2010, 08:32 AM
It's an interesting idea. I'm not entirely sure how much use I'll personally get out of it, but I can see potential*. At the very least being able to get a thumbnail view of every tab I have open at any given moment would be nice.


----------------------
*As much as it pains me to admit it, I had much the same thought about tabs when they first started being "the big thing" -- "Why would I bother opening multiple websites in the same window when having a different window for every site works just fine?" Well, I became a tab-convert pretty quickly, so I'm not going to try to remain pretty neutral towards Tab Candy until I get to try it out.

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 09:48 AM
This is the best thing since French Fries :)

I don't do too many tabs at once, but I might start doing now. This is awesome. I'm already using Firefox 4 beta 2, but I'm downloading this version right now.

If you want to try it too, I would recommend creating a new profile for it, since it could break things. But the easiest way is to use my extension FoxTester (http://foxtester-extension.blogspot.com/), which allows to easily install any Firefox version and run it simultaneously with the default version, without affecting your profile or requiring to close the default first.

Thanks for sharing.

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 09:57 AM
Wow. It's awesome. If you haven't tried yet, grab a copy right now.

It's so easy to create new workspaces, just click and drag over an empty space on the TabCandy canvas, then drag tabs to it.

This will certainly revolutionize tab browsing.

Nick_Jinn
July 31st, 2010, 10:05 AM
I like both Opera and Firefox.....I think something like this already exists for Opera though. I dont care much for Chrome in its current state.

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 10:07 AM
I like both Opera and Firefox.....I think something like this already exists for Opera though. I dont care much for Chrome in its current state.

I think in Opera you can view the tabs like mini windows, but I'm not sure you can organize and display only some sets of tabs.

Nick_Jinn
July 31st, 2010, 10:09 AM
I guess thats cool if you are going to be on the same pages for a long time. If the pages keep changing, that could be extra time consuming....it looks cool though. I am a big fan of eye candy.

Nick_Jinn
July 31st, 2010, 10:15 AM
There are tons of cool addons for all of the leading browsers.

http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/voice/



Poor Epiphany. Its really been left in the dust.

I think linux needs to produce a really good web browser....like 'The Ubuntu Web Browswer' or 'Mint Browser', or maybe 'Enlightenment web browser'....the last one sounds cool, and maybe it could have animated browser effects and still be light weight......maybe it could emulate Linux software from inside windows, and then from the home page it could prompt you to try Linux with Wubi, and it installs and executes it all for you after getting you hooked on those linux apps.

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 10:27 AM
More info at http://www.azarask.in/projects/tabcandy/

To make suggestions for improvement:

http://feedback.mozillalabs.com/forums/56804-tabcandy

Åtta
July 31st, 2010, 10:40 AM
I like the idea, even if I don't know how much use it'll be to me personally (I rarely have more than 8 or so tabs open at any time). The whole idea seems very similar to workspaces - which I don't really use either. :P

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 11:11 AM
A demo from Mozilla Summit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXEB025mDL8&feature=related).

The best part is what happens at 1:02 :)

Lucradia
July 31st, 2010, 02:23 PM
Pretty nice new feature. Haven't seen this yet from the other browsers.

ElSlunko
July 31st, 2010, 05:55 PM
This would've been CRAZY useful back when I had an office job. Did research and had to share it from time to time -- this would've been an invaluable tool to help speed things up and help out when I needed to bring work home.

murderslastcrow
July 31st, 2010, 06:26 PM
Yep... Firefox will never come to mobiles.

And I'm totally fine with that. The desktop is where it shines.

ve4cib
July 31st, 2010, 06:40 PM
Yep... Firefox will never come to mobiles.

And I'm totally fine with that. The desktop is where it shines.

Uh, it's already on mobiles. I've been using it on my N900 for months:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/mobile/

Firefox Mobile is a completely different beast than the desktop version. Tab Candy will likely never come to FFM, but how many people are in the habit of having more than half a dozen tabs open on their mobile at any given moment?

Spr0k3t
July 31st, 2010, 06:49 PM
Checked it out. Wow! I've so needed this like ages ago. All I need now is something like "Promote page to minimal window" feature so I can have multiple windows open at once while doing research.

ElSlunko
July 31st, 2010, 07:02 PM
Yep... Firefox will never come to mobiles.

And I'm totally fine with that. The desktop is where it shines.


In the video they show how you can sync it to mobile devices o_O.

ElSlunko
July 31st, 2010, 07:19 PM
Been using it all morning. It actually runs better than I expected it to. Just have an annoying bug with closing a tab and having to move to another tab before it dissapears. Oh and this build isn't showing all my bookmarks for some reason.

Edit :

Oh man that grouping button is great! Can't wait 'till they get more metadata relationships built so it can be "smarter".

Legendary_Bibo
July 31st, 2010, 10:41 PM
Definitely cool and useful. I don't have very many tabs opened, probably 3 at the most, and even then it feels cluttered, and I close them constantly to prevent everything from becoming more cluttered. With this I wont have an issue with that anymore.

Firefox 4 is coming along nicely. Hopefully they don't do anything too drastic with it. I just keep hearing from people how they dislike it.

lovinglinux
July 31st, 2010, 11:19 PM
Definitely cool and useful. I don't have very many tabs opened, probably 3 at the most, and even then it feels cluttered, and I close them constantly to prevent everything from becoming more cluttered. With this I wont have an issue with that anymore.

Exactly my case.

I also recommend BarTab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/67651/versions/). It prevents tabs for loading until they are needed. This is awesome if you start you browser with many tabs open, because it improves performance. I haven't tested it in conjunction with TabCandy yet.


Firefox 4 is coming along nicely. Hopefully they don't do anything too drastic with it.

Me too. For me, they could take the Beta 2, add TabCandy, fix the App Tab and release it :)


I just keep hearing from people how they dislike it.

Some of my extensions are crashing the browser on version b3pre on a specific situation where extension alerts are fired after performing some functions. Additionally, I'm experiencing rendering glitches when scrolling. Other than that, Beta 2 is awesome. I'm really liking it and it is already my main browser.

JustinR
August 1st, 2010, 01:48 AM
Ugh. that reminds me of Gnome-Shell.

Helkaluin
August 1st, 2010, 03:22 AM
Definitely useful. Still waiting for JaegerMonkey though, somehow all media's attention now is on Javascript performance when comparing browsers...

SunnyRabbiera
August 1st, 2010, 05:12 AM
I never have a million tabs open personally, 8 at the most for me

chessnerd
August 1st, 2010, 06:16 AM
Very impressive. It does seem like eye candy, and it looks like it really could bloat Firefox down even more than it already is, but it also has a lot of useful features.

This might even make me consider considering going back to Firefox, which is saying a lot because I thought I'd never even dream of going back.

Generally, I'm only going to have up to 10 tabs open, but I do sometimes go a bit crazy. What I'd use mainly is the "save for later" type of feature where I could store tabs that I was looking at. Now, Opera does have a Session feature that I never use, so maybe I wouldn't use it, but I might...

lovinglinux
August 14th, 2010, 12:31 AM
TabCandy is coming! Wooohoo!


Mozilla bolting Tab Candy on to Firefox 4 today (http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/08/12/tab-candy-firefox-4/)

I wonder if I will end up using this...

I am happy with Tree Style Tabs... but this looks cool and it is built-in... hmmm.

earthpigg
August 14th, 2010, 12:52 AM
i love it. i really hope we get sandboxed tabs in the same release, though.

and: i leave multiple tabs open when i close firefox as a matter of course. thus, starting firefox takes a while because FF insists on reloading all of these web pages as soon as it starts. give me a choice in the matter.

once those three things (tabcandy, sandboxed tabs, load from cache option) are in place, we can begin to treat web pages the same as we do software. starting your web browser, for those of us that do a lot of our stuff on the web, wont be much different than turning the computer on.

lovinglinux
August 14th, 2010, 01:06 AM
i love it. i really hope we get sandboxed tabs in the same release, though.

and: i leave multiple tabs open when i close firefox as a matter of course. thus, starting firefox takes a while because FF insists on reloading all of these web pages as soon as it starts. give me a choice in the matter.

once those three things (tabcandy, sandboxed tabs, load from cache option) are in place, we can begin to treat web pages the same as we do software. starting your web browser, for those of us that do a lot of our stuff on the web, wont be much different than turning the computer on.

Use BarTab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/67651/) to prevent the pages from loading until you need them ;)

Perhaps you like to join my thread about Firefox 4 at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1544124

I have a few other tips there.

BTW, Firefox Sync is already built-in too, so you can sync Bookmarks, passwords, settings, history and tabs. I haven't tested it with TabCandy tho.

RiceMonster
August 14th, 2010, 01:51 AM
This is a REALLY cool idea. It might just make me start using Firefox again, in fact. We'll see when it comes out. I'm glad to hear they're working on performance, though, because if they don't do this carefully this could turn firefox into fireelephant.

juancarlospaco
August 14th, 2010, 03:30 AM
When it gets 100/100 on Acid3 test, please tell me...

JustinR
August 14th, 2010, 04:55 AM
when it gets 100/100 on acid3 test, please tell me...

+1 :p

StephenF
August 14th, 2010, 05:11 AM
When it gets 100/100 on Acid3 test, please tell me...
Chromium font rendering on Linux is like a bad trip down memory lane.

lovinglinux
August 15th, 2010, 08:04 PM
I just noticed another issue with TabCandy. I'm sure most problems will be fixed soon, but I would like to confirm if is not my system.

Whenever I close the last tab on the right, TabCandy switches to another workspace, even if there are more tabs opened.

EDIT: Never mind. Bug already reported - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=582872

drawkcab
August 16th, 2010, 03:26 AM
very cool!