I use TST extensively to manage hundreds of tabs, and it is a real joy. FWIW, these are the customizations that made TST much more usable for me:
1) Very importantly, hide the horizontal tab bar. You get some vertical screen space back, and you aren't distracted by two ways of showing the same tabs. You'll have to edit your userChrome.css (see e.g. http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&pri... for details on how to find it), and add something like this:
There are a few variations; this is the one that works well for me on Mac. The second block also hides the sidebar title for TST, which saves space in the tab bar.
2) I customize the tabs themselves to make them more compact, thus letting me see more tabs. This CSS can be placed in the TST addon preferences under the "Advanced" section.
/* Compact tab layout */
:root { --tab-height: 20px !important; }
.tab { height: 20px !important; }
/* Shrink space between pinned tabs and tab bar, only when pins are present */
#tabbar[style*="margin"] { margin-top: 20px !important; }
/* Show title of unread tabs with red font */
.tab.unread .label {
color: red !important;
}
/* Add private browsing indicator per tab */
.tab.private-browsing .label:before {
content: " ";
}
I highly recommend this addon, and it's a major differentiator for me between Firefox and Chrome.
Another useful tweak is to turn on the option that forces all popups into tabs rather than new windows. This is an option in FireFox itself but it complements TST quite nicely, because it means that the popup's tab appears underneath it's parent's tab in the tree. Popping up in a separate window with no tab at all is pretty much the opposite of that!
This is a nice option to turn on anyway. IMO there is no reason why a webpage should ever be able to open another window on my computer. For me, this is the other killer feature in FireFox. This also stops pages being able to resize/move windows (because that only works in popup windows), which stops the worse aspect of "the annoying site" which came up recently on Hacker News.
Thanks for these tips. If you don't mind, can you please write these down in the add-on's Review itself so that it's easy for us to find them every time we install it (and may be so that it inspires the add-on author to implement these features himself?)
Thank you for providing this detail, I used to use tree tabs before the webextensions fiasco but hadn't gone back to it yet as I wasn't aware it was possible to hide the existing tab bar. I'll definitely give it another shot now thanks to your help!
The last time I tried TST, it was fairly hostile to my battery on macOS; is that still a problem?
Sidebar tabs are a massive workflow upgrade, it surprises me that it's not a core browser feature, especially now with the ridiculous proliferation of those loathsome vertical-space hostile sticky elements that have spread through the web like a plague.
If by "last time" you mean the pre-WebExtension version - yes, that version was rather CPU intensive and I used a different extension (no longer maintained post-WebExtension) back then.
I haven't seen any negative performance impact as far as battery or CPU usage are concerned, but as usual YMMV.
I just gave it another try. Unfortunately, things haven't improved. `about:performance` shows a "medium" energy impact for TST. My 2015 Macbook's fans come on and stay on until I disable TST again, after which they reliably spool back down after a short delay. While TST is enabled, Firefox shoots up the list of CPU users in Activity Monitor.
Oh well, it was worth a shot, sidebar tabs are just so good when they're working well, but it's not worth the battery drain.
I'm using a bunch of other extensions and customisations, so I guess there's some dodgy interaction going on somewhere. No time to go spelunking though. I'll just use it on my desktop instead, where I won't notice the load.
No, it's part of the philosophy that this particular feature led to users suddenly being without tab bar and basically having a broken browser. Although I do believe they're still weighing that against the benefits of being able to use TST without needing to go through extra hoops.
You can still view individual cookies and their values: open the dev tools, then the Storage tab.
I should clarify that "users suddenly being without a tab bar" might not necessarily be the result of those users disabling it themselves. It might be that they install an extension like TST that doesn't restore the tab bar after it's removed, or something even less obvious.
It's not so much the users they care about but the fact they have to deal with all the support requests, plus the complaining on social media that Firefox is dumb and bad. At some point it's net-negative for the project. So sometimes they open functionality to extensions instead of having it easily available to users, like the option to disable JavaScript on pages.
I should clarify that "users suddenly being without a tab bar" might not necessarily be the result of those users disabling it themselves. It might be that they install an extension like TST that doesn't restore the tab bar after it's removed, or something even less obvious.
I don't know what sort of "end user" you expect to be poking around in cookie contents. The developer tools storage inspector always provided a much better user interface for doing so, and also exposes localStorage and IndexedDB data. I don't see why anybody interested in this sort of thing would have used the previous interface anyway.
The one thing to watch out for is that Firefox has been changing the structure of their browser chrome recently, and while it has actually gotten easier to style (the three MacOS buttons are now just html elements!) it requires some occasional maintenance to keep up.
I really wouldn't do this. The add-on bugs out for me fairly regularly and doesn't let me interact with the tabs (like closing them). Still, I can't imagine using a browser without vertical tabs ever again.
This happens to me too. TST seems to currently be riddled with all kinds of unusual bugs that only crop up occasionally. Workarounds: Sometimes keyboard shortcuts still work when mouse interaction doesn't. Other times closing then opening the side panel again causes TST to stabilize it's state.
I'm kind of curious what browser and OS version you and the other user are running.
I'm running Firefox Nightly, which is version 66 at this point with tree style tabs 2.7.9 on auto update on linux 4.19 with intel/nvidia gpu drivers. I've never seen any issues just tree style tabs but note I only have 5 extensions at this point.
I was wondering if it was an issue with a particular platform or interaction between multiple extensions particularly if you are using the pre quantum version.
I've noticed bugs such as the new tab button stops working (command-t still works though), child tabs not being promoted to top-level tabs when their parent is closed and a few other strange cases of tree state corruption. Particularly it sometimes happens when dragging tabs around to reparent them, although I haven't been able to nail down any concrete rhyme or reason to it. My other extensions are umatrix, ublock origin and tampermonkey, I don't think there is any strange extension interaction going on.
Despite all of this, TST is still too useful to not use.
I'm kind of curious if the other user also uses mac and its an issue that firefox needs better mac support. I recall in a similar thread on hacker news others recounting having had a bad experience with firefox on mac.
Have you tried submitting a bug report to the author of TST maybe they don't have a mac and could use more feedback.
I'm kind of curious what browser and OS version you and the other user are running.
I'm running Firefox Nightly, which is version 66 at this point with tree style tabs 2.7.9 on auto update on linux 4.19 with intel/nvidia gpu drivers. I've never seen any issues just tree style tabs but note I only have 5 extensions at this point.
I was wondering if it was an issue with a particular platform or interaction between multiple extensions particularly if you are using the pre quantum version.
Thanks so much for this. It feels like I've got some of the browser back. I avoid using tabs, I have them mostly disabled by default. This frees up the screen space taken away many years ago. This bit of chrome gives me the equivilent of the missing menu item: View > Toolbars > Hide Tab Bar
I created a userChrome.css file (including the aforementioned snippets + the namespace line on top) and put it into the folder that Firefox tells me is my profile folder - still see the tabs on top though (Mac OS Mojave - FF - Quantum) - any ideas what could be the issue? I did restart firefox.
I wonder if anyone might have a hint on how I could create a certain behavior for TST.
Generally, I want the TST sidebar to be full width (~250 px) so I can read all the open tabs at once. But when I have several windows open on my screen, the TST bar can take up too much of the window and reduces usability. I'd like to have the TST sidebar to auto-collapse (so it expands on mouse-over) when the firefox window is less than (say) 500 px wide/50% of the screen width.
1) Very importantly, hide the horizontal tab bar. You get some vertical screen space back, and you aren't distracted by two ways of showing the same tabs. You'll have to edit your userChrome.css (see e.g. http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserChrome.css&pri... for details on how to find it), and add something like this:
There are a few variations; this is the one that works well for me on Mac. The second block also hides the sidebar title for TST, which saves space in the tab bar.2) I customize the tabs themselves to make them more compact, thus letting me see more tabs. This CSS can be placed in the TST addon preferences under the "Advanced" section.
I highly recommend this addon, and it's a major differentiator for me between Firefox and Chrome.