Iceraven-browser: Always Open New Tabs to the Right and Below Existing Tabs

[CharmCityCrab]

What is the user problem or growth opportunity you want to see solved?

As things stand, Iceraven will often, when requested to open a blank new tab in Fennec-style tab mode (My preferred option), open it in what I would view as a sequential manner. If there is a spot open to the right of the last tab open, it opens there, and, if there are, for example 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10 tabs open, meaning that all the entire row of two square tabs is full, it will open below the last row of existing tabs, taking up the left square of a new row. That makes sense to me and seems like how things should be.

Unfortunately, however, this behavior is not replicated when one, for example, opens up a news or sports web site with articles and, when long pressing links, opens a bunch of article pages from a single page of links tabbing them all open in the background to be viewed sequentially. In that scenario, for whatever reason, the tabs seem to open in reverse order, so that the last thing one tabs open from the page, when one is done setting it up and ready to read the articles, is at the top left, with the first opened link of the group at the bottom-right.

I would like to see Iceraven, either by default or as an option, simply open any new tab to the right when a spot to the right is open, and to the left hand side of the line below the lowest full line when it is not.

How do you know that this problem exists today? Why is this important?

Having, or having an option for, a consistent tab ordering experience that doesn't vary based on how the new tab is opened, makes it easier for users to navigate and know what to expect, increasing ease of use and workflow efficiency.

Since left to right and top to bottom is how most western languages are read and putting any new tab at the end of all the other tabs is the traditional tabbed browsing behavior from its earliest incarnations on desktop (ie this is how early desktop version of Firefox used to do it), western users and long-time users of tabbed web browsers will likely mostly, perhaps even unconsciously in many cases, feel most at ease with a tab flow of that nature, which already exists part of the time, always working that way.

Of course, other people may have native languages that are meant to be read the opposite way or simply prefer that their tabs work the opposite way, and I would not be opposed to having that option present as well for those who desire it. In fact, I would say having both options would be ideal.

However, having tabs that open in one direction sometimes and in another direction when opening other times, based on how they are opened, seems unnecessarily confusing.

Who will benefit from it?

Users who prefer that setup or simply want a consistent order for where they can expect to see any new tab they open, no matter how they open it (i.e. new tabs that open in the same places and in the same order whether launched manually from the screen with the tabs, or tabbed open from a single page one by one in a group would both open in the same place- the browser would be agnostic as to how the user opened the tab.).

EDIT: Revised paragraphs 2 and 3 for clarity.

[CharmCityCrab]

I checked to see if there is a browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent in about:config to set to false, and there is not. I am not lobbying specifically to add that to about:config, I'm just saying I looked for it (That's what I do on my desktop browser, I think.). :) The most preferred resolutions would be going to the desired behavior by default or having a GUI option that allows it. An about:config would be better than nothing, though, if the other two possibilities aren't something that developers want to do.

[abhijitvalluri]

I am not 100% sure what the problem you describe is. Are you saying that when you open links from an existing tab, they open next to the current tab rather than getting appended at the end of the list? What do you mean by "reverse order" here?

If I understood your issue correctly, the default behaviour in fenix is to open tabs from an existing tab next to the existing tab. However, I guess the behaviour in this regard is slightly different from the desktop version of Firefox because there it opens the tabs to the right of the browser with the oldest link on the left and the newer links you open added to the right. So that the order of links you open from a tab on the desktop is oldest on the left (closest to current tab) and newest to the right (away from current tab). This is the behaviour for left-to-right layout. Not sure if the behaviour changes for right-to-left languages.

In our forked version with the Fennec layout, Fenix behaviour seems to manifest as oldest link at the bottom (furthest from current tab) and newest link at the top (closest to current tab), which is opposite of the desktop behaviour. Are you suggesting reverse this behaviour to make the order same as on desktop? Or are you saying just append the new tabs to the end of the list regardless and do not put them next to the current tab at all?

[CharmCityCrab]

I am saying append each new tab to the end of the complete list regardless of context (Though we would start at the top and work our way down in terms of how the list is constructed, I am not suggesting a "build from the bottom" approach) and do not put them next to the current tab at all, unless, of course the current tab is the end of the list, in which case being next to the current tab and being at the end of the list would result in the same placement for the first tab opened.

I am also suggesting a "newest at the bottom of the existing list" behavior, ideally for each tab opened regardless of it's relation (or therefore) with the tab from which new tabs are being launched, but if that is not possible, at least in regard to the tab from which new tabs are being launched.

For the example, let's say I had two tabs open and proceeded to open 10 new tabs from links within the first of the two open tabs that is in the top left corner. Ideally, the first link I opened would appear on the second line as tab 3 just below both the current tab and the second tab I had open, with the second link opened from tab 1 becoming tab 4 to the right of tab 3. New tab 10 (Overall tab 12) would be at the bottom of the list.

The only way a link opened would be next to the current tab would this be if it was the only tab opened or if it was itself at the bottom of the list.

[CharmCityCrab]

To try to make this a little simpler, my desired behavior is demonstrated here (Please enable sound) in this 2009 video (An official Mozilla video about desktop Firefox from that era) from the 31 to 56 second mark:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p2G4ZgdwVVw

Please note the plural when she says a link is opened to the right of the current tabs.

Of course, the Fennec-style mobile tabs look different, but the order in which they open and where they are placed relative to other tabs would ideally be the same as early Firefox.

i.e. The tab being open would always go at the end of all the other tabs in general.

[CharmCityCrab]

Several of my posts above were revised for clarity within the last few minutes. I made some poor word choices that may have confused the issue a tad. Still, it's kind of a hard to explain thing in general.

I guess the easiest way to put it for people who know Firefox history, is that I am looking for the Firefox 3.x way of organizing tabs, but applied to the Fennec-style framework in Iceraven as either the default or a user option.

[CharmCityCrab]

One last try here to clarify (Unless someone is still confused and asks for more or has a new question). Here is an article about Firefox 3.6:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/why-to-embrace-firefox-3-6s-new-tab-ethos/

See the new behavior introduced there that the author of the article is applauding? I hate it.

I would like an option to essentially do what he describes as the old behavior they replaced with that new behavior, adapted for use on a phone with our square picture tabs on our tab screen, of course. :)

This is not as much a request from when dinosaurs roamed the earth as one might think. Desktop Firefox still retains the old behavior if an option is toggled in about:config. So, I am literally typing this right now on Firefox, and it behaves like 3.5 and before, because I at some point flipped the about:config entry (An equivalent entry does not exist on Fenix).

If I recall correctly, desktop Vivaldi has this option in it's GUI, and it of course came into being long after Firefox moved away from the tab behavior in question as it's default or a visible GUI option.

As much as Mozilla might like to consider some things innately better and the wave of the future, consigning other things to being considered out of date, the truth is that many of their users and former users do not agree with them, and that is part of why their marketshare is shrinking. A lot of these things are just subjective preferences about which way people want to do things, rather than being innately better or worse than other behaviors and implementations.

[crisalis2]

So you want tabs to follow an absolute chronological order, regardless whether they come from links in another tab or are completely new tabs opened manually, right?

Meanwhile I would like what I describe in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/12243 , which is essentially the current behavior BUT respecting the relative chronological order of tabs that are opened as a result of using the "Open link in new tab" option with several links. This behavior I want is what I remember desktop Firefox having and what I think is described in the article you linked, but it's slightly different from the current behavior of Fenix/Iceraven. Current behavior of Fenix/Iceraven doesn't really make sense, contradicts itself; as you say "for whatever reason, the tabs seem to open in reverse order".

We want different things but I would prefer your solution rather than the current behavior. My solution or your solution make sense, but the current behavior doesn't, in my opinion.

[abhijitvalluri]

By the way, this issue does not exist if you use the "Fenix" style tab tray layout. That is, do not use compact tabs. Then, when opening a new tabs from existing tabs by long pressing a link and opening in new tab, the order won't be reversed. The reason the order is reversed in compact tabs layout is because... well I do not do the additional step of reversing the order. It is a bit complicated and annoying. But you may find the fenix style non-compact layout where each tab takes up an entire row, and the tabs are not arranged in a grid format is more consistent when opening tabs from existing tabs.

[crisalis2]

By the way, this issue does not exist if you use the "Fenix" style tab tray layout.

But it does. Please read what I describe in the issue I linked in my previous message.