Tilix: [Proposal] Drop Sidebar functionality in favor of tabs

[gnunn1]

I am thinking about dropping the sidebar in Tilix and just go all in on tabs. While the sidebar is neat, it has a number of complexities with it's implementation to make it work. Those complexities lead to bugs which are often hard to track down, for example a small memory leak that I've mitigated but haven't been able to eliminate.

Additionally, going all in on tabs would make the code much cleaner and make it easier to implement additional functions, for example the UI design work that is being done in #1541.

I'm therefore requesting feedback from the community before I remove this functionality.

[sjpp]

Hi,

I personally use the sidebar for two reasons:

• it does not occupied any screen space; on the opposite I think that tab are a waste of space and reduce the useful vertical size on 16:9 / 16:10 screens
• the thumbnails of the sessions are handy to visually find the session I am looking for

On the other hand, if dropping the sidebar would drastically improve some part of the code and help implementing some of the nice functionalities shown in the UI proposal, it is worth getting rid of it.

Regards,

[phw]

• it does not occupied any screen space; on the opposite I think that tab are a waste of space and reduce the useful vertical size on 16:9 / 16:10 screens

This is exactly why I use the sidebar as well. I don't like the tabs very much. On the other hand I personally don't use the sidebar itself very often, so for me having the option to hide the tabs would probably work as well (which means using only the keyboard shortcuts). But I still would like to see the number of the current session and the session counter which the current sidebar button provides.

If the sidebar causes too much code trouble maybe providing a simpler session switcher popover would be an alternative? You could still make tabs the default if this better suits the majority of users.

[trongthanh]

Me, on the contrary, would prefer tabs to sidebar. Sidebar is hidden which require multiple click steps to navigate, and if it's always shown (is it possible?), it'll take large window estate.

However, I agree with guys above regarding tabs bar is currently too large. If we can reduce it's size then it'll be perfect.

BTW, I'm a macOS convert and was a fan of iterm2. I'd really love this app because it resemble iterm2 a lot and actually, I use tabs more often than split sessions since I can focus on one task at a time.

[syedelec]

Personally a sidebar user for the same reasons as above.

[cprog]

Sidebar is unique . I like it so much for the same reasons as above.

[ConorPFarrell]

I'm in the same camp as @trongthanh - as an ex-iTerm2 user, personally, I don't like the sidebar model purely because it doesn't let me easily see what sessions I have open. I don't want to have to click something to find that out.

[mjourdan]

As I understand it, the issue with the sessions sidebar has more to do with the thumbnails than with the sidebar itself, right? Stupid question: in the future, could something like Pipewire provide real-time sessions preview, instead of pixbuf?

I think an overview is absolutely required for who manages dozens of terminals across several sessions. Tabs (alone) do net give enough information. The sidebar provides one more clue, the session layout, but still it is sometimes hard to distinguish between sessions. Hence the use of colors in some mockups shown in #1541, which do use the sidebar.

@trongthanh @ConorPFarrell If you do use a pointing device, a single click more over tabs doesn't seem a bad tradeoff. But if a single click is absolutely too much, you can keep your hands on your keyboard and open/close the sidebar using F12.

Yet, it is certainly true that either sidebar or tabs should be dropped. Maybe even both could be replaced with something else.

[hendricha]

I'm a sidebar user, but I mainly use it for the thumbnails. If tabs could have a thumbnails on hover or on a keyboard shortcut, I would be okay with losing the sidebar. (However I'm guessing the the memory leak/other complexity problems with the sidebar is because of said thumbnails, right? So removing sidebar but keeping thumbnails would still lead to similar problems, right?)

[aaronSkar]

I'm ok ditching the side bar for tabs. The side bar is cool but tabs are just as easy to navigate so long as they are able to have custom names.

[edubxb]

I really love the tab-less interface (to save some pixels), but I use the keyboard to change between sessions, so a tab interface with the option to hide it will be enough for me.

Although the session sidebar preview is really a cool feature.

[Daemoen]

I guess im in a very different group than most people here -- I would actually like an option for normal 'vertical' tabs.. While realizing that this would seem like a 'waste' of screen space to some, when you only work in maximized sessions anyway, it isn't a big impact. additionally, i dont particularly need the tiling in the emulator due to using tmux.... vertical tabs are much more readable (again -- 'normal' vertical tabs -- the session name/title is horizontal, not vertical)

[gnunn1]

Thanks everyone for the input, I think I'm just going to leave things as the status quo for now.