Treestyletab: Introducing tab groups to treestyletab

[nyanpasu]

Is it possible to group tabs manually like in Vertical Tabs?

At the moment you can only group tabs under other tabs. It would be nice if you were able to manually group them under a name.

[piroor]

You can open a group tab with a URI, "about:treestyletab-group?title=foobar"

[seafox]

1. Well, typing such an URI it's not THAT intuitive and straightforward. Looks like Multiple Tab Handler offers tab gathering as moving selected tabs into a new tree under a temporary folder as the group placeholder. It would be much better if TST would have such ability in its own context menu.
2. As per OP image above, looks like TST should definitely borrow some elements from Vertical Tabs UI, as the available vertical space is the most critical part on small wide screens:
   A. TST should go DOWN all the way and a status/add-on bar leftmost end should start from there;
   B. New tab (+) sign should be merged on the SAME line with All Tabs, and, optionally, with a tab counter (like Tab Counter add-on).
3. With recent FF (v32.0.x) releases looks like there are still bugs in restoration of the tree structure after FF restart - some branches shifted and mixed with others (unrelated). Add-on bunch TST+MultipleTabHandler+SuspendTab+ClassicThemeRestorer(1.25beta)
4. Any chance to have left click on a tab not to autoload the selected tab, for instance for drag-drop operations?

BR

[piroor]

1.

Creating a new bookmark with the "about:treestyletab-group" URI will help you. You can open a new blank group tab by clicking of the bookmark (or middle-click). If you want, my another addon "Open Bookmarks in New Tab" forces bookmarks to be opened as new tabs always, by single left click.

Sorry, but I have no plan to improve the group tab feature in TST, anymore. I'm mainly using TST's tree of tabs as "branched visual histories of web browsing", and I initially added the group tab feature as "temporary dummy parent tab" for tabs opened from bookmarks (which cannot have a logical parent tab.)

2.

Hmm, you are right. However, I have no time to develop TST for these problems. My hands are full to keep already existing features up for new versions of Firefox.

3.

Recent commits possibly fixed this issue. Could you try the development build? http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/xpi/nightly/

4,

Because i is not related to "tree of tabs", I think it is not a target of TST.

Did you talk about a case when you drag and drop many pending (or suspended) tabs to a tree? If so, such an usage is unexpected for TST. Mainly, tree of tabs should be controlled by TST itself. Modifying of tree by drag and drop is just an irregular case. If this usage is required from broken trees of restored sessions, the broken restoration is the problem truly need to be fixed.

[irvinm]

Piroor, I just wanted to say that I love the "about:treestyletab-group?title=foobar" functionality and use it all the time. (I do wish there was some way to access this functionality outside of doing it manually. There was a time I didn't have any of these tabs and forgot how to do it, but a little internet searching was my friend)

Also, just wanted to give feedback that your recent check-ins (Sept 30-Oct 1) seem to have really improved the stability of the tab restore order for me. I still see some visual problems (indentation, etc.) every now and again, but after a restart the tab order looks MUCH better and appears more stable in FF32.

[seafox]

Piroor,
Indeed, looks like your use case " I'm mainly using TST's tree of tabs as "branched visual histories of web browsing" is far from my intended purpose. I don't want TST be my surfing tracks, but to be tabs ready to load as needed, organized in trees. Are you familiar with the excellent Tabs Outliner for Chrome? That, placed into FF sidebar is the way to go. Furthermore, my idea is rather revolutionary to COMPLETELY replace two things: ordinary bookmarks AND history with tree like tab structure. That essentially would be the synchronized (with tabs) bookmarks tree. Eliminating the need for extra layers of visual bookmarks like built-in Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks & History sidebars, speed dials like Super Start, Fast Dial etc. and would also retire session managers as bookmarks are always natively persistent and synchronized with tabs tree BY DESIGN!

[irvinm]

seafox, you can already do that for the most part. If you only load "tabs on demand", then you can create trees (like categories or however you like to organize things) then only click on a tab as needed to load it. Couple this with an add-on like "unload tab" and you can actually get back to an original state without closing a tab.

There are limitations from having this work with VERY large number of bookmarks\tabs, but I actually been as high as around 500 tabs and this works "ok".

I love the idea of mapping ALL of your bookmarks to a vertical tree hierarchy. It would certainly help me clean up and prune my bookmarks.

[seafox]

Irvinm,
sure I'm already doing all you wrote above. Are you familiar with Tabs Outliner for Chrome? I recommend it just to get a clue what a similar usage scenario would like to. And that's only the beginning, as we have FF, not Chromium base!

Piroor,
you just see Irvinm usage of TST is very alike to mine, 2:1 - you are in the minority :+1:

[nyanpasu]

I started using TST because prior to this I was managing some 800 tabs using firefox's built in tab groups:

As it appears, TST was _huge_ visual improvement to my workflow, and the only issue I was having was manual parents. As @piroor points out, you can just use the about:treestyletab-group?title=foobar page, which is exactly what I wanted.

But, it isn't documented.

It isn't intuitive.

And since it's already there and part of TST, I don't think it's really hard to just add a context menu item to spawn a treestyletab-group page.

And perhaps the ability to rename the group from within TST (either by double clicking or some context menu option, or anything where you don't have to visit the page to rename)

[piroor]

Piroor,
you just see Irvinm usage of TST is very alike to mine, 2:1 - you are in the minority

Yes, I know I'm minority. But that's my big reason why I keep TST this design. Because I'm minority, I have to keep TST's concept as is.

Please remember. The first-class user of this addon is just me. I made this because I need this. If there is already any existing software which satisfies my needs, I don't have to develop this painfully complex addon TST by myself. Instead I should use the existing software. However, I don't know such a software - working as a part of Firefox, together with other useful addons (Yes, I'm using 37 addons including TST itself), supporting multi-level nested tree, etc. Because no one develops such an addon for me, I have to develop this for myself.

Of course, more powerful supporting for your usage possibly can exist together with TST's main concept. However, it will make TST more complex and large. Because I'm too busy now, I only can maintain existing features for updating Firefox. To keep TST available on future Firefox versions for me, I hope to keep TST simple at current level. (Nay, if possible, I want to delete much codes from TST!)

I think it is possibly better way for you: offering to authors of other addons (Vertical Tabs, Side Tabs, or something) to import some features from TST. If those features don't break concept of those addons, such features can be commons.

[seafox]

:+1:
these shouldn't be very time demanding requests:
a. Context menu for a (selected) tab(s) New Group... [with possible popup asking for its name]
b. Content menu for a group (folder) Rename Group...
c. Option to drag a tab to main browser window for loading; then option to not load a tab on every left click (either short or long)...

[piroor]

b. Content menu for a group (folder) Rename Group...

Select the tab and click on the title in the content area, or press the F2 key, then you can rename it.

[seafox]

Select the tab and click on the title in the content area, or press the F2 key, then you can rename it.

Good, but that breaks the usability code of the add-on as it shifts tree maintainance to the main content area. The area of cause may extend the usability of the tree by adding extra node notes etc.

The concept of plugins you mentioned is already broken to me as none of them supports bookmark trees. The only working tree plugin for FF is so far yours, although seems we agreed to disagree on the main purpose of sidebar tree concept. I have zero knowledge of FF and add-ons architecture and APIs, unfortunately. What do you think about re-using TST code to fork the development in the direction enlightened above?

[nyanpasu]

I also have no knowledge of firefox addons, otherwise I would have implemented this myself and made a PR

My current solution to this issue is to set:
browser.newtab.url to about:treestyletab-group?title=New%20Tab

But it is no solution, just a workaround.

@piroor Please reconsider implementing this small feature request into TST

[seafox]

@piroor

3.Recent commits possibly fixed this issue. Could you try the development build? http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/xpi/nightly/

Few days on Tree Style Tab 0.14.2014100200a025115 & Suspend Tab 0.2.2014100200a144152:
a. Tree stucture seems to keept well, thanks for fixes whatever they were!
b. Had once problem with last group node (under whole tree root) in the tree when the last tab of the group visually seemd to be on the group level (i.e. next to and outside the group), when dragging it on the group node or anywhere inside the group made zero result. When clicked on the group node, all tabs were shown in the main context window properly, including the last one, still showing on the left as sibling of the group node. FF restart made the normal behavior restored.
c. Somehow I have a hunch the Suspend Tab 0.2.2014100200a144152 causes the complete restoration failures after FF shutdown and reopening. Not 100% of time, but in significant measure (around 25...75%). Didn't observed such behaviour with May 2014 release of SuspendTab. On failure, only a single default FF home page shown (set as default home pg). SessionManager recovers last session as always...

Update: Apparently its TST nightly fault, as I disabled SuspendTab and still have the tree complete restoration failures, sorry to blame the wrong add-on, it just seemed with SuspendTab it comes more frequent! The tree isn't big, less than 250 tabs.

[bkonia]

I'd like to add my vote for a context-menu item that would create groups. I created a bookmark to do this, but it's counter-intuitive and clumsy to have to do it this way. I can't imagine that it would be that difficult or time-consuming to add a "New Group" context menu item.

[piroor]

There are too many subjects so I close this for now. If you see any problem or feature request around it, please open new issue for each individual subject.

[derekbasch]

I know this is closed but another vote for a context-menu item that would create groups.

Thanks for the great plugin!

[tompropst]

Adding a reasonable work-around here...
If you have one group tab created (as described many ways above), quickly create others from the context menu with "Duplicate Tab". Then just rename and you're set.

[aldanor]

I know this is closed but another vote for a context-menu item that would create groups.

I also know this is closed but would be very happy to see this in TST, too.

[igoralmeida]

Sorry for bumping this, but what would be the best fix/workaround for this:

1. Any chance to have left click on a tab not to autoload the selected tab, for instance for drag-drop operations?

Having quite a few tabs and tab groups means that reorganizing them involves clicking on tabs I'm not really interested right now... If I could drag'n'drop without restoring(?) them (say, holding Alt when dragging) that would be a huge performance benefit.

[derekbasch]

@igoralmeida try using the Tab Suspender add-on. It has an option for not loading selected tabs.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-suspender-tab-unloader/

[igoralmeida]

@derekbasch Thanks, but unfortunately that one is deprecated and the newer version does not seem to do that
I think the minimal functionality for this use-case is to simply prevent a tab from loading/showing up in the viewer when dragging. I could not find extensions or bugs that mention this...

[derekbasch]

@igor the deprecated version will still work with Quantum. It has an experimental feature that you can enable for now. I imagine the dev will port all the plugin features to the new version shortly.

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 1:02 PM, Igor [e-mail] wrote:
@derekbasch Thanks, but unfortunately that one is deprecated and the newer version does not seem to do that
I think the minimal functionality for this use-case is to simply prevent a tab from loading/showing up in the viewer when dragging. I could not find extensions or bugs that mention this...

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[igoralmeida]

@derekbasch ah right, I didn't even try to read everything, sorry about that.
Indeed it "helps", since the viewport is updated with a simple "tab is unloaded" page.
One thing I also did was installing Multiple Tab Handler, which allows Ctrl-click to select several tabs. Also helps.

Though much of my problem is now moot since I inadvertently closed a 100+ subtree before I managed to organize it, of which I recovered only 10... -_-

[qwitwa]

The solution I'm happy with is just to set my homepage to the URL above and click the home icon in the toolbar whenever I want a new tab group, which works fine, unlike some of the addons that try to change the new tab page but can't support the "about:" URL scheme.

[qwitwa]

My above solution seems to have been broken by a recent firefox update.

[piroor]

@qwitwa On my environment (Nightly 63.0a1) about:treestyletab-group for the home button sometimes work but sometimes don't...

[ptbrowne]

It is also possible to use the search feature of bookmarks to easily create a group.

Add a bookmark with location "about:treestyletab-group?title=%s" and keyword "tst" and then you can create a group from the location bar with "tst nameofthegroup".