Vertical Tabs

How many browser tabs do you have open?

Most people would say too many. This is the same thing most people would say about how much paper they have. Is it any surprise that the old browser designers based browser tabs on the tabs used to organize paper files?

But here's the thing, paper files have fixed amounts of space and aren't dynamic. If you need to organize file tabs, it's much better to have only a few options for tab positions and make up for it with depth, repeating the tab positions further back in the same stack of files. You also can't hide information dynamically, so tabs have to be fairly large.

In browsers, we cheat that constraint by scrolling since the tab doesn't have to be in a fixed position. Tabs compress into one line instead of having to simulate depth. Two dimensions become one.

But why would you keep the restriction of horizontal tab organization at all?¹

Vertical tabs work off a few simple realizations.

Tab names are long and largely unrelated. People typically read related text on a single line and scroll vertically. Therefore, tabs placed in a horizontal row will run out of space quickly, are difficult to skim read, and unintuitive to scroll.

Scrolling the width of a tab before getting to the next one is also just inefficient. Compare to a file system, where you flick past the depth of the tab, regardless of tab size.

Vertical tabs solve all these problems.

As a bonus, vertical tabs reduce the available screen space width, not height (which is in shorter supply).

With two dimensions of space to work with, vertical tabs also can pull fun tricks like nest tabs based on which one you opened it from.

Even if you already use an alternative for tab management like tab groups, pinned tabs, or have so many tabs you only use the icons anyway, this is a direct upgrade. You get all the benefits of vertical tabs, and more space to do the things you already do.

Really the only time horizontal tabs make sense is if you consistently have so few tabs they don't fill the horizontal space, and you want to always view the tab names without losing as much space as an expanded tab sidebar.

Most every desktop² browser has vertical tabs these days, and if it doesn't there's extensions. Try it for a day, if you really hate the change you can always switch back.

- Rew

Nightly Notes

Today is the first day I started writing something else entirely and had to drop it halfway through because it just was not right. Could not get myself into the zone. Which I think means it's not ready to publish.

I don't regret spending the time, doesn't hurt to start a stash of rainy day drafts. I've already learned so much about how messy my writing is just from these few. How do people communicate so succinctly? I look at the world of writing and I conclude I fail with every single thing I write.

If I ever start pushing stuff out here for the sake of hitting the deadline and nothing else, is that a fail state or a necessary motivation?

I know I've done a lot of great things only because I was dragging myself through the worst parts. But I really don't know what to expect from something like this. Better writing skills at least.

Daily is a high bar sometimes.

Anyway.

I have many opinions on web and browser design which primarily boil down to stop making me visit your website every time, just give me a normal app. That being said, downloading apps and data invisibly on demand, with standardized support for almost any modification? What a beautiful, innovative trick of user experience.

I don't want to give up the web.

This post fascinates me because it's someone else trying to tackle the same problem through design, but I'm still not sure I understood what they wanted. The barrier to entry is lower for everyone because websites work everywhere, at least in theory. How else would I even have found that?

Is a browser still a browser without a search engine?

Obviously yes, browsers came first. But the default behavior in any browser is search.

Funny, that.

May the internet never die,

- Rew