Chrome is really popular. I'm pretty sure everyone knows it. Chart confirmation. I still use Firefox.
Side Tabs
A good side tabs extension is the primary reason I use Firefox. A row of tabs on top is the worst thing ever. Lists are great:
I use the "Tab Tree" extension (thank you Sergey Zelentsov). Chrome has a handful of side tabs extensions, but I don't consider them usable.
That's It
Side tabs is the only reason I use Firefox.
What's different?
Since I'm using Firefox on my laptop, I'd like everything to sync to my phone so I don't have to retype all my passwords. I like Firefox for Android's tab screen better than Chrome. That's the only difference I notice so that works out pretty well.
I'm in the dev tools quite a bit throughout the day, and I find the Firefox dev tools more intuitive. Chrome can take it's 'Elements', 'Sources', 'Application' tabs and shove it - I prefer 'Inspector', 'Debugger', 'Storage'. Honestly it's not a big difference to me. Some people feel strongly about dev tools.
Should I ever be debugging a cross-browser issue, my other (more popular) browsers are clean installs. Nice to have.
Firefox doesn't support integrated windows authentication. That's alright by me.
I don't understand why more people don't demand side tabs.
Top comments (26)
For everyone here wanting this but not use Firefox, give Vivaldi a shot! It's based on Chromium, but with tons of new features and awesome things. Tried it because I wanted something different and never looked back.
Wow, I'm impressed. Sounds like Vivaldi for Android and a Sync feature are high priorities for them too. I'm sure I'll switch in the next 18-24 weeks.
why switch? use them both! personal browser, professional browser!
same here... i also love vivaldi's tab stacks & groups!
I 2nd this. I love Vivaldi b/c you can still have access Chrome Web Store.
Firefox has been my main browser since version 3.
Nowadays, the main feature to me is the responsive view (CMD + ALT + m), which is so much more reliable than the one Chrome recently added.
The only point (to me) of using Chrome is for testing performance in a lot more granular way (throttling CPU or network connectivity, using offline mode and the newly addit audit function in devtools are some things I would not want to miss).
Side tabs, that's interesting. While I'm not the type of person who opens a bazillion tabs at the same time, I can see the point. I'll definitely give it a try! Thanks Anton.
btw, another (and probably more solid) option would be to use Tab Center (testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/...). It is developed by Mozilla devs (as far as I know) and is part of the Firefox Testpilot program...
It notes that it won't work after Firefox 56 on the page. I've learned just now from twitter that they're disabling their XUL stuff with that release, which will probably break my side tabs as well, and make me very sad.
There will be also sidebar tabs extensions in the no-xul-world. Tab Center Redux is already a WebExtensions (compatible with future releases). It still misses the part to hide the original tab strip but there will be an API in the future and in the meantime you can hide it via userChrome.css.
I still use Firefox because of a much more important feature: I can bookmark a website into the toolbar with simply dragging and dropping the tab!
Come on Chrome, why the f*ck not is this not possible, why I have to push another button for this!????? Goddamn....
Firefox has built in options to stop HTML5 video autoplay as well.
I've been thinking about making the switch back to Firefox for a week now (since I found out about the autoplay option) and after this and the video I saw today with the CSS grid inspector coming soon, I'm gonna go back now.
I'm going to try out the side tabs as well. They seem neat.
There's this extension called Tabs Outliner on Chrome that offers really great nested tab functionality (IMO better than FF's Tree-Style Tabs).
I use Firefox on my home machine purely for the performance of Quantum. I still find Chrome extensions superior by far, though. That could change as more WebExtensions are added in FF, but so far I've not found direct equivalents that work just as well.
(For those curious: Tabs Outliner, Quick Tabs, and Google Search Navigator, are my mainstays that I make sure to install wherever I go. I have corresponding extensions in FF (Tree-Style Tabs, Saka and Google Search Keyboard Shortcuts), but they're not equally good.)
I'm with you on Firefox for a few reasons (the ones that make me stick with Firefox):
Firefox is infinitely customizable and extensible. Yes, you can have your side tabs. I like my top tabs (gauge of how much I'm distracted by how many tabs are crowded there) clean of any buttons in a tab bar with the new tab button on the left and the close tab button on the right, under the address bar (where it should be), which is under a combined menu and bookmark bar. No other browser does this!
When debugging SSL Certificates, Firefox gives me a ton more info than any other browser by default. Chrome? Zilch. IE/Edge? Nada. I'm assuming this is because Firefox doesn't use any OS based framework for web page calls.
Firefox was first on Unix and Linux. IE... a showing when it got around to it, and never raced again. Chrome? Late, but it's here to stay. I'm too used to Firefox.
I often use split screen, so this is a no for me, also I'm trying to navigate trough tabs using the keyboard.
I'm not familiar with the FF dev tools since ...many yrs ago, did they added all the goodies from Chrome? Debugging, remote debugging (from mobile or node), throttle web requests, multiple resolution/user agents/mobile emulation, load files from local storage & modify them, fire charts, CPU/GPU/Memory analysis?
As a side note I even used Chrome fire charts with data from C#, to measure the performance :))
Since I generally only use 3-5 tabs at a time, having a side-tab wouldn't be a practical use of desktop real-estate. Having it on auto-hide would make me forget how many tabs I have opened. I do dislike chrome for limited UI APIs so extensions like tab-tree just can't be done.
on a side-note, any reason you prefer the stock Firefox over Firefox dev edition?
As long as it's a landscape monitor, I don't consider the real estate to be an issue, since most sites don't go out of their way to design for extra width.
I remember looking at dev edition before but can't remember why I didn't switch. I took another look at it since you mentioned it. Couldn't really tell what the difference is, so I googled it. An IDE, audio testing, and cross-browser engine testing. Although the cross-engine testing looks interesting, it's not been enough got me to get off by butt and make the change.
Also, in Chrome, infinite opened tabs will result in each tab being infinitely small. In Firefox, tabs can be scrolled through with the mouse wheel.