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Tab Candy for Firefox goes alpha, revolutionizes tabbed browsing
Aza Raskin of Firefox fame has just announced one of the most amazing concepts I have seen for Web browsing in a long time: Tab Candy. Lee covered a slightly out-of date version on Monday, but now it's out for everyone to play with.
It's a completely new concept of tab management: today, it's very easy to have too many tabs. I mean, 12-13 tabs is already "too many". Just try doing three or four things at once with your browser (checking out a link someone sent you, doing some research for work, checking out travel options, reading DownloadSquad and following some links) and see how confusing it all gets. It's a mess!
Tab Candy is a radical re-imagining of the whole notion of tabs. You browse using Firefox, as per usual. When you start feeling you have too many tabs, just hit Ctrl-Space. The screen instantly zooms out, and each tab becomes a tile. Now the fun begins.
Grab a tile and drag it out of the group; it detaches and floats freely. Throw another tile onto it – now it's a group. Now you can click the top of the group and label it, say "apartment hunting". When you click this group, it expands back into "regular" Firefox mode, but now only with the four or five tabs you're using for apartment hunting. Of course, any new tabs you add get added onto this group. I know this sounds like "saved sessions meets visual tabs", but it's so much more.
This is not an extension; rather, it's a very early Alpha build of Firefox 4. Also, the potential is far from realized; if you think I sound excited now, check out Aza's video after the jump – he goes into hyperdrive somewhere around the 3-minute mark.
There is lots more to this concept than what I've covered above; for example, you could have a tab group shared with a friend in real-time, where each sees what the other is doing and you're both researching something together. Or you could send tabs to a friend just by dragging them somewhere on this canvas.
The possibilities are really mind-boggling, and the UI is very impressive and intuitive. If you're brave, go download an Alpha build and take it for a spin. They are really looking for feedback.
I can't wait to see this concept come to fruition. So much more can be done with it; for example, you could have certain tabs "age" and disappear after a while. Or, as Raskin notes and illustrates, you could have extensions which customize tab groups and add their own information or metadata ... this could be the beginning of something epic. Watch the video for more!
Comments
18
Subscribe to commentsjsmorleyJul 23rd 2010 4:43PM
I think this might find the widest audience if it added "persistence" to the mix. By that I mean that most folks really don't have 100 tabs open at a time, and even if they do it is for just a short time and tabs / sites are opened and closed as they work. I don't think most people want to always have Firefox open a ton of sites they don't intend to work on in that session, and who wants to go to the work of being so organized if not?
So what if this included the capabilities of FastDial or SpeedDial along with this excellent tab management? So you could create these groups, put either open tabs OR bookmarks in them, and mark some to be opened "on demand" when Firefox is started, and others to be "auto opened", as TabCandy is designed now?
That to me would be a logical conjunction of functionality, and make this a real killer feature for Firefox.
RobomasterJul 23rd 2010 5:10PM
Pfht, this isn't "revolutionizing" anything. It's just a neat idea that's completely inadequate for what it's trying to accomplish (simplifying tabs) and the best solution (in my opinion) is to not open 12+ tabs. Honestly, I use Chrome and have around 5~ tabs open at all times, and I never need anymore. I know different people's needs are different, but in Chrome pinned tabs work well and I could probably have 20 pinned tabs without having to worry about space on the top of the browser.
Again, this is a cool idea but (especially since it's still in alpha) it's clumsy, not streamlined, and doesn't really solve the whole too-many-tabs dilemma.
Android underlingJul 24th 2010 1:57AM
You say that you understand people have different needs, but its clear that you dont really understand. I like you only ever use a maximum of 7 or so tabs, and my browser opens with only 1.
However, I know tons of people that have saved tabs and open their browser with at least 10. This is a great feature for them!
tporvazJul 23rd 2010 6:03PM
Internet research is about to get a whole lot easier.
AemonyJul 23rd 2010 5:40PM
I'm quite a sporadic surfer and the end result for me would probably be that all my groups would still be completely unorganized until I take organizing them once again. Wasting even more of my time. It's a cool idea, but completely useless for us who have already learned to manage 40+ tabs without any slowdowns.
Open all tabs relative to the current one + use the bookmark bar for important tabs = a much better solution for me.
Worst cause scenario: CTRL+N
gonintendoJul 23rd 2010 11:38PM
wow, i thought my 20+ tabs were bad
Saint SeminoleJul 24th 2010 12:21AM
Looks really cool.
But in the end, I should be reading the stuff on the web pages, not dragging thumbnails around in my Tab Candy organizer. It seems like another time waster to me...
EthanAug 4th 2010 3:54PM
I don't use financial planning because in the end I should be spending my money, not worrying about how much goes to savings, investments, retirement, expenses, etc. Why would I want to have a powerful tool to plan my finances when I can just blow it all?
See how that works? I've been using Tab Candy for a few weeks and it has revolutionized my browsing. I have much more time to spend actually consuming content because of Tab Candy, not less. Work smarter, not harder.
fiendsanJul 24th 2010 5:33AM
this isnt revolutionary at all... come on there are good plugins that manage tabs on firefox, besides people like me that do open a lot of tabs if they want to organize them, they open new windows and put the tabs there, way simpler to work with and organize, not "hiding tabs inside the browser"... what is easier? having 3 firefox windows with different tabs and you go from one window to another (1 click) or having hidden tabs inside your firefox where you need to go to the view and then choose (2 clicks)... this is a nice concept but should be just a plugin...
also yeah chrome and opera manage tabs better and also new windows/tabs better as well...
fiendsanJul 24th 2010 5:35AM
ohhh just one more thing... how about spending your time making the browser quicker to load and move and use... that would make people more productive, i still have to way full minutes while my firefox loads or opens new tabs... that would be revolutionary and a way better user experience than any tab candy.
MattJul 24th 2010 1:01PM
They're putting a lot of work into that, it's one of their top priorities. As for waiting for all your tabs to open, get the excellent extension Bar Tab. It delays the loading of each tab until you actually click on it, and that way you can have a hundred tabs restored but the browser will be usable right away.
EthanAug 4th 2010 4:04PM
Just because you don't prefer it doesn't mean it isn't useful.
I have used the multiple windows method for quite some time and I hate it. I absolutely hate cluttering my desktop with multiple windows for a single purpose – browsing and using applications on the web.
Besides that, you miscounted. If you have to choose a tab in Tab Candy, you have to choose a tab in another window. Two clicks either way. In fact, depending on your window environment, it could be three clicks/actions for the window method, but Tab Candy won't be more than two. For me, switching between tabs in Tab Candy is much faster because I use the hot key (and have it mapped to a button on my mouse and a multi-touch gesture on my trackpad), then select a tab visually. That is only one way it is more efficient though.
Refer back to the points in the intro video about spatial relationships. That is very important and improves cognitive ability to recall the location of tabs and switch between them efficiently. It isn't as simple as the number of clicks, friend.
Additionally, Tab Candy adds very little performance overhead. And as a whole, Firefox 4 is incredibly fast already, and will continue to improve before its slated November launch.
Again, it doesn't matter if you don't like Tab Candy – plenty of other people love it.
Cheers.
MattJul 24th 2010 12:58PM
This is essentially what I already do by organizing tabs into different windows, just in a single window interface.
EthanAug 4th 2010 3:54PM
I used to do the same thing. The only problem is that cluttered my desktop with multiple windows which is undesirable. Tab Candy is much more flexible and transparent than that approach. It is a lot easier to see what tabs you have in a Tab Candy set than in a window.
MattJul 24th 2010 1:30PM
Firefox can show an unlimited number of tabs, it's just that they keep a minimum size so you can actually tell what they are instead of shrinking down to a mess of icons. Although if you really want that behavior you can change the minimum size to make it do that. Thus the brilliance of Firefox.
BugMeNotJul 25th 2010 1:24PM
I do this in a non-visual way with Vimperator's :tabattach and :tabdetach
shobderaJul 26th 2010 12:01AM
yo wtf ppl if u cant appreciate someone elses creativity y bother even look into the post in the first place? and be all negative abt it? u don like don use it.
Daniel BloisJul 26th 2010 8:48AM
Thank you, I agree completely. Plus, people hear do not realize how useful this would be for collaboration and people who do research.