More than eight years after Mozilla decided to remove tab groups from Firefox, the organization confirmed today that tab groups will make a comeback.
When Mozilla launched Firefox’s Panorama feature, which introduced tab groups in Firefox years before Google implemented the feature in Chrome, it was ahead of its time.
Tab groups improve tab manageability by allowing users to put multiple tabs into groups in the tab bar. These groups may be collapsed to free up room on the taskbar.
While Mozilla did introduced Tab Groups before Google, it was Google that made them practicable to use.
Current implementations in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers are easy to use. It is an elegant solution. Panorama on the other hand showed tabs of the active group only to the user.
Mozilla announced the end of tab groups in Firefox about nine years ago. The organization cited low usage, a lack of quality, and high maintenance costs.
Mozilla CEO confirms Tab Groups
This month, something remarkable happened. Firefox user Belfox published a letter to Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers. In it, they asked Chambers to consider adding a tab grouping feature to the browser.
Firefox lacks proper tab grouping support. All Chromium-based browsers support it, thanks to the shared codebase. Belfox noted that tab groups was the top requested feature on Mozilla’s Connect website.
Nothing happened for about a week, but then, Chambers replied to the user on the Mozilla Discourse website.
She wrote:
Hello! Thanks for reaching out. I have some good news! I checked in with the team, and they have prioritized the work and have a people assigned to work on it.
In other words; Mozilla’s CEO confirmed that a team is working on tab groups and that it is a development priority.
The response is remarkable. Not because of confirming that tab groups will (likely) come to Firefox. It is remarkable because it is the first time in a very long time that Mozilla’s CEO communicates directly with the community.
Not with a letter or blog post, but in a discussion.
Chambers confirmed that Firefox would become a priority at Mozilla again after taking over the reigns from Mitchell Baker. It seems that she is making good on the promise.
This direct interaction with the Firefox base could help bring management, developers, and users closer together again. It gives hopes to a community, of which no small part felt neglected in recent years.
Closing Words
Firefox is getting tab grouping support, which is good news for users of the browser. The CEO partaking in discussions about the browser and responding to user requests is even bigger than that.
Chambers remains CEO for a limited time only. A successor has not been found yet and it remains to be seen if the future Mozilla captain will follow her lead.
Mozilla is also working on bringing tab previews to Firefox.
Now You: do you use tab groups?
I don’t use tabs grouping myself because I never have many tabs opened concurrently, perhaps never more than a dozen, related to a given topic; when the topic changes, I bookmark if applicable and close all concerned tabs. Nevertheless between a dozen and hundreds of opened tabs I may shift from understanding to being extremely puzzled. Perhaps in the winds of a trend which would be to never delete, remove, be it tabs, cookies, history, caches. I remain stunned when compartmentalization of thoughts does not include serialization by removal of what is out of a given topic, so to say.
But I understand many of us open far more tabs and that’s of course when tab groups become relevant, or do they, or do they nowadays whilst not in the past years? Mozilla had cited low usage to explain the removal of the feature : is it as it seems that this feature is now a popular demand? If so, maybe the Google effect : I don’t need it but if Google implements it then I do need it … or simply a change of digital behavior 🙂
The main idea behind Panorama was excellent: let users create groups of tabs to improve manageability. Problem was that the execution was lacking.
Google’s implementation is elegant. While it took Google a long time to introduce features such as tab group collapsing, it got there eventually.
Vivaldi’s Tab stacking feature is another example. It is also a tab grouping feature and it is elegant as well.