Forum Discussion
Vertical tabs mode new tab button should be fixed position at the top of the tab strip
I feel I should start by saying thank you to the Edge UI/UX team. Yous really have made the best browser UI on the market and I really appreciate it.
TL;DR version: when in vertical tabs mode, the new tab button should be at the top of the tab strip in a fixed position. I even made a quick mock of what this would look like
Vertical tabs mode is best for users that have many tabs open, but for users that have many tabs open, that means the new tab button is almost always located at the bottom of the screen. That is a problem - especially for people trying vertical tabs mode for the first time - because the "cost" or "friction" of clicking the new tab button is much higher compared to what that person is used to. The user has to move the cursor too far and it takes too long to reach the new tab button all the way in the bottom left corner of the screen. It is a very large regression in UX efficiency and I'm very confident this is a big reason why so many users don't stick with vertical tabs. Below is a screenshot where I superimpose vertical tabs mode on top of normal horizontal tabs mode and drew a green arrow line so you can see where the user is used to the new tabs button being compared to the vertical tabs mode position. That is is a massive change and increase in cursor distance.
Also, on desktop browsers, the buttons and UI are at the top of the screen. This isn't just muscle memory but also where the users eyes are accustomed to. But in Edge's vertical tabs mode, the new tab button is usually closer to the bottom of the screen, making it an odd outlier of a decades long unofficial "law".
Safari has had a fixed position new tab button for many years, so we know this is a good and "safe" thing to do, there's no worries or risks with a fixed position new tab button. And Edge's vertical tabs already do the reverse gravity behaviour that would be needed for this, so this wouldn't be a lot of work!
I did some web searches because I was curious if others asked for this and wow, yes, a LOT of users want this! There are many more tweets and reddit threads where users ask for this but I can't link all of them here, it would take days hahaha. You get the idea, this is a very highly requested feature/complaint
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/open-new-tabs-in-inverse-order/idi-p/90669
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1jsvqhk/how_do_i_make_the_vertical_tab_list_upside_down/
https://www.reddit.com/r/edge/comments/m0mz4e/invert_order_in_vertical_tabs/
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/31424
https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/30884
A few more things I forgot to mention:
- when enough tabs are opened, the new tab button becomes fixed position anyways! It's just that it's fixed at the bottom of the screen (which I suspect is very common for vertical tabs users because vertical tabs is meant for people that have lots of tabs open)
- another part of what I'm requesting/suggesting is: when the user clicks this new tab button that's fixed at the top of the tab strip, the new tab would open directly below it, pushing down/scrolling down the other tabs.
- of course this would be optional because unfortunately, Edge users have gotten used to the current arrangement of the trailing new tab button, and it's not worth getting a bunch of angry user complaints by changing that on existing vertical tabs users. But I think it's worth considering that, for users that have enabled vertical tabs for the first time, it makes sense to give them this "new-tab-button-fixed-at-the-top" layout instead of the current one. And I'm very confident those users are more likely to stick with vertical tabs because having the new tab button fixed at the top is just that much better.
