Enable horizontal and vertical tab UI at once, with tab groups in vertical tabs

[bhargavreddy]

Vertical tabs haven't been as useful to me on a smaller laptop screen because:

1. They take some horizontal space away and the title bar still takes up as much space as with regular horizontal tabs leaving less space for content than before with title bar being useless except for displaying the tab info
2. If changed to compact mode to save horizontal space, the tabs are not detailed anymore at a glance unless hovered upon with a mouse pointer.

To remedy this I propose the option to use both the horizontal and vertical tab UI at the same time. Only this time, the regular tabs will still be at the top, however the vertical tabs will now be populated with tab groups. (This is can be interchanged as well if people are more comfortable with tabs in the vertical tabs UI)

This way the space that was gonna be taken up anyway in this mode can be better utilized. With tab groups at your side you can switch between browsing different contexts under bunch of tabs essentially making it easier for people with small screens to not switch between several browser windows at the same time.

[#2]

@bhargavreddy This should be implemented within a flag.

[#3]

@Kam 

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@Kam wrote:
@bhargavreddyThis should be implemented within a flag.

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why flag? o.O

[#4]

@bhargavreddy 

I like the idea, it'd be interesting, have you sent feedback through Edge browser about it?

by the way, currently you can switch to full screen by pressing F11 and have access to your horizontal tab strip, but vertical tab strip don't appear in that mode yet.

so what if you had access to vertical tabs when in full screen? would it help you?

another thing I'm thinking about that could help in small screens is the ability to auto-hide favorites bar.

[#5]

@HotCakeX Because some people won't like it in certain cases. For example, me. I like the idea but wouldn't want it to be on all the time. Or it should be a toggle.

[#6]

Bad idea. Double vertical tab panels, one for switching between tabs and other for revealing grouped tabs is what I will like to see.

[#7]

Yes, "optional"

[#8]

I did send the feedback through the official channel. I meant this feature more in tune with something that can solve the constant switching between multiple browser windows and vertical tabs UI seems like a really good place to show tab groups since I didn't find its original feature less useful on smaller screens.

[#9]

Yeah I think a toggle sounds like a good idea because I'm aware not everyone would like to see this on all the time.

[#10]

Yeah i agree,
vertical tabs wasn't exactly created with the idea of freeing up more space, the way i understood from developers' comments is that they made it so that we would be able to manage lots of tabs easier and see their titles better.
tab grouping doesn't take a lot of space, i mean when we talk about vertical tab strip, you literally got unlimited space since you can scroll down and up, unlike the horizontal strip 🙂

btw, vertical tabs is now available on Edge stable ver 88
behind a flag: edge://flags/#edge-vertical-tabs

[#11]

@HotCakeX  I've tried to use the vertical tabs groups system since it was introduced, but have now given up, as on three occasions they have disappeared after closing my browser (Edge).  I cannot be bothered having to constantly set them up allover again.  It works reasonably well once the tab groups are established, but I am not happy with the fragility.