Scrollable tab strip

Brass Contributor

Have you ever worked with a large number of tabs? It seems you have and the tab strip is usually completely overwhelmed with tabs as it is not able to fit all of them. In contrast to Firefox or Safari, Edge browser doesn't make the tab strip scrollable — tabs just keep getting smaller until the only favicon is visible. The most horrible thing is that rightmost tabs even start disappearing at some point.

Edge tabs.png

Edge tabs behave in a strange way

Firefox tabs.png

Firefox tabs look okay

Chrome tabs.png

Chrome tabs look okay

However, recently Google has introduced a fix to this problem that makes the tab strip scrollable in Chrome, which makes it very easy to manage tons of tabs. Since Edge is a Chromium-based browser, this feature is hidden in MS Edge too. The only thing that is left is to add appropriate flags to enable it.

 

This is a request to add the next options to edge://flags:

1. #scrollable-tabstrip - Tab Scrolling:

  • Tabs do not shrink
  • Tabs shrink to a large width
  • Tabs shrink to a medium width
  • Tabs shrink to a pinned tab width

2. #scrollable-tabstrip-buttons  - Tab Scrolling Buttons

 

These options will allow the Edge browser to fix a tab problem.

To see how it works in Chrome:

1) go to chrome://flags

2) Search for flags #scrollable-tabstrip and #scrollable-tabstrip-buttons, and enable them.

3) Observe the behaviour of the tab strip.

6 Replies
I don't see Vertical Tabs being mentioned here. Edge took care of the problem by implementing Vertical Tabs, that's exactly what that feature is used for, when you have too many tabs.
in fact, Edge automatically suggest you (once) to switch to Vertical Tabs when you open too many tabs that are more suitable to manage Vertically.

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/awesome-new-feature-vertical-tabs-now-hide-title-...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/vertical-tabs-preview-now-available-in-the-canary-an...
I am not against the Vertical Tabs feature, it is a really good way to manage lots of tabs! However, Edge would benefit much more if it could propose two different ways of tab management according to each user needs.

@Bascredvarcker 

in the meanwhile the logitech mx master 3 mouse lets you customize the side scroll wheel to scroll tabs with its logitech options software. That's what I use and it works well as a substitute.  

I've always wondered why people like to flounder on and on into the stupidest solution when there are much more sensible resorts. Opera has Workspaces, Vivaldi offers three solutions. Do not exist really useful extensions somewhere to help people to get read of the "toilet paper" aka "tape worm" blight? Next replies stipulates some want to watch motion pictures one by one picture! I'm strongly against pumping up Edge into creepy blob composed from zillion setting options.

This is really needed!

Is these flags removed?