http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100319

If I'm working on a project I'll often have many tabs open for
references. It's useful to be able to read their names.

On Feb 12, 2:13 am, Fred <fredkilbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 12, 7:52 am, Dylan <dylan.v...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 12, 5:16 pm, Fred <fredkilbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 12, 5:24 pm, Capy <codyku...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have reluctantly moved back to Firefox (which at least doesn't seem
to crash as often as before) and won't be using Chrome until they
enable Side Tabs.  It is a deal breaker for me.

On Feb 13, 12:00 am, Fred <fredkilbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 13, 8:49 am, SeaFern <buddhisti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Just search "Side Tabs" on the Web Store, it should be one of the first
results.

On Feb 17, 2:28 am, Ben <benjo...@gmail.com> wrote:

You could switch to full screen mode, though (on Macintosh is still has
some toolbar, though).
(But then you will lose the Windows task bar)

☆*PhistucK*

On Feb 17, 5:06 am, PhistucK <phist...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mar 7, 9:19 am, Fred <fredkilbo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, I am not entirely sure why I'm bothering to join the group to
discuss since everything so far has basically been of the tone "too
bad, so sad."

Nevermind that it's inconvenienced everyone who did manage to find it
on the flags page and used it to solve two of the most fundamental
hard-to-work-around issues with the current vanilla chrome: issues for
some with vertical space and issues for others who keep large numbers
of tabs open while browsing.

Quick recap:

I am not entirely sure how long side tabs were in, since, I, as with
many others, found it through exploring the "chrome://flags" page
being that the feature was entirely unadvertised. There were some
blogs and other articles that explained how to get them, as well. An
example: (now with an update saying tabs have been removed):
http://www.techerator.com/2010/07/how-to-enable-vertical-tabs-in-goog...
, dated 23 JUL 2010. So lets just be generous and say this feature was
in for, at a minimum, a year and a half.

Then, without ever notifyng anyone they were available, we were told
the feature was removed due to... ahem... "lack of interest." (Yes, no
interest, e.g., https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/
: Tree Style Tab, 83,422 users.) Besides, as if interest could have
ever built when it was never even placed on the main configuration
page.

At this point 117 people have starred and there are, let's say, ~75
comments on the issues on a bugtracker issue
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=104937 regarding
the matter, prior to which we also had others (check the first issues
link there's a post with other links to things showing the support for
keeping sidetabs) and this one:

-----------------------------------

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=99332#c25

"Comment 25 by g...@chromium.org, Oct 14, 2011
I'm the 'Glen' referred to in thakis' original posting, and I feel we
owe you some explanation.

As an experiment, side tabs weren't a success - a small number of
people really passionately loved them, but they ended up not being
compelling enough to make the cut. We torture ourselves over stuff
like this - it comes down to painful decisions about keeping Chrome
lightweight - we know that a feature like this is really important to
some number of users (and Chrome developers!), but at the same time we
have to continually cut and trim things, knowing that those cuts will
annoy people, so that Chrome doesn't turn into bloatware that
satisfies no-one.

We do hope to have a better solution to the "I have too many tabs"
problem someday soon, but side-tabs wasn't it. I'm really sorry that
we let the experiment linger too long - it meant that many of you
became dependent on it, making the end of the experiment an even
bigger pain than we wanted it to be. "

-----------------------------------

Yep yep, was cut and trimmed, there was a decision taken to remove
them, 'cause it could possibly stop working, maybe, so really why
leave it in for more than the year and a half, I mean, of course it
was just a chrome://flags option, so we can remove them at any time.
Nevermind that it's what kept many people using chrome in the first
place, since it makes browsing much more convenient, especially with
large numbers of tabs or widescreen aspect monitors, the developers
have control to remove it so why listen to "a few" users that are
switching to firefox or freezing their Chrome at the last sidetab
enabled version? (Oh and BTW, side tabs actually was the solution for
many people, and not just for too many open tabs, so your statement is
simply an assertion and a wish, not anything based in reality....

FTFY: "We do have a fantasy that some day we may provide a way to fix
the "I have too many tabs" problem (although it's not like it's even
in the plan at the moment so we can't give you dates on it) but I'm
gong to ignore the other obvious big problem that has no solution,
users needing a way to save vertifcal space, and just make a clearly
false statement ("side-tabs wasn't it") that you should accept without
questioning, but what I really mean is "I didn't like the purity of
the code with side-tabs in it, so I'm deciding that it isn't going to
be a solution for the issue because I'm taking it out and all you
people that use it be damned."

What is said implicitly by standing by this decision: "Hell, who needs
customers when there may someday be a bug in an experimental feature
which actually hasn't had one develop in over a year and which may or
may not ever *actually* develop one, when there is a small small
chance that it will, and then the decision would be justified.  Oh,
and nevermind we could make the decision at that point in time instead
of arbitrarily, now, prior to implementing the promised "much better
feature" that will replace side tabs, eventually, probably.  Who cares
if 'a few' people are inconvenienced so much they can't use our
browser anymore, amirite?"

Then, another thread was opened which people came to voice support of
the feature over, which was marked as being untriaged! So, we thought
perhaps, maybe, someone told the developers that they should at least
listen to people and perhaps consider re-enabling sidetabs. Oops,
nope, wontfix:

-----------------------------------

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100319 with this
message

"My hope is that ultimately we will add extension-controllable
detachable surfaces or similar under the auspices of bug 51084.  At
that point it will be more feasible to implement a feature like this
that has a small but devoted following as an extension.

Until that time, we don't have any plans to re-implement side tabs.
There are a number of higher-impact features we're busy working with.

Bugs in our database are not a good place to discuss and debate
feature decisions.  They're a work tracker for the engineering team to
quickly make triage decisions and then either close or schedule the
work.  I'm sorry no one did that any sooner on this bug and gave all
of you folks who were waiting some clarity -- if we weren't going to
do this, it would have been good to say so sooner and not give a few
hundred people the misimpression that if only they posted enough
supportive comments we'd change our minds.

I am closing this bug to further non-committer comments.  I suggest
that people who wish to discuss this issue use the chromium-discuss
mailing list which is a more appropriate forum for that.

I know this is a disappointing and/or frustrating message, and I'm
sorry about that, but it's better for us to be clear about our plans
than say nothing."

-----------------------------------

In other words: "Shut up, we're removing them, doesn't matter that
nothing was buggy about them in the first place, we're not going to
put them back, and besides we're looking at ways to someday, maybe,
possibly, put a feature in that might allow theoretical extension to
actually imitate the behavior that was already working and simply
removed on the theory that there might someday someway be a problem.
Sorry you're f'ed, but at least we told you that we plan to f you hard
instead of letting you think we might decide not to f you after all,
so drop your pants and close your mouth. At any rate we're closing
this for comments so you can't make your voice heard because it's
bugging the developers even some who might actually care about you, so
f u about that too."

Wow.

Finally, here's a post from Linus Torvalds regarding a recent patch
that was made that broke existing software depending on the kernel,
which as far as i'm concerned is equivalent in this case to breaking
the functionality that existing users were depending on in Chrome:
[N.B.: warning, very strong language!]

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/8/495

"From      Linus Torvalds <>
Date    Thu, 8 Mar 2012 15:40:26 -0800
Subject Re: [PATCH] sysfs: Optionally count subdirectories to support
buggy applications

On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Eric W. Biederman

This is *not* about some arbitrary "30-year backwards compatibility".

This is about your patch BREAKING EXISTING BINARIES.

So stop the f*&^ing around already. The patch was shown to be broken,
stop making excuses, and stop blathering.

End of story. Binary compatibility is more important than *any* of
your patches. If you continue to argue anything else or making
excuses, I'm going to ask people to just ignore your patches entirely.

Seriously. Binary compatibility is *so* important that I do not want
to have anything to do with kernel developers who don't understand
that importance. If you continue to pooh-pooh the issue, you only show
yourself to be unreliable.  Don't do it.

Dammit, I'm continually surprised by the *idiots* out there that don't
understand that binary compatibility is one of the absolute top
priorities. The *only* reason for an OS kernel existing in the first
place is to serve user-space. The kernel has no relevance on its own.
Breaking existing binaries - and then not acknowledging how horribly
bad that was - is just about the *worst* offense any kernel developer
can do.

Because that shows that they don't understand what the whole *point*
of the kernel was after all. We're not masturbating around with some
research project.  We never were. Even when Linux was young, the whole
and only point was to make a *usable* system. It's why it's not some
crazy drug-induced microkernel or other random crazy thing.

Really.

                     Linus"

Or, my ...

read more »

Lisa, thank you for the lengthy, thoughtful, interesting tirade. :) Now
here's the thing that puzzles me. 83K+ users of Firefox Tree Tabs! That was
interesting. And even with the delightful Tree Tabs design, users still had
to recognize that they had a problem -- lack of space for readable tab
names -- and then go find a solution. So, how come none of the technical
press have picked up this issue? Surely someone or more of us in this small
but exceeding angry group knows some one or more people that could make
something out of this?

For that matter, why isn't moving tabs to the side for all browsers a meme.
With today's wide monitors in particular, it makes great sense for improved
usability.

  --David

They will close this one like the others, with no reason at all, hoping we
will stop trying and forget about this.

Chrome (and frankly any other browser without sidetabs support) suck at
handling many tabs, even on a 30 inch monitors, devs should understand that
this is an important feature and must be added back.

We have two options, fork chrome and add sidetabs support or use firefox or
any other alternative.

I wonder what the plans are for SRWare Iron browser <http://srware.net/en/>,
a Chrome fork with privacy as its highest value? I'm using its version 13
to retain side tabs in a close to Chrome browser.

Here is something to read about SRWare Iron...
http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2009/12/iron.html

☆*PhistucK*

Interesting read that certainly affects my impression of Iron. Thanks for
bringing it to my attention.
  --David

Just my two $0.02

On 3/24/12, David Phillips <da...@qxo.com> wrote:

There lies the other flaw in their thinking.  They are pissing on the
tech users, the ones who loved Firefox when it came on the scene, the
ones who advocated it to all their non-tech friends because it's
better than Intenet Explorer.  These were then the same people who
started moving the masses to Chrome and who will move all their
friends on to the next great thing.

Please Chrome, don't stop being the next great thing, I fear it may
already be happening!

Everyone get the word out, lets try and get the same attention in this
obscure feature request Google group that we had on the issue tracker.

~ Fred

On Mar 25, 12:24 am, Prabal <prabal....@gmail.com> wrote:

This sort of reminds me of the Windows 8 Metro interface.  It sounds
awesome - for a tablet.  But I really doubt it will be used for
serious things.  I mean, Chrome developers - don't you guys multitask?

I might consider running a concurrent fork of Chrome - something like
patching the latest stable build with the sidetabs code.  But I've
heard it takes hours to build Chrome, and it sounds like a lot of
work.  I've already got a day job and a bunch of hobbies.  It's just
sort of depressing.  Speaking of day job... good night.

Also, the closest standard multitasking element I see is FF's
Panorama.  What power users usually use?

On Apr 12, 12:15 am, virtualAdmin <mrcul...@gmail.com> wrote:

Everyone has their pet option, however my impression is that
Google-Chrome is mostly for the mainstream regular user. That user
would unlikely find side tabs useful.