Pinned tabs feature gone

[Chen Yong]

Woke up this morning to find that the latest trunk builds don't offer the ability to pin tabs anymore.

Is this a temporary removal for troubleshooting purposes or some such, or is this feature gone for good?

Thanks in advance for answers.

[Mohamed Mansour]

Hi Chen,

It has been nuked this morning. Scott Violet and engineer in Chrome stated:

"For those of you that noticed your pinned tabs stop working, it's

intentional. Pinned tabs are being nuked and replaced with app tabs.

See http://crbug.com/32845 for details."

-Mohamed Mansour

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[dhw]

That is already discussed here:
http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/thread/50b083e26ab3d8d2

and in http://crbug.com/32845

- The current version of pinned tabs is going away, you will not be
able to pin an arbitrary tab.

- An extension can choose to open an 'app' tab. App tabs look like the
current version of a pinned tab (although they'll likely have a bigger
icon) and behave similarly: they float to the left. One distinct
difference between current pinned tabs and app tabs is that once an
app tab, always an app tab. This means dragging of app tabs will be
restricted to the set of app tabs.

- You can pin an app tab, which just means on closing it the renderer
goes away and you get a different visual treatment (called a phantom
tab). Phantom tabs get resurrected when you click on them and load the
url specified in the extension's manifest.

[Chen Yong]

Since nobody has responsed to this email for the better part of a day, I'll assume that an official explanation for dropping the pinned tabs feature does not exist. Which brings me to the question of: why?

I'll try to not sound too emotional in this email, but I must admit that I'm very, VERY irritated by this change. What was wrong with the previous implementation of pinned tabs? Why does Google see fit to take away the ability to pin any arbitrary tab? Will we now need an extension for every specific site we wish to pin? How does this offer any advantages?

I use the Pin Tabs feature for other than just online apps; I use it as a way to store interesting pages I plan to read later during my browsing session, and the removal of this feature has been extremely disrupting for my browsing habits over the last 10 hours or so. I personally value this feature so much that it's perhaps the only thing keeping me from switching to the Opera 10.50 preview as my main browser. If that ever happens, it'll be a choice reluctantly made, as Chrome and Chromium devs have been kind to me for the past eight months. But unless the devs can show me how the removal of the Pin Tabs feature will benefit rather than piss the hell out of me - or, even better, undo this change POST-HASTE - the switch will have to take place.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:56 AM, Chen Yong <elant...@gmail.com> wrote:

That really sucks. One less reason to use Chrome/Chromium now, at least for me.

Is the rationale behind this change documented anywhere? I'm really curious what the devs were thinking when they removed something as useful as this.

[Chen Yong]

My apologies. I'd previously hit 'Reply' instead of 'Reply to All', and hence my email went to dhw only, instead of to the list.

On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 2:11 AM <d...@chromium.org> wrote:

Hi Chen,

 

I see you have already posted a follow up to this thread on the chromium-discuss

group.  That is probably the best place to ask for the reason for the change as

the developer, Scott Violet, can probably provide a better answer.

 

I didn't get around to reviewing my emails until now.  I did want to ask you

whether you really intended to send me this email personally, or did you want

to send it to the entire chromium-discuss group?  Remember, you need to REPLY=ALL

to send the email to the entire group.

 

-- David

----- Original Message -----

From: Chen Yong

To: dhw

Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 6:56 PM

Subject: Re: Pinned tabs feature gone

That really sucks. One less reason to use Chrome/Chromium now, at least for me.

Is the rationale behind this change documented anywhere? I'm really curious what the devs were thinking when they removed something as useful as this.

On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:49 AM, dhw <d...@chromium.org> wrote:

[BigBouncingBob]

@Chen Yong
As far as I can tell, the new "Pin Tab" feature has already been
implemented in the current beta build (5.0.307.1) which I installed
earlier today.
Some how I missed the old "Pin Tab" feature, but the current
manifestation of it seems very handy.
Pinning a tab will move it to the left of all other tabs, out of the
way of what I'm doing, & even if i accidentally close it the "Phantom
Tab" remains as long as there is one tab still open in the window.
Sorry I missed out on the original implementation of the "Pin Tab
feature to know what's missing in the current build so I could be
enraged with you.
If there can be a way to have the "Phantom Tabs" remain even if I
close out Chrome, that would be a feature I'd like to see added to
this currently awesome feature!
-BBB

[OwenCM]

That Pin Tab feature is only still there because it hasn't been
removed yet (which it will be). The current trunk build is 5.0.312.0
in which the feature does not exist, but will return in the form of
'app' tabs, similar to what we saw in screenshots of ChromiumOS from
the launch event.

[Chen Yong]

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=32845

Feedback on this change has been almost universally negative, with no response or explanation whatsoever from the dev(s) in charge.

C'mon, Google. You can do better than this.

[Geoffery Lassen]

I am also disappointed that the feature is gone, I really liked the
idea.

On Feb 3, 9:46 am, Chen Yong <elanthe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=32845

[PhistucK]

It will come back, soon.

☆PhistucK