My take on Chrome side tabs

[David Phillips]

I posted some thoughts on Google+ about Chrome side tabs here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110913110102141511020/posts/1UmkDcrmHnL

I'm working right now in FireFox with the Tree Tabs extension with
seven tabs pinned as "app" tabs, and 19 other tabs, one of which is
nested to two levels. Not all that many, but still so many that it
would be an exercise in regular frustration to do this with Chrome's
(or any browser's) horizontal tabs.

Google has ditched a lot of other initiatives that I used and thought
were worthwhile, such as Health and Solar energy tracker. But I never
said anything about those because there were other good non-Google
alternatives, and those were never well integrated into the Google
empire. But I had become so attached to Chrome and then to side tabs,
that it was a hurtful blow to lose them.

As I look about my Desktop: Windows Explorer, Windows Media Center,
Filezilla, Adobe Reader, Sonos Desktop, Spotify, and on and on, I
don't see anything that uses a horizontal display for other than
menus. The information you want to browse is all displayed in a
vertical stack.

I have to assume that Chrome developers are mired in the retrograde,
"Well, that's (horizontally) the way browser's have always done it
(displayed tabs), so if it ain't broke, don't bother improving it."

--David

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

On 13 February 2012 15:27, David Phillips <da...@qxo.com> wrote:
> I have to assume that Chrome developers are mired in the retrograde,
> "Well, that's (horizontally) the way browser's have always done it
> (displayed tabs), so if it ain't broke, don't bother improving it."

You don't have to assume anything; the reasoning why this was removed
is stated pretty clearly in the closing of the relevant bugs. You may,
specifically, want to read the final comment in the most recent bug:

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

where a future way that this may be doable in an extension is mentioned.

--
Torne (Richard Coles)
to...@google.com

[iipavlov]

Sorry Torne, but for me:

"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."

is far from "preaty clearly" reasoning.

Anyway it's obvious that you don't want and/or are not able to
implement this feature. Lets hope that eventually "this may be doable
in an extension" some day.

I personally manage to live without the vertical tabs in Chrome (as
also without the PKI signing support, which prevents me from using my
on-line banking with Chrome), but what upsets me and I guess also most
of the site tabs supporters, is that you (Chrome developers) keep
insist to have clearly explained the reasons for this decision, while
you failed to do this.

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

On 13 February 2012 16:43, iipavlov <iipa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry Torne, but for me:
>
> "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."
>
> is far from "preaty clearly" reasoning.

Have you also read all the chromium developer comments in other bugs
on this topic? I didn't mean that single comment explains everything;
I was drawing your attention to the goal of having this doable in an
extension in future.

> I personally manage to live without the vertical tabs in Chrome (as
> also without the PKI signing support, which prevents me from using my
> on-line banking with Chrome), but what upsets me and I guess also most
> of the site tabs supporters, is that you (Chrome developers) keep
> insist to have clearly explained the reasons for this decision, while
> you failed to do this.

The reason, as far as I know (I did not work on this feature, but have
followed some of the previous discussions about its removal) is
"wasn't finished, wasn't implemented on all platforms, was an ongoing
maintenance issue, and very few people used it". As pkasting
acknowledges in the comment I referred you to, we are aware that the
few people who did use it were very attached to it, but developer
resources are finite.

[David Phillips]

Well clearly, Torne, I'm familiar with that "explanation" you mention,
since I cite it. And I have followed up with the referenced bug:
51084, where I find such things as this, "... Chrome UX consistent,
sidebar is always displayed on the right side of the window, left side
is reserved for the page content. For the same reason, as of now there
are no plans to let extension authors to control sidebar placement."
This tells me that Chrome developers are a bunch of arrogant amateurs
at user interface development. (I'm pissed, and I'm sorry that I can't
at the moment think of a way of saying something reasonable.)

I love the minimalist aesthetic of Chrome, and I expect most of its
users do as well. But to leap from that to say that sidebar on the
right -- and ONLY on the right -- is the (or A) standard just blows me
away. Look at a dictionary, an index, a glossary, Windows Explorer.
The index term, in this case the browser tab, is on the Left, and the
content is on the Right -- at least in Western culture.

Are the Chrome developers or managers from countries where text is
read from right to left? That's the only rationale I can think of for
this particular bizarre UX assertion.

But go beyond that absurdity to core principles of software design.
What decent object oriented programmer (or UX designer) in this modern
age would say that you should artificially constrain what is
reasonable for the user to do? (I.e., let users or extensions put a
side/top/bottom/floating bar anywhere they think makes sense for
them!)

Just one final point. As you say, the so called pretty clear
explanation points to a discussion (id-52084) as, "a future way that
this may be doable in an extension." So not only do we have no clear
indication if or when it will ever be doable, if doable. But even if
that development takes place it will still require someone to develop
the extension.
--David

[David Phillips]

P.S. I appreciate, Torne, your willingness to engage at all, and to be
more reasonable about it than I am.

[David Phillips]

P.P.S. As in, "Don't hold your breath."

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=51084
Comment 41 by a...@chromium.org, Nov 9, 2011

The sidebar's on ice for now. We're going to go through an API
prioritization exercise near the end of the year to figure out what's
important for 2012, so there's some chance it could resurface. I'd put
the probability pretty low though.

[David Phillips]

P.P.P.S. I wonder if the kind of users who discovered and began using
side tabs are also the sort of people who set browser preferences to
not phone home to developers, and whether that had any impact on
Chrome development management to pull side tabs.

By the way, I separate the reasonableness or not of the decision to
pull support for the feature, from the clearly unreasonable, cavalier,
arrogant, thoughtless, unprofessional way it was (and is still being)
handled.

[Torne (Richard Coles)]

On 13 February 2012 17:54, David Phillips <da...@qxo.com> wrote:
> Are the Chrome developers or managers from countries where text is
> read from right to left? That's the only rationale I can think of for
> this particular bizarre UX assertion.

I am not a UX designer and have no desire to be, so I will not comment
on the design aspect here.

> But go beyond that absurdity to core principles of software design.
> What decent object oriented programmer (or UX designer) in this modern
> age would say that you should artificially constrain what is
> reasonable for the user to do? (I.e., let users or extensions put a
> side/top/bottom/floating bar anywhere they think makes sense for
> them!)

Pretty much all software has many artificial constraints on what the
user can do, because there are practical limits to how many
configurations it's possible to test, and making it trivial for users
to get into entirely untested states is a recipe for disaster. I
realise you probably won't consider this relevant in this particular
case (since it's "only" a couple of choices) but this logic can
reasonably be applied to a very long list of things, and thanks to
multiplication this produces a lot of configurations very rapidly :)

This is somewhat tangential to the actual side tabs issue in any case;
the removal of the side tab code is *not* just a case of "artifically
constraining" what the user can do, since it was a separate
implementation which had to be kept up to date.

> Just one final point. As you say, the so called pretty clear
> explanation points to a discussion (id-52084) as, "a future way that
> this may be doable in an extension." So not only do we have no clear
> indication if or when it will ever be doable, if doable. But even if
> that development takes place it will still require someone to develop
> the extension.

I am also not a project manager and don't set the direction of the project, but:

Like most open source projects (and most closed source projects, for
that matter), we don't commit to timelines. I understand that this can
be frustrating to users, especially when it looks like a feature is
not just a long way off but may never happen at all, but you have to
understand that the project's priorities are never going to match up
with any specific user's priorities. A very small number of users who
*really want* a feature does not, generally, outweigh a much larger
number of users who would be better served by devoting resources
elsewhere.

> By the way, I separate the reasonableness or not of the decision to
> pull support for the feature, from the clearly unreasonable, cavalier,
> arrogant, thoughtless, unprofessional way it was (and is still being)
> handled.

I really don't know what you expect, here, and at this point I'm done;
I started replying here under the assumption that some or all of the
contributors to the thread were only recently aware of this removal
(when stable updated) and hadn't seen the previous discussions, and
thus would benefit from the explanation; I've now done that, and
continuing to retread the same ground with people who have already
seen the previous discussions is not useful, since I didn't implement,
or make any decisions about, this feature.

[David Phillips]

Richard, thank you for your thoughtful and well considered reply.
--David

[Chad H.]

This is a terrible way to look at software development:

"A very small number of users who *really want* a feature does not,
generally, outweigh a much larger number of users who would be better
served by devoting resources elsewhere. "

First of all, this number is very small because of the degree of
difficulty of turning on the feature. Side tabs do not come bundled
with any browser, therefor the vast majority of users have no idea it
even exists, or if it is even an option. One thing I can guarantee is
that 99.9% of Chrome users are on widescreen monitors. Those users are
also using monitors wider than 1000px, which is the general width
websites are designed for. So for each website a user visits, there is
an enormous amount of space wasted on the left and right side of the
actual content areas of the websites.

Also why is the Chrome team assuming that even with this feature
readily available the number will remain small? I would not be
surprised if you had a 50/50 split of users if you had that option
available on installation.

With that said, how can anyone disagree with the fact that this is a
serious UX issue that needs to be addressed? Or does the Chrome team
feel it is important to have that wasted space on the left and right
sides of websites?

Side tabs addresses the issue of wasted space on the sides of
websites, and grants the user some more vertical space. How is that
not on the top of the list of things to do?

[Tibor]

I also have widescreen but I rarely browse in a maximised window or
full screen, my browser window is resized to approximately 1000 pixels
widht.
I only wanted to point out that the screen size doesn't necessarily is
the size of browser windows.

[Fred]

We also have a larger thread requesting this feature here if you want
to voice your support:
http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-discuss/browse_thread/thread/62095b30958a3374/0b35da7c5e6c4fb1#0b35da7c5e6c4fb1

~ Fred

On Feb 26, 6:14 am, Tibor <jbti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I also have widescreen but I rarely browse in a maximised window or
> full screen, my browser window is resized to approximately 1000 pixels
> widht.
> I only wanted to point out that the screen size doesn't necessarily is
> the size of browser windows.
>
> On Feb 25, 8:47 pm, "Chad H." <chadhunt...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > This is a terrible way to look at software development:
>
> > "A very small number of users who *really want* a feature does not,
> > generally, outweigh a much larger number of users who would be better
> > served by devoting resources elsewhere. "
>
> > First of all, this number is very small because of the degree of

> > difficulty of turning on the feature.Sidetabsdo not come bundled

> > with any browser, therefor the vast majority of users have no idea it
> > even exists, or if it is even an option. One thing I can guarantee is
> > that 99.9% of Chrome users are on widescreen monitors. Those users are
> > also using monitors wider than 1000px, which is the general width
> > websites are designed for. So for each website a user visits, there is

> > an enormous amount of space wasted on the left and rightsideof the

> > actual content areas of the websites.
>
> > Also why is the Chrome team assuming that even with this feature
> > readily available the number will remain small? I would not be
> > surprised if you had a 50/50 split of users if you had that option
> > available on installation.
>
> > With that said, how can anyone disagree with the fact that this is a
> > serious UX issue that needs to be addressed? Or does the Chrome team
> > feel it is important to have that wasted space on the left and right
> > sides of websites?
>

> >Sidetabsaddresses the issue of wasted space on the sides of

> > websites, and grants the user some more vertical space. How is that
> > not on the top of the list of things to do?
>
> > On Feb 13, 1:23 pm, "Torne (Richard Coles)" <to...@google.com> wrote:
>
> > > On 13 February 2012 17:54, David Phillips <da...@qxo.com> wrote:
>
> > > > Are the Chrome developers or managers from countries where text is
> > > > read from right to left? That's the only rationale I can think of for
> > > > this particular bizarre UX assertion.
>
> > > I am not a UX designer and have no desire to be, so I will not comment
> > > on the design aspect here.
>
> > > > But go beyond that absurdity to core principles of software design.
> > > > What decent object oriented programmer (or UX designer) in this modern
> > > > age would say that you should artificially constrain what is
> > > > reasonable for the user to do? (I.e., let users or extensions put a
> > > >side/top/bottom/floating bar anywhere they think makes sense for
> > > > them!)
>
> > > Pretty much all software has many artificial constraints on what the
> > > user can do, because there are practical limits to how many
> > > configurations it's possible to test, and making it trivial for users
> > > to get into entirely untested states is a recipe for disaster. I
> > > realise you probably won't consider this relevant in this particular
> > > case (since it's "only" a couple of choices) but this logic can
> > > reasonably be applied to a very long list of things, and thanks to
> > > multiplication this produces a lot of configurations very rapidly :)
>

> > > This is somewhat tangential to the actualsidetabsissue in any case;
> > > the removal of thesidetab code is *not* just a case of "artifically

[David Phillips]

Seth Godin had a good blog article today: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/sethsmainblog/~3/ZBE7AeZ5WMg/how-to-downgrade.html

If only Chrome developers could have read and appreciated it before yanking side tabs (see point #1) without providing any kind of bridge (point #2) to some comparable capability.

[Jason Simone]

Over a year since side tabs were removed and I'm still running Chrome 15... Extensions, the web store, and various other products which check for the latest version are now a thing of the past.

I hadn't wanted to, but I have now just about entirely abandoned Chrome in favor of side tabs on Firefox.

[Vladyslav Volovyk]

Guys. Check this:

TabsOutliner

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabs-outliner/eggkanocgddhmamlbiijnphhppkpkmkl?hl=en

a screenshot:

http://i.imgur.com/HkTGWJT.jpg

The side tabs in compare to this is anachronism.

And only waste a lot of space when there is only 3-4 tabs open in a window.

[Tom Miller]

I've tried a couple side tabs extensions for Chrome to duplicate Tree-style Tabs but none is a direct replacement. I have, however, had success using Sidewise tabs in getting most of what I want out of side tabs. There is no app pinning analog but most of the rest works well. Using it in Linux/KDE gives you some window manager options that can make it seem more seamless.