CustomCSSforFx VS treestyletab

As noted, there are quite a few of these, I use this project:

https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx.

It's actively maintained and lets me put the tab bar directly above the content but you can set it up to fully return you to the days of Firefox 4 if you want...

Just in case you do not know or you are interested, the Firefox's UI is mere CSS, one can customize it through "chrome/userChrome.css" in the profile folder of the user. I put my tabs under the bookmarks for example, just above the page content, with the template from the CustomCSSforFx[1] project, and modified some colors and icons.

Firefox have also the "Browser Toolbox"[2] -and is homologous to the web development tools- that you can use for to explore the CSS of the UI, select elements, the CSS code, and modify them for to see how would work the modifications before to put them within the userChrome.css

The tabs are under the id=TabsToolbar, so an #TabsToolbar{ display: none !important; } or similar should work, in addition to correct the space that it leaves modifying other params css.

[1] https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx

[2] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/browse...

Years ago, a strange trend began in which browsers removed by default all the classic menu bars, bookmarks, etc., sacrificing usability for aesthetics.

But fortunately with Firefox it is possible to restore that usability through its options, and custom stylesheets allows us to change the interface under our needs. In my case I use as base [0]customcssforfx for to put the tabs under the url bar (by default is shown over the url bar), and from there I add a couple of lines with custom padding, sizes and icons. [0] https://github.com/aris-t2/customcssforfx

The matter is, when I open the browser I see the following rows:

1. Menu bar (file, edit, view, history, bookmarks, tools, help).

2. history buttons |[ URL BAR ]| reload | home | addons (... | Decentral eyes | CookieAutoDelete | uMatrix | uBlockOrigin | Multi-Acount containers ) | Addons icon | Menu bar icon |.

3. Toolbar bookmarks row | Button for unfolding the bookmarks that don't fit in such row.

4. Pinned tabs (they are only icons) | < | Tab_1, Tab_2, Tab_3, ... | > | + | unfold vertical list of the opened tabs |.

5. The page for the selected Tab.

This allows us to use two bookmarks visual groups, the ones that are unfolded through Menubar's bookmarks, and the ones from Toolbar's folder -what in reality is a subfolder from menubar's bookmarks- that it's shown as 3rd row in the interface. Also the easy access to CookieAutoDelete, uMatrix, uBlockOrigin current page options are essential.

In the Toolbar bookmarks, for being able to visually have more folders as "quick access" row line, I use acronyms as folder names (just for the first ones until fill that space). This between separators, and also mere url icons bookmarks (by removing the bookmark title name its just showed the page icon).

When one push one those folders are unfold all the related sub-folders and sub-bookmarks.

Also, equally important, the folders and bookmarks that don't fit in such row are easily accessible by pushing an icon at the right corner, what unfolds a vertical list with the rest the bookmarks. This is important because in such toolbar one usually have several hundreds of independent bookmarks and folders by topics, with infinite sub-folders and their respective bookmarks, etc.

This let us in Firefox with:

Pinned tabs (that I usually have linked to multi containers), the current session opened tabs, the usability of to have all those topics by clicking the folder or icon, a second different visual group of tabs through Menubar's bookmarks. If one want to add to those folders/topics the page is being read, it's just needed to drag and drop the url there. Also all those folders have the option "open it all in tabs".

I can not think in browsing comfortable without such interface and tools as a starting.

I guess you need to use whatever version of the Aris CSS is meant to be used with a specific version of Fx; it's detailed here.

I am using tyhe most recent https://github.com/aris-t2/customcssforfx code but I can't get my previous adds for Bookmark sizing and padding to work.

Yes Aris: https://github.com/aris-t2/customcssforfx

I am using the userchrome CSS here and I've tried adding height, margin, and padding variations to a lot of different ids and cannot find which of them controls the total tab height. (My current CSS state is that of the code I linked)

I'm trying to use the userchrome CSS here to put the tabs below the navigation bar, and it does indeed move the tabs below the navigation bar but then leaves the vertical space for the tabs on top of the navigation bar as inactive dead space. What do I need to do to fix this? I also tried the alt version of the CSS code and got the same thing.

TreeStyleTabs author lists some more elaborate css [1].

[1] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...

Addressing grandparent's comment regarding lack of tab grouping, I made a custom stylesheet for TST that somewhat tries to tackle this:

https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/discussions/3369

I was really enjoying tree tabs and panels of the Arc browser [0] but decided to rollback to firefox so I could have something cross platform. Sidebery lets me do nested tab groups, tab panels, plus its got my bookmarks as a panel too. Performance so far is really good, with ~50 tabs anyway.

Only trouble is I had to go to relatively great lengths to hide my horizontal tabs: enable userChrome stylesheets, go to about:support to find my Profile folder, create a chrome folder, create a userChrome.css file and paste contents from [1], and restart. So now I have only the side bar of tree tabs, and a hot key to hide/show. Screencap attached [2]

[0] https://arc.net/

[1] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...

[2] https://coltenj.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-20...

Out of the box Tree Style Tabs is not very good, due to decisions made by Firefox that are beyond its control.

Enabling the desires behavior likely requires quite a few steps beyond just installing the extension.

https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/wiki/Code-snippets-fo...

Originally, Firefox had a dropdown menu that allowed the user to choose whether tabs were on the top, bottom, left, or right.

This has been an annoying trend with Firefox for some time. They take the default, expected functionality, marginalize it while saying "Users who prefer the old way can enable it in a setting / extension" and then the setting gets deprecated or the extension gets broken by Firefox.

See also: "Classic Theme Restorer".

I don't really think anyone is copying anyone here. This is a popular feature for browsers that has been around for over a decade.

Orion[1] is another recent MacOS browser that released before Arc in 2021 and has vertical tabs. Edge had vertical tabs as an experiment back in 2020[2] and is full feature now. Vivaldi has had vertical tabs since 2015[3]. It might not count since it's not built in, but Firefox has had vertical tab extensions since 2007[4].

[1]https://browser.kagi.com/

[2] https://www.howtogeek.com/697986/how-to-enable-and-use-verti...

[3]https://www.maketecheasier.com/vertical-tabs-browsers/

[4]https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/graphs/contributors

Use treestyletab

If you need further help with this, use the official Tree Style Tab forum or look for solutions on /r/FirefoxCSS.