Maybe I use browsers differently to most people (I don't think so), but I really feel these features to manage tabs are misguided.
I get through thousands of tabs a week. Tabs don't indicate a web page is significant or persistent. They indicate that I wanted to have two pages open at the same time. Thus it makes no sense to manage tabs: they are an effect of untidiness, not a cause.
What these features are hinting at is some better way to handle common [sites]. I have a dozen or sites that I check every day, and being able to have those all open in one place would be great. But using the poor old tab system for this is not the answer. It already has a job.
Many people use tabs as a task queue. Particularly for sites like HN: someone sees several interesting things but doesn't have time for it right now - he opens it in a tab.
Just because tabs were meant for something else doesn't mean they shouldn't be used for this. If people use tabs this way, then by all means provide a feature to make it work better for this use.
I should point out that there really isn't anything good for this task other than tabs. You might say bookmarks, I say no. Until bookmarks (or some other feature) have a way to separate permanent bookmarks (like a site you frequently reference) from a temorary one (like the article you want to get back to soon) as well as the ability to very quickly remove the bookmark once you're done with it, tabs (or windows for those that have competent window managers) are the best solution right now.
I strongly believe in:
● space = area (programming, twitter, mail)
● window = subject, search, etc
● tabs = the subject expanded (pages relative to a search, links of an article)
Can you see? It has 3 levels of Hierarchy! If you use Google Chrome you have only one! This stacking thing is another trying to circumvent some OS's crappy UI. If something has to be done is go beyond the App centric paradigm and go to the 'task' center paradigm (like Palm OS's stacks).
Actually, all those things can be handled by a competent window manager. If you had the ability to have tags on your windows, and quickly change your view based on those tags, that would be Awesome.
I have Awesome window manager and Firefox with the Pentadactyl (and previously Vimperator) plugin.
I use Awesome's tag system extensively. When tabs aren't in use, the task list then looks and works like tabs - that is they are lined up across the top and you can click on them.
Not only do you get the benefit of the tagging, Awesome can be controlled completely by keyboard. I have mine setup to use Vi-style keybindings. Combine that with both Firefox and tmux using Vi-style keybindings, and you get a really cohesive, reinforcing keyboarding system.
It works great on my netbook for a couple of extra reasons: Firefox's chrome in this setup takes up about 20 pixels (for the status bar, and even that can be hidden if you want), and I don't have to use the horrible trackpad nearly as much.
I do prefer this, but I should point out that there are a few of gotchas to working without tabs. First, Firefox 3.6 is much slower opening a window than a tab. Firefox 4 improves this quite a bit, but it's not yet stable. Second, the Vimperator/Pentadactyl keystroke for opening a window takes two keys (";w") instead of one ("f"); this is probably fixable, but I haven't done it yet. Third, I haven't found a way to make a window open in the background yet; that means to open a window, it's ";w [link]...[mod+j]" - I open a new window then switch back to what I opened it from.
I'm using vimperator now, I didn't know about pentadactyl, thanks!
I actually don't bother forcing everything into windows, I'm fine with firefox managing its own tabs. In fact, I rarely have more than two windows on any one tag (and I really only select one tag at a time...kind of a "everything runs in fullscreen" mode for the most part).
Firefox 4 is doing something similar with its "expose"-like feature for tabs, that lets you group tabs in some way.
I too think it's silly, and I wonder if mozilla/opera are just building things because they think they're cool, or if they actually have user studies that show these are useful features. I expect the former.
I was just thinking to change from opera (that I love since forever) to ff4 because of the tab-candy feature. I tried, but I missed so much the features I got used to, like mouse-gestures, notes, downloads, quickstart thumbnails, no slowdowns...
Finally opera, again, has everything I need, and this tab management actually feels so much more usable and faster then ff.
Isnt this pretty much the same as what firefox "tree style tab" addon has been doing for some time already? Except for the preview option, but im not a big fan of that anyway. And tree style tab was putting the tabs on the side, which imho is better because it saves the precious(on widescreens) vertical space.
Opera has been able to move the tabs to the left side for a while. So combine that with this new feature and you have the basic functionality of that "tree style tab" addon except only 1 level deep but much more polished/usable.
More usable? I'd say definitely not. Tab-style-tree works automatically in the way I like it to the best. If I want to further group things beyond what it automatically does, I grab the tab and move it to where I want it - I don't have to hover there until it snaps to stacked mode.
Furthermore: with Informational Tab, you get thumbnails on all your tabs; with Multiple Tab Handler, you easily select many tabs to move to where you want them. These three plugins work like a perfect trio.
Even better, if you don't like the default behavior, it's highly configurable based on how the tab is opened, and from where (although I don't believe site specific options are available).
It does look polished, and having not tried the new Opera i would not argue about usability.
As a general consideration, having nice window previews sure looks cool(except if they are too small, in which case they look really messy), but i dont think this is an usability improvement. Mostly because a consice title would tell you just as much - in a tenth of the space. Coolness gets confused with usability a bit too often imho.
I've been wanting to move away from Chrome for a while (too many issues in too short a space of time). Opera looks to be the near-bleeding-edge browser I actually want. Minimal UI, draft standards support, efficient and still finds time to be innovative. If you stick with Chrome for the UI give this a try.
I'm not intending to troll, but you seem to be describing Firefox more than Opera. Minimal UI? Sure it only has one more button on the screen, but once you open the context menu, or opera menu things get just as complicated as they have always been for Opera. Not that it's necessarily bad - I think Opera is a great browser, it's just the properties you describe seem to fit Firefox 4 more.
(To address 'draft standards support' - Opera doesn't even have the HTML5 parser or WebGL...the list goes on.)
Mm, when it comes to "minimal UI" I just want as much screen space for the page as possible. At the moment Firefox's tabs don't overlap with the title bar and I was surprised how much this annoys me - Chrome has spoiled me.
After using it for a few days I can't say I particularly like the menu system (although it's smaller than Firefox's in terms or items. Ad blocking doesn't seem to work particularly well either. Opera Link's useful but replicated by every other browser than IE (and Safari? but I'd never use that). My previous post was written on elation or something like it, I'm missing Chrome already.
I actually saw the video link in the article and came back to the comments hoping for screenshots. Video typically makes me wait while the person introduces themselves, explains what they're doing, and it's usually much more of a time-sink than just looking at screens.
I look forward to this once it actually works. Right now, when any stacks are collapsed tab order breaks badly. And you can't have more than one uncollapsed.
I get through thousands of tabs a week. Tabs don't indicate a web page is significant or persistent. They indicate that I wanted to have two pages open at the same time. Thus it makes no sense to manage tabs: they are an effect of untidiness, not a cause.
What these features are hinting at is some better way to handle common [sites]. I have a dozen or sites that I check every day, and being able to have those all open in one place would be great. But using the poor old tab system for this is not the answer. It already has a job.