Tabbed Browsing/User Interface Design

Introduction

Tabbed browsing is one of the most visible aspects of Firefox, and has a large number of use cases.

Improvements in the Firefox 2 cycle will focus on the following aspects:

• Shifting to new tabs instead of new windows by default
• Improving discoverability for tabbed browsing
• Support close buttons on tabs for initial discoverability
• Providing a solution to tab overflow (too many tabs)
• Providing support for reopening closed tabs
• Handling "open in tabs" better and more consistently across the UI.
• Examining foreground vs. background heuristic for consistency concerns

Requirements

• Tab ordering/reordering should be preserved
• Research on frequency of use cases should be done, probably via instrumentation+flexible tab prefs, in order to optimize for the most common use-cases.
• Full keyboard access (implemented for Firefox 1.5) should be preserved.
• Needs to be flexible enough to fit the needs our current users have, while providing a more obvious and understandable default configuration.

Design Docs

• Tab Overflow