The problems these browsers are trying to solve aren't web browser problems, they're window manager problems. Your web browser shouldn't try to be a window manager.
- If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.
- If you want to have several web pages open but not visible, so that you can switch between them (i.e., tabs), just use your window manager's tabs, stacks, or workspaces.
- If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.
- If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces. You can even name workspaces according to projects or tasks, and assign windows to them automatically.
Any modern window manager will do, but ones with automatic tiling are the best. Sway, i3, Monad, Hyprland, Awesome, and Newm are a few.
Personally I agree with split panes in browsers - but not that it's better to use desktop workspaces than have workspaces to contain browser tabs.
I think a 'mail' workspace is useful - especially if those tabs aren't running when you switch workspaces... haven't tried it yet, how's it much different to a 'mail' folder with bookmarks inside).
I can't understand people who want 100 tabs open. Neer happened to me, I think going on over 20 or 30 is getting crazy already and time to sort things out.
You're basically saying web browsers and other applications (including IDEs, chat apps, etc) should remove support for tabs and rely on WMs providing tab functionality. Some of tiling managers you mentioned that I'm familiar with don't have any functionality I would be happy replacing browser tabs with.
> If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.
Bookmarks and history have very different UX from tabs, they are clunky to use and I would never prefer them to opening 100 tabs, sorry.
> If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces
These workspaces don't enable separation of cookies and other state, they have a very different use case to browser workspaces.
Tbh, I think this is way more subjective then you're making it out to be. I subjectively would not want to use a WM for most of these points.
> - If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.
I feel Edge does this better then any browser or WM. As a user, I don't want to see the browser's window border, or UI duplicated. Edge has a very easy and friendly split view does exactly what I would expect.
> - If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.
I'm sorry, but I am not going to add every article I may want to read later as a bookmark or add to my history. If I added it as a bookmark and read it, I'll have to remove it as a bookmark next. That's already more steps then just opening it in a background tab by middle clicking my mouse and closing the tab after reading it. My bookmarks are for items that I want to keep, not one time uses.
> - If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces. You can even name workspaces according to projects or tasks, and assign windows to them automatically.
Nope. I have different profiles for my browser to seperate accounts, cookies, history, settings, etc... I don't think a WM could do this like using a browser could. In Edge I can just open the browser in my work profile and my Google work account is logged in with my Slack as a pinned tab versus using my personal profile and having my personal Google account logged in with YT Music as a pinned tab. This is a critical feature to me.
Yup, that 100 tab comment had me instantly clocking them as an i3 (or similar) user. There's just something about those types of window managers that has them convinced it's some kind of panacea for every problem. We already have tabs and we already have bookmarks: if bookmarks were an easier way to queue things up to look at later than tabs, most people would already be doing that, and yet tabs prevail. There must therefore be something about tabs that people find more useful and or more convenient than bookmarks.
The "just use bookmarks, bro" mindset comes from their foregone conclusion that windows are good, tabs are bad, therefore anything that favours tabs is also bad and should be done differently if you insist on doing it at all. Just let people have tabs.
> There must therefore be something about tabs that people find more useful and or more convenient than bookmarks.
I suspect it really is as simple as 'tabs are always visible'. Hidden behind a menu, it's easy to forget bookmarks exist unless you really buy into that way of working and open your bookmarks menu frequently. Tabs are the 'default' alternative. However, I do think most browser bookmarking could be improved immeasurably — start by having a proper bookmark manager, similar to something like Pinboard.
I highly disagree with this. I use both terminal multiplexers and browsers with split window functionality for portability reasons. I use multiple operating systems in different environments and can't rely on a tiling window manager in some of them. I can rely on my terminal multiplexer and browser tiling working wherever I am running the program the same way every time.
This is all kind of just your opinion that you are stating as hard fact
I haven't logged into this site for years but just had to after this... what a load of rubbish. Zen browser is showing what firefox should have been at least half a decade ago.
Not at all. Zen browser is trying to achieve Vivaldi UI on the Firefox browser - but more limited. Opera has been doing this for years...
More fluid tab experience looked nice - though I don't prefer vertical tabs, I liked that I could drag to make them bigger/compact, drag them to top/bottom/sides, and use a shortcut to HideUI.
HideUI is the single most loved feature of this 'Firefox' for me. To get rid of the tab/tool/URL bars, but have access (via keyboard/mouseover) is awesome... though better if we could assign something like F7 tabs F4 toolbar.
Edge has a convenient split view feature that allows you to set links from the first pane to open in the second pane, rather than in a new tab. Particularly useful for browsing Hacker News etc.
In ideal world, but you should consider about cross-platform capability and usability, most os window managements sucks, that's why web browsers implement their own.
- If you want to have two web pages side-by-side, you don't need a web browser that can handle split panes. Just have each web page in its own window and use your window manager to put them side-by-side. Tiling window managers will do this automatically.
- If you want to have several web pages open but not visible, so that you can switch between them (i.e., tabs), just use your window manager's tabs, stacks, or workspaces.
- If you have want to have 100 tabs open, you should be using bookmarks or history instead of tabs.
- If you want to have different workspaces, profiles, or so on, use your window manager's workspaces. You can even name workspaces according to projects or tasks, and assign windows to them automatically.
Any modern window manager will do, but ones with automatic tiling are the best. Sway, i3, Monad, Hyprland, Awesome, and Newm are a few.