New extension: Tab Sidebar 1.0 (Firefox 1.5b1 upwards)

[Mossop]

The tab sidebar extension, if you haven't heard of it already, provides a sidebar in the browser that can act as a replacement to the main tab bar, with extras. The most obvious extra is that each tab includes a preview of the web page that is continually updated, but you also get navigation buttons for each tab.

Since Tab Sidebar provides a replacement for the main tab bar, when the sidebar is visible, Firefox's main tab bar will be hidden. If you still wish to use the main tab bar then you can show it again from the Tab Sidebar options.

See the homepage for more details.

Otherwise, let me know what you think.

Install/Download

[mezziah]

Very nice idea, really.

Ideas for future development:

- allow middle-click for closing tabs
- allow manual image resizing
- make a SeaMonkey port (yes, I know that it's hard and it probably won't happen... but it's just an idea)

Otherwise I'm happy with it, it just works fine here.

[Recall]

For some reason this extension does not work with ANY of the of the optimised third party builds. Any ideas?

[Mossop]

For some reason this extension does not work with ANY of the of the optimised third party builds. Any ideas?

What doesnt work about it? Any errors in the JS console and can you point me to any of the optimised builds?

[gorgias]

I get this error:

Code: Select all

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE) [nsIDOMHTMLCanvasElement.getContext]"  nsresult: "0x80070057 (NS_ERROR_ILLEGAL_VALUE)"  location: "JS frame :: chrome://tabsidebar/content/bindings.xml :: redraw :: line 535"  data: no]


I checked about:buildconfig for the latest nightly and it has --enable-canvas
in my build I have --enable-cairo I thought that would enable canvas as well but now I'm not sure. Trying to make a new build now.

[Mossop]

Ok yeah if the canvas isnt in Firefox then it will cause problems. You can test if canvas is there with the following examples:

http://developer.mozilla.org/samples/ra ... aster.html
http://www.wirelesshamster.com/cosas/ca ... a_set.html

I sort things so my code works if canvas doesnt work and I guess the extension is still of some use in that case.

Mossop

[Recall]

Ok yeah if the canvas isnt in Firefox then it will cause problems. You can test if canvas is there with the following examples:

http://developer.mozilla.org/samples/ra ... aster.html
http://www.wirelesshamster.com/cosas/ca ... a_set.html

I sort things so my code works if canvas doesnt work and I guess the extension is still of some use in that case.

Mossop

Ahh cool, ok off to ask boba to include canvas in his builds, thanks!

[asqueella]

Very cool. One thing that annoys me is that for a certain width of the sidebar when you open the fourth tab or so, the vertical scrollbar appears, and disappears again, probably due to thumbnails autoresizing themselves.

[xeen]

Great idea, if you now implement the standard tab operations I'd use that extension as a tab bar rather than my normal tabbar
Would be really great if you could add middle click closing and double clicking on a blank part=new tab and stuff. Like normal tabbar, but I doubt it's possible to copy the settings for the tabbar since most of them are set by extensions, at least for my configuration

Another thing is: I can't see the X and reload button in the upper part of a page box, using the Brushed theme. I don't know if it's a bug of the theme or if it's your extensions, any ideas?

[Mossop]

One thing that annoys me is that for a certain width of the sidebar when you open the fourth tab or so, the vertical scrollbar appears, and disappears again, probably due to thumbnails autoresizing themselves.

Yeah the resizing jumps about a bit right now. I'm working on cleaning this up.

Great idea, if you now implement the standard tab operations I'd use that extension as a tab bar rather than my normal tabbar
Would be really great if you could add middle click closing and double clicking on a blank part=new tab and stuff. Like normal tabbar, but I doubt it's possible to copy the settings for the tabbar since most of them are set by extensions, at least for my configuration

Yeah unfortunatly I think the best I can do for now is have the same behaviours as the default tab bar, then maybe a little further down the line allow consomisation of that.

Another thing is: I can't see the X and reload button in the upper part of a page box, using the Brushed theme. I don't know if it's a bug of the theme or if it's your extensions, any ideas?

I was kind of hoping that themes all used standard names for the images, but I imagine that isn't really the case. I'll see what I can do about making how I do things more compatible with other themes.

[stonedyak]

Cool extension. It'd be nice if you could make each tab take up less vertical space so more can be visible at once. Probably the least useful element is the URL - you can't see most of it anyway. Maybe have the URL as a tooltip. Perhaps also have a preference to show the close/reload buttons or not - or have them appear on top of the image on hover or something.

[Mossop]

Cool extension. It'd be nice if you could make each tab take up less vertical space so more can be visible at once. Probably the least useful element is the URL - you can't see most of it anyway. Maybe have the URL as a tooltip. Perhaps also have a preference to show the close/reload buttons or not - or have them appear on top of the image on hover or something.

You'll be glad to know that thst already been requested and the next release will let you turn on and off many of the items on display. I did want to make the buttons hover over the preview, I haven't quite managed to get that working yet though.

[rue]

mossop:
Take a look at iRider's approach, when you have a moment: <a href="http://irider.com/irider/index.htm#QuickOverview">linked</a>.
.
The subgrouping / caching / offline-previewing / bookmarks-and-live-pages-all-mixed-in: would be.. killer stuff. -- Especially if subgroups were collapsable.

[Mossop]

mossop:
Take a look at iRider's approach, when you have a moment: <a href="http://irider.com/irider/index.htm#QuickOverview">linked</a>.
.
The subgrouping / caching / offline-previewing / bookmarks-and-live-pages-all-mixed-in: would be.. killer stuff. -- Especially if subgroups were collapsable.

Wow, that does look pretty spectacular. I think that much functionality may have to wait a bit until I get the basic features working properly

Mossop

[Recall]

Just wanna confirm that canvas fixed the problem for your extension. Its rather cool I must say

Oh and some JS errors you may wanna fix

Error: previews is not defined
Source file: chrome://tabsidebar/content/sidebar.js
Line: 50

previews.redraw();

Error: document has no properties
Source file: chrome://tabsidebar/content/bindings.xml
Line: 114


return document.getElementsByTagName("tabpreview");