I performed a test again. This is on a 1920x1080p screen, which is pretty standard. Firefox progressively shrinks tabs, until there are 21 or so. Then, you can scroll the tab bar left and right with the scrollwheel.
Chrome continues shrinking tabs, until there are 90 or so. Then you can switch tabs with the scrollwheel or with the drop-down arrow on the right. However, it will fail to display some of the most recently opened tabs in the tab bar.
My workflow usually consists in opening a new tab for a new activity, for instance search the web for a product category. Then open multiple tabs from here, and multiple other tabs from each, while searching more and more precise information (like spec sheets, or digging into some documentation). I progressively walk back, closing the tabs as I am done researching a topic. This process is very analogous to a mind map (and it's a representation I wish was available in browsers, together with annotations, a bit like pearltrees). Tree-style tabs come close enough, as you can collapse a group or close it at once.
The reason why Firefox's approach work is analogous to the principle of locality[1]: data that needs to be frequently accessed tends to be close together (in time and space). By opening new tabs close to the current one (middle-click a link or the new tab button), they stay close to each other, and scrolling the tab bar allows to shift your context window. It works quite well.
Now, Firefox has one big advantage compared to Chrome: its address bar is very effective for jumping to an open tab far away (or some matching browser history/bookmarks). Chrome probably has a conflict of interest here where they want you to search the web first. If you want to jump back to a topic 40 tabs to the left, you don't have to scroll, just type in some keywords in the address bar.
Lastly, and that works with both browsers (still thanks to this locality principle), you can shift-select multiple tabs to move them to a new window to form a "tab group" substitute. Though in practice, I just tend to use private windows.
> Many of us don't have enough horizontal space on all their machines to comfortably waste a bunch of it on a tree style tabs sidebar.
Now, I find this argument to be weak. The only screen I have trouble using it is my vertical 1360x768p screen (so 768 horizontal pixels). Most screens will otherwise fit this quite comfortably, and have more horizontal than vertical real estate. The Tree Style Tab extension, by default, is toggled with F1, so I just hide it on that screen, and bring it up when needed. Thinking about this, some auto-hiding panel could work very well here.
I am conceding the fact that my initial reply was exaggerated. After testing this again, Chromium's usability threshold is more around 30 tabs. And given the RAM chromium requires for maintaining numerous tabs, I am wondering if it isn't by design.
To summarize, well, it probably depends on what you are used to... You wouldn't catch me dead on either hill though.
I performed a test again. This is on a 1920x1080p screen, which is pretty standard. Firefox progressively shrinks tabs, until there are 21 or so. Then, you can scroll the tab bar left and right with the scrollwheel.
Chrome continues shrinking tabs, until there are 90 or so. Then you can switch tabs with the scrollwheel or with the drop-down arrow on the right. However, it will fail to display some of the most recently opened tabs in the tab bar.
My workflow usually consists in opening a new tab for a new activity, for instance search the web for a product category. Then open multiple tabs from here, and multiple other tabs from each, while searching more and more precise information (like spec sheets, or digging into some documentation). I progressively walk back, closing the tabs as I am done researching a topic. This process is very analogous to a mind map (and it's a representation I wish was available in browsers, together with annotations, a bit like pearltrees). Tree-style tabs come close enough, as you can collapse a group or close it at once.
The reason why Firefox's approach work is analogous to the principle of locality[1]: data that needs to be frequently accessed tends to be close together (in time and space). By opening new tabs close to the current one (middle-click a link or the new tab button), they stay close to each other, and scrolling the tab bar allows to shift your context window. It works quite well.
Now, Firefox has one big advantage compared to Chrome: its address bar is very effective for jumping to an open tab far away (or some matching browser history/bookmarks). Chrome probably has a conflict of interest here where they want you to search the web first. If you want to jump back to a topic 40 tabs to the left, you don't have to scroll, just type in some keywords in the address bar.
Lastly, and that works with both browsers (still thanks to this locality principle), you can shift-select multiple tabs to move them to a new window to form a "tab group" substitute. Though in practice, I just tend to use private windows.
> Many of us don't have enough horizontal space on all their machines to comfortably waste a bunch of it on a tree style tabs sidebar.
Now, I find this argument to be weak. The only screen I have trouble using it is my vertical 1360x768p screen (so 768 horizontal pixels). Most screens will otherwise fit this quite comfortably, and have more horizontal than vertical real estate. The Tree Style Tab extension, by default, is toggled with F1, so I just hide it on that screen, and bring it up when needed. Thinking about this, some auto-hiding panel could work very well here.
I am conceding the fact that my initial reply was exaggerated. After testing this again, Chromium's usability threshold is more around 30 tabs. And given the RAM chromium requires for maintaining numerous tabs, I am wondering if it isn't by design.
To summarize, well, it probably depends on what you are used to... You wouldn't catch me dead on either hill though.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locality_of_reference