Split view, tab stacks, tab tree and UI enhancements

[Marin-Kitagawa]

Description

It'd be better to have dual-pane or split-view so that multiple tabs can be viewed simultaneously. Also, the vertical tabs feature (enabled via Experiments) could have a more polished view similar to Edge. It, right now, looks dull with black background. But Edge shows better UI for these vertical tabs.

Also, preview is not being shown (Cards with preview option enabled) when Vertical Tabs are enabled

Another feature is to have nested tabs (as in Tree style tab for Firefox) and stacked tabs as in Vivaldi

One bug in Vertical tabs is the misaligned Window buttons

Brave version (brave://version info)

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│ 1.48.83 Chromium                                  │ 109.0.5414.46 (Official Build) nightly (64-bit)                                                                                                                                      │
│ AllowCertainClientHintsStudy                      │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ Executable Path                                   │ C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser-Nightly\Application\brave.exe                                                                                                           │
│ FirstPartyEphemeralDomainBlockStudy               │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ PartitionBlinkMemoryCacheStudy                    │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ Profile Path                                      │ C:\Users\quant\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser-Nightly\User Data\Default                                                                                                   │
│ EphemeralStorageStudy                             │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ PermissionLifetimeStudy                           │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ Active Variations                                 │ AdRewardsStudy:NextPaymentDay                                                                                                                                                        │
│ MetricsAndCrashSampling                           │ InReportingSample                                                                                                                                                                    │
│ BraveAds.AdNotificationsStudy                     │ AdNotificationTimeout=30                                                                                                                                                             │
│ BraveRewardsWebUiPanelStudy                       │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ ConversionsStudy                                  │ NewDefaultPattern                                                                                                                                                                    │
│ BraveAutoTranslateStudy                           │ AutoTranslateDisabled                                                                                                                                                                │
│ Default1pBlockingStudy                            │ Disabled                                                                                                                                                                             │
│ PartitionConnectionsByNetworkIsolationKeyStudy    │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ Revision                                          │ 6e36b77363ef3febbe792af680fa1367993ddcf0-refs/branch-heads/5414@{#709}                                                                                                               │
│ BraveScreenFingerprintingBlockerStudy             │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ User Agent                                        │ Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/109.0.0.0 Safari/537.36                                                                      │
│ DeAMPStudy                                        │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ Command Line                                      │ "C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser-Nightly\Application\brave.exe" --disable-domain-reliability --enable-dom-distiller                                                     │
│                                                   │ --component-updater=url-source=https://go-updater.brave.com/extensions                                                                                                               │
│                                                   │ --origin-trial-public-key=bYUKPJoPnCxeNvu72j4EmPuK7tr1PAC7SHh8ld9Mw3E=,fMS4mpO6buLQ/QMd+zJmxzty/VQ6B1EUZqoCU04zoRU= --sync-url=https://sync-v2.brave.com/v2                          │
│                                                   │ --lso-url=https://no-thanks.invalid --variations-server-url=https://variations.brave.com/seed --variations-insecure-server-url=https://variations.brave.com/seed                     │
│                                                   │ --flag-switches-begin --enable-features=BraveVerticalTabs --flag-switches-end                                                                                                        │
│ OS                                                │ Windows 11 Version 22H2 (Build 22621.963)                                                                                                                                            │
│ JavaScript                                        │ V8 10.9.194.6                                                                                                                                                                        │
│ HangWatcher                                       │ Default                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ CosmeticFilteringChildFramesStudy                 │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ ForceDisableBlinkFeatures                         │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ BraveDebounceStudy                                │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ BraveAdblockCookieListOptInStudy                  │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ DisableReduceLanguage                             │ Enabled                                                                                                                                                                              │
│ BraveAds.UserActivityStudy                        │ Triggers=NTPSI/TimeWindow=15m/Threshold=0.0/IdleTimeThreshold=5s                                                                                                                     │
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[waldyrious]

It seems like this issue should be split into multiple ones. I am personally interested in nested (tree-style) tabs, and would like to track an issue about that, specifically.

@rebron would adding separate issues for each of the topics described above be welcome?

[ttang4299]

@waldyrious IMO Split tabs should be one of the highest priorities for new features, Microsoft Edge already introduced it as a new feature recently.

[Marin-Kitagawa]

You're just looking into Edge. Vivaldi released it before Edge. Also, Vivaldi allows 4 tabs instead of just 2 in Edge and Vivaldi allows tab stack and tree-style tabs (via Window icon in the sidebar). So, just looking into Edge for prioritizing the work isn't the right approach in my opinion. Sure Edge has more market share than Vivaldi. But nothing is more innovative and has more features than Vivaldi. Brave beats them all in privacy for sure. I really like Brave to have all these features and I really want it to be the best. So, please prioritize innovation, features and their usefulness to people

[ttang4299]

@Marin-Kitagawa Well, it's not just that Edge and Vivaldi implemented those features first, my primary intention wasn't to make it a race about which browser can implement which features faster, but split tab view is the one feature that brings the most immediately noticeable benefits out of the feature proposals that you brought up (i.e comparing information between 2 different pages/tabs without having to make separate windows and snapping them together).

I do agree with the notion that perhaps all these different feature proposals should have their own issue instead of being clumped into one issue.

[Marin-Kitagawa]

It has nearly been 1.5 years. I don't even see the Window controls of maximize, minimize and close properly aligned. All other browsers with vertical tabs do it really clean (e.g., Edge, Vivaldi). But, why does it take so long to fix a thing as trivial as this? I understand the amount of work that needs to be done for other things asked above, but a thing as small as Window controls? I am glad that Brave is progressing a lot with many new features. For e.g., you have brought in Brave search which I use on a daily basis in lieu of Google. I really like it. But understand that many people have realized the need for vertical tabs. The alignment of those window control buttons just look so awful. It is really disgusting and so annoying. Could you please fix this trivial one first? You have implemented a great task of making the tabs vertical. How long would it take to position these buttons correctly?

I always use Nightly version of Brave and hence, it is not even in the latest (as of writing this comment) release of it.

[ttang4299]

@Marin-Kitagawa All due respect, I think part of the reason this isn't getting attention is because as mentioned before, these are 3 (EDIT: 4) suggestions clumped into one