Make Home screen with an actual tab

[Cheap-Skate]

Has bugged me for ages and the new Home and "Jump back in" buttons, while welcome, really accentuate the issues.

Fenix works differently from any other browser I know, 1 - tapping the "new tab" button doesn't open a new tab, it just takes me to the Home screen, and 2 - tapping a Top Site always opens it in a new tab

1 is weird to me and 2 is annoying, both seem counter-intuitive

The "Jump back in" button accentuates the issue for me:- now I can open the Tabs tray, hit the New Tab FAB (which doesn't actually open a new tab), then I can Jump back in to my previous tab. Hey, I thought I'd opened a new tab? Very, very confusing

For consistency with other browers and lack of confusion, perhaps

• the New Tab FAB should always open a new tab, increment the tab counter, and move me to the Home screen. Tapping any shortcut on that Home screen should then open in the newly created tab. Jump back in could be re-labelled as "Cancel new tab"
• tapping Home should not open a new tab or increment the tab counter but should just move me to the Home screen. Tapping any shortcut on that Home screen will open the site in the tab from which the Home screen was accessed.

I don't think this is a new complaint ;) see eg #19930 and probably some otheres

Thanks & keep up good work

┆Issue is synchronized with this Jira Task

[Cheap-Skate]

Fenix still seems to have the paradigm where the "Home" page isn't associated with any particular tab, it's [limbo state] from which new tabs (always) get created.

I think that's unorthodox and unhelpful.

The three buttons (the New Tab shortcut, the New Tab FAB, and the Home button) all actually take me to the same [limbo state] with or without the keyboard. Arguably they could all just have the same [limbo state] icon on them!

Once I'm in [limbo state] any tap opens a new tab so I still can't recycle a tab. I really really want to do what I could in Fennec and my other browsers:- tap Home button or URL, tap a Top Site, watch Top Site open in existing tab.

Thanks for your time.

[edit - reduced ranting!]

[ale82to]

I could not agree more. in fact the new home button is nothing but a joke. it always open a new tab in every damn browser including Firefox desktop home button preserves history opening a top sites or the web search in the tab if origins from. it's so frustrating using fenix after a full year this issue has still not been fixed, such a shame

[azerto11]

@Cheap-Skate I agree with this, and I feel if this is implemented, it might even eliminate the need for Jump Back In Button

tapping the "new tab" button doesn't open a new tab, it just takes me to the Home screen

This bugs me many times as well....

[amedyne]

@topotropic @vesta0 some feedback on HomeScreen and "Jump back in".

[Cheap-Skate]

Apologies for my earlier frustration

All I want to do is open a Top Site (bookmark, History item) in an existing tab, like I can on (AFAIK) every other browser, including Fennec.

I was excited about the new Home button, I thought it might fix what I see as a major issue. But it didn't. Home > Top Site opens in a new tab just like New Tab > Top Site does.

I find Fenix's "home screen is a limbo state not associated with any tab" paradigm confusing, because it's different to other browsers yet brings no advantages that I can see.

I find Fenix's "everything opens in a new tab" paradigm frustrating, because I quickly get a lot of unwanted "low value" tabs. I find that compared to other browsers, Fenix requires constant tabs tray maintenance to clear out the low value tabs; it's too easy to close wanted "high value" tabs when clearing out the unwanted stuff; and the large number of tabs open at any time uses a lot of memory which on my phone is very limited.

But perhaps I am in the minority. If you have user feedback that these Fenix features are preferred over, eg Fennec's more conventional approach, then I will close this issue and move on!

Thanks again

[cadeyrn]

I was excited about the new Home button, I thought it might fix what I see as a major issue. But it didn't. Home > Top Site opens in a new tab just like New Tab > Top Site does.

Of course it didn't. The integration of a button in the toolbar of the active tab will never change the behaviour of the home screen. These are two totally differrent things.

I don't want to argue against a change of the home screen behaviour. I don't have a strong opinion about that. I'm just saying that both things have nothing to do with each other.

FWIW, for me the home button fixed a major issue. It allows to go straight to the home screen. Before you had to open the tabs tray, press the "new tab" button and then hide the keyboard. Now you only need one instead of three actions to access your top sites or collections so it's a clear improvement, independent of the behaviour of the home screen. The home screen itself is, as explained, another story.

[Cheap-Skate]

@cadeyrn I completely agree, which is why I wrote my clarifying post. I like the Home button, I dislike the "open everything in a new tab" paradigm to which it leads. Thanks.

Incidentally I just saw this on mozilla.org, implying that the median user has maybe 4-5 tabs open on Desktop. That describes me very well. I dislike how in Fenix just glancing at a few news sites causes my tab count to explode.

"Based on our research, we found out that more than half of you have 4+ tabs open all the time, and some of you have more, a lot more" https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/fresh-new-look-for-firefox/?utm_source=www.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_content=card

[Cheap-Skate]

I think it's a major error to encourage/force users to open so many tabs. My mid-range phone starts to choke with more than seven or eight.

I tried an experiment. in Fenix I have three "work" tabs open with important stuff in them. I took a short break and read eight news sites out of Top Sites. I got a total of 11 open tabs. Fenix total RAM usage peaked around 1.4 GB, the Android memory manager started squeezing other apps very hard. Then memory pressure on Fenix caused it to start unloading those tabs from RAM.

So just a ten minute reading break led to my phone being a mess:- a tabs tray cluttered with unimportant tabs. Most of those tabs have been unloaded from RAM so they are virtually useless, switching to them shows a blank screen while the tab reloads. Other apps memory squeezed or killed. The impression is that Fenix is a poorly performing memory hog which is not true:- it's not Fenix, it's just the number of open tabs.

At the end of my ten minute reading break, what to do? I can't leave those 8 tabs in the tabs tray, they clutter up my workflow. So I have to go to the tabs tray, scroll to the bottom and swipe 8 tabs away. Of course, it's easy to get carried away and swipe 9 by mistake in which case I lose a "work" tab and have to go and find it again! Having swiped the 8 tabs away I switch back to my "work" tabs which have been unloaded from RAM, so I have to wait for them to reload again. A hassle.

I tried the same thing in Samsung Internet and it was no fuss. I opened a single "reading break" tab, consecutively read the 8 Top Sites in that single tab. Memory peaked at around 0.8 GB, all four tabs remained responsive, the system memory manager didn't seem to get too aggressive with other apps. At the end of my reading break I swiped the single "reading break" tab away and went back to my "work" tabs which were still responsive.

So my issue is really with the number of tabs which Fenix opens.

[ale82to]

I think it's a major error to encourage/force users to open so many tabs. My mid-range phone starts to choke with more than seven or eight.

I tried an experiment. in Fenix I have three "work" tabs open with important stuff in them. I took a short break and read eight news sites out of Top Sites. I got a total of 11 open tabs. Fenix total RAM usage peaked around 1.4 GB, the Android memory manager started squeezing other apps very hard. Then memory pressure on Fenix caused it to start unloading those tabs from RAM.

So just a ten minute reading break led to my phone being a mess:- a tabs tray cluttered with unimportant tabs. Most of those tabs have been unloaded from RAM so they are virtually useless, switching to them shows a blank screen while the tab reloads. Other apps memory squeezed or killed. The impression is that Fenix is a poorly performing memory hog which is not true:- it's not Fenix, it's just the number of open tabs.

At the end of my ten minute reading break, what to do? I can't leave those 8 tabs in the tabs tray, they clutter up my workflow. So I have to go to the tabs tray, scroll to the bottom and swipe 8 tabs away. Of course, it's easy to get carried away and swipe 9 by mistake in which case I lose a "work" tab and have to go and find it again! Having swiped the 8 tabs away I switch back to my "work" tabs which have been unloaded from RAM, so I have to wait for them to reload again. A hassle.

I tried the same thing in Samsung Internet and it was no fuss. I opened a single "reading break" tab, consecutively read the 8 Top Sites in that single tab. Memory peaked at around 0.8 GB, all four tabs remained responsive, the system memory manager didn't seem to get too aggressive with other apps. At the end of my reading break I swiped the single "reading break" tab away and went back to my "work" tabs which were still responsive.

So my issue is really with the number of tabs which Fenix opens.

totally agree also over a year ago I literally begged the developers to add close other tabs to long pressing tab switcher (like close tab wich we already have) and NOTHING, smartcookie web based on fenix added close other tabs a week after I asked this to the developer, fenix devs simply won't listen to what is important to users, shame.

[eliserichards]

FWIW we have options in Settings -> Tabs to auto-close tabs after a defined period of time 👀

totally agree also over a year ago I literally begged the developers to add close other tabs to long pressing tab switcher

@ale82to is there a feature request filed for this?

[ale82to]

FWIW we have options in Settings -> Tabs to auto-close tabs after a defined period of time 👀

totally agree also over a year ago I literally begged the developers to add close other tabs to long pressing tab switcher

@ale82to is there a feature request filed for this?

I don't even know anymore I asked at least two times for "close other tabs" still waiting,smartcookie web developer (fenix based) added it literally the week after I proposed itm

[azerto11]

@eliserichards #19930, #20090, #19926 , #19994 all these issues in a way are duplicates of this issue....And this one explains the expected behavior most clearly. There really is a lot of confusion, please try to prioritize this if possible. It would be tougher to change the home screen logic later if it's implemented in upcoming stable builds.

[M-Reimer]

Actually it seems like noone really organizes issues around the "Home screen" problem anymore. Several issues on this GitHub project seem all to target the same problem.

In the "Pre-Fenix" Firefox on Android I used to surf through several news pages by tapping the address bar (which seems to work again since a few days in the Nightly which is at least a start), then selecting the first news site. Now I would open all interesting articles into new tabs and if I'm done with this site, I tap the address bar again and choose the next news site. At least I expect this second news site to now open in the current tab.

The current implementation always opens a new tab. If you tap the address bar and choose the exact same bookmark to open ten times in a row, then you have ten open tabs which all show the same website... Just silly. It should at least be possible to say "open websites from the Home screen in the current ab" in the preferences.

[ale82to]

I ve reported this bug two times when that useless home button was first introduced, as for now is nothing more than"make a new tab without keyboard "

[platinops]

This issue perfectly describes my daily frustration with the new tab and home screen behaviour. I fully second this request!

[ale82to]

it will never be fixed because fenix does not have a real home page but a navgraph.xml at least the developer should admit it so people can switch browser once for good

[Matth7878]

@ale82to IMHO you are wrong about can't be fixed. As it is possible to know which tab you were on (there is now a button to switch to it) you could use that to open link selected from home.

Right now there is a caveat because you could have accessed home using (+) button in tab tray for opening a new tab. For correct handling of this case it would be needed to store a variable so Fenix knows you asked for a new tab.

Actually if such a variable where created it would be even smarter to store info from which screen and using which button you landed on home screen. Then you would have everything needed to known if user wanted to reuse a tab or not.

[ale82to]

@Matth7878 thanks for letting me know hope to see this fix soon, fenix is improved a lot in every aspect it's the only thing that I don't like right now

[Wazhai]

The current "limbo state" implementation for home screen degrades the UX, leads to tab clutter, and works differently from every other browser. These are reasons why the home screen needs to be an actual page that can be open in a tab.

I will describe a common use case scenario: whenever the user is done with a site and doesn't need that tab/page any more, then minimizes Firefox (i.e. switches to another app), and does something else on their phone or puts it away.

The workflow possibilities that Fenix offers for this case:

• close the tab. Requires at least 2 taps which I find clunky. Anyway if you close the tab when you're done, minimize Firefox, then later when you reopen Firefox, there are two possibilities:

  • Firefox remained in memory/RAM and you again see the tab switcher you were on after closing that tab. This is okay behaviour.
  • Firefox was unloaded from memory (the usual case). Firefox then defaults to loading another tab, the one that was behind the tab switcher after you closed the previous tab, and the tab switcher isn't open. Therefore, Firefox when reopened behaves differently based on external memory management factors by Android.

• just keep the unneeded tab open, minimize Firefox, and go on. Least upfront effort, but this leads to an issue when you reopen Firefox, because it opens that same unwanted tab you were on and, if unloaded from memory, reloads the unwanted page.

This behaviour (directly reopening some unwanted tab after Firefox was unloaded from memory) wastes data, battery and time, and is annoying and undesirable.

A home button and a real home page that can be open in a tab would solve these issues. You tap home which opens the home page in that tab, then close Firefox. When you reopen it, OS memory management doesn't affect Firefox behaviour, and you instantly see your home page in that tab to quickly access something, or switch to another open tab. No unwanted tabs get loaded, fixes issues https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/19930 and https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20090, makes it behave like every other browser including Firefox desktop, etc.

Firefox on Android unfortunately hasn't been my browser of choice ever since Fenix was introduced precisely because of the above UX issues with tab management/clutter, and the lack of the workflow described in the previous paragraph.

[cadeyrn]

This behaviour (directly reopening some unwanted tab after Firefox was unloaded from memory) wastes data, battery and time, and is annoying and undesirable.

Firefox has an option for that - at least in the Nightly version. It should reach the stable channel in one of the next updates. With that option you can decide whether Firefox should always start with the last tab, only start with the last tab if it was accessed less than four hours ago or always with the home screen.

[DavidJCobb]

The fact that the home screen isn't a real tab seems to be the primary cause of #13775 and #13336, and probably also makes #7551 impossible to address.

[Cheap-Skate]

I think the issue is Collections.

In other browsers, actions on the Home screen affect just one tab so it makes sense to strongly associate the Home screen with a single tab. But in Fenix actions on the Home screen can affect more than one tab because opening a Collection can open more than one tab. So Mozilla chose not to associate the Home screen with a single tab and instead made the Home screen a kind of meta-state.

This brings an advantage:- Collections. But also disadvantages:- it's unfamiliar if you come from another browser, and it stops a very common use case from working:- opening a Top Site, Bookmark etc in an existing tab. Everything opens in a new tab.

I think Fenix tries to hide the unfamiliarity by having familiar looking buttons like "New Tab" even though really there is no such thing as a "New Tab" button in Fenix.

IMHO if Fenix continues with the Home screen as it is I think it should stop hiding the unfamiliarity with "New Tab" buttons etc and instead double down on the unfamiliarity:- there should only be "Home" buttons, no "New Tab" buttons. Because all buttons take you to Home; no button opens a new tab; and users are going to have to get used to that.

OTOH I hope the Home screen meta-state goes away, I get what Mozilla is trying to do but it just messes up my browsing experience :)

[Obscerno]

The fact that the home screen isn't a real tab seems to be the primary cause of #13775 and #13336, and probably also makes #7551 impossible to address.

As a follower of #13336, I want to add that that issue possibly also is related to to current situation in #2871. Bookmarklets don't work from the menu on the current page, because they're opened in a new tab. You have to work around it by typing the bookmark in the address bar and tapping the suggestion. That way they're applied to the current page you're on and can do bookmarklet things.

[jaimet]

Originally posted by @Obscerno in https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012#issuecomment-980076092

You have to work around it by typing the bookmark in the address bar and tapping the suggestion. That way they're applied to the current page you're on and can do bookmarklet things.

@Obscerno I am unable to reproduce your workaround (by "typing the bookmark in the address bar and tapping the suggestion"). On Firefox v96.1.1 (installed from the Play Store), I have created a bookmark with the url "javascript:alert(location.href);". If I:

1. open any "normal" url (say https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/) in a tab, then
2. (in the same tab) I type the name of my bookmark into the address bar, then
3. I select the bookmark/bookmarklet from the suggestions list,

then absolutely nothing happens. (If, on the other hand, I open the bookmarklet from the bookmarks menu, I see the expected, yet unwanted, "This page says: about:blank" as discussed here).

Are you still able to consistently reproduce your workaround i.e. can you get any bookmarklet to apply to the current page?

TIA, Jaime

Update: I've just found this and this via this. Ouch!

Update 2: As per this, it is my alert which is causing the bookmarklet to fail. So long as I remove the alert, your work around still works succesfully. Apologies for the noise (and please ignore my original question). Thanks again.

[Obscerno]

@jaimet I'm glad you got it working! That said, while I was checking it on my end I find that this bookmarket, which was working for me a week ago, is no longer working in Firefox nightly:

javascript: (function() { var i, x; for (i = 0; x = document.styleSheets[i]; ++i) x.disabled = true; })();

So thanks for the prompt! I'll share over at #2871

Edit: this is working again.

[Cheap-Skate]

The Home screen seems to get less and less logical

Now the "Recently visited" section obeys a whole of of different rules about whether a new tab opens or not. I am trying to understand the rules and I think they are:-

• if foo.com is in Recently visited then
• • if there are zero tabs currently open on foo.com, open a new tab on foo.com
• • if there is one tab open on foo.com, move to that tab
• • if there is more than one tab open on foo.com, move to the first foo.com in the tab list regardless of whether that version of foo.com is stale and very old or new and just opened
• • if there is a tab open on foo.com/page.html, open a new tab on foo.com
• • if there is a search whose results includes foo.com, always open a new tab on foo.com whether there is one open already or not

Eh?

This seems daft. I can navigate to foo.com three ways on my Home screen:- tap an entry in Top Sites; tap an entry in Recently visited; or by typing in the URL bar. The logic is crazy complicated

• tapping the one in Top Sites always opens in a new tab, it does not depend on whether I entered the Home screen by tapping the New Tab button or the Home button or the URL bar
• tapping the one in Recently visited may open in a new tab or may not, it does depend on whether foo.com is already an open tab, but does not depend on whether I entered the Home screen by tapping the New Tab button or the Home button or the URL bar
• typing in the URL bar may open in a new tab or may not, it does depend on whether I entered the Home screen by tapping the New Tab button or the Home button or the URL bar (the URL bar opens in an existing tab)

So if a user is presented with the Home screen, I think there is no a priori way to know what will happen when they tap an icon or type a URL. It might open a new tab, it might not. It almost never depends on whether that user tapped the New Tab button (vs the Home button or the URL bar). It sometimes depends on whether there is a tab open already with that URL.

Surely this behavior must be damaging Fenix's market share? Fenix is crazy different to every other browser and is not even internally consistent. Users who come from a "normal" browser (Samsung Internet, Kiwi, whatever, even Fennec) must download Fenix, play with it for half an hour, realise they have no clue how the Home screen works, they have unexpectedly opened dozens of tabs, and their phone is melting. Presumably they then abandon Fenix and go back to a browser that behaves as expected.

I really think that Fenix at least needs to respect users' choice of the New Tab button or the Home button. A user should be able to use those two buttons to choose whether to open a new tab, or reuse an existing tab.

[Cheap-Skate]

... Incidentally I just saw this on mozilla.org, implying that the median user has maybe 4-5 tabs open on Desktop. ... "Based on our research, we found out that more than half of you have 4+ tabs open all the time, and some of you have more, a lot more" https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/fresh-new-look-for-firefox/?utm_source=www.mozilla.org&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=homepage&utm_content=card

It seems reasonable to infer from this that quite a lot of users on mobile and desktop only have a single tab open. They just endlessly recycle the same tab over and over, they never hit the New Tab button. I think my parents might do that. I think that Fenix needs a good solution for this kind of user. I expect these users will abandon Fenix very quickly when they realise it is almost impossible to stop it opening lots and lots of tabs.

[youri--]

@Cheap-Skate you're right on the money with your comments, but I'd just like to add this. Even for users like myself who do open many tabs (on purpose), the (lack of consistent) logic as it pertains to actions opening URLs is maddening! I would just like the same behavior as on desktop, ie. actions to open a URL taken from an existing tab, open in that existing tab, actions taken after tapping New Tab/Home Screen open in a new tab. There could be an extra setting for users to choose to Always Open Bookmarks in New Tabs. Would make things so much more logical/usable.

I love Firefox, but I also kinda hate Firefox on Android sometimes.

[bjoli]

When was this introduced? I noticed this week and it is driving me NUTS. (I have been on an old EOL phone so my firefox may have been ancient)

The behaviour is the same for the address bar (I never use the home button). If I click the address bar I want to go to a different site in the current tab. Any most visited sites that show up should honour that.

Any action involving the address bar should open in the same tab. Unless I am on a desktop and holding [modifier of choice] when pressing return.

[klint]

I have another opinion : I find the Recently visited feature quite useless actually, it's a confusing concept. What is the point of displaying recent searches? Why should I search again what I have searched before? Especially as the result of my search is now available as a tab is the tab tray. And THAT is a extraordinary feature, on the contrary : I have a huge list of tabs, of course displayed as a list, not as a grid (useless to me), and THIS is the only Recently visited section I really need! 😊

[Cheap-Skate]

I find it funny that it keeps getting reported as a bug, but apparently it's a feature!

I just don't understand what the advantages are. I understand the disadvantages

• bloated tabs tray, constant game of Whac-a-Mole to close redundant tabs
• unfamiliarity for new users coming from literally any other browser, desktop or mobile
• excessive memory use leading to a poor browser and/or Android experience.

I find the last one funny, Mozilla has a whole UI team working to make Fenix open as many tabs as possible, and a whole other team working to make Fenix handle those tabs. And Fenix can't, no browser can. Phones below flagship level can't handle a lot of tabs, they don't have much RAM or a swap file, so just a few tabs causes memory pressure and Fenix unloads tabs or Android kills recently used apps.

These fundamental memory limitations make it easy to see why other phone browsers make it relatively easy to re-use a tab and relatively difficult to open a new tab.

[WimpyMan]

Just to back up the initial request: I think this feature made it to Firefox for Android lately. This is bad.

[klint]

Pertaining to memory, are you sure it is really an issue? I have tons of open tabs in Fenix and feel nothing special in response time (which should be the case if there was a lot of memory swap). Having tons of inactive and unloaded tabs should is different from having tons of active and loaded tabs. In my case, 100 tabs in the tab tray are unloaded and only 3 or 4 are loaded (ie will reload from the memory instead of reloading the page from internet)

[klint]

In a way, it seems to me that Fenix has merged the concept of bookmarks/visited sites/... with tabs open in the tab tray. And I find this way highly efficient on a phone, on the contrary to desktop. So for me, opening new tabs is not a problem, it is a useful feature. And the only feature I'm using on the home screen is the access to the last tab. No history, no search history (what's the point of it? I still don't get it), no collections, no bookmarks (my bookmarks are web sites installed or site shortcuts deployed on the launcher itself) Yet, of course, opening or reusing tabs should be done in a consistent way, and there seems to be real issues here 😊

[WimpyMan]

The option of opening a new tab was always present.

[Cheap-Skate]

Pertaining to memory, are you sure it is really an issue? I have tons of open tabs in Fenix ...

My bad, I should have said active tabs, ones loaded in memory.

Opening/loading/activating a tab in a browser requires RAM, and the Android memory manager has to steal that RAM from somewhere. It steals it from other apps and from the browser, but it's somewhat biased towards stealing from other apps. So opening/loading/activating (for example) 10 tabs in the browser might damage 12 apps and tabs, it might kill 4 background apps, destroy the UIs of 4 others, and suspend/unload 4 of the older tabs in the browser. On a high end phone with lots of RAM that's not a problem:- the damaged apps & tabs were probably ones you hadn't used for ages. But on an entry level phone it's a disaster, the damaged apps & tabs were ones you had been using just a few minutes ago! So everything slows to a crawl and reloads when you swap to very recently used apps and tabs.

The problem is, I can open 10 tabs in Fenix very easily (it's almost impossible not to). On other browsers it's much harder to open 10 tabs. So Fenix looks really bad, it looks like a memory hog. I gave an example here https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/20012#issuecomment-863913320 of how a short coffee break in Fenix made a total mess of my mid-range phone, which would probably not have happened in Samsung Internet, or Chrome, or Edge, or Kiwi, or ...

To be honest, multiple tab handling & Fenix's memory use is such a mess now (#12731, this) my argument might be premature. But devs didn't really seem to notice how bad it was, so I am concerned that the UI team hasn't thought through this "new tabs are very expensive" idea properly.

[klint]

Ok, I get your point now and I understand it is critical for some users. Actually, this does not happen to be a problem to me as I rarely go back immediately to a recent tab that is not the current one, so I don't care about a recent tab being in memory as long as I can switch to my payment validation app back and forth without reloading the page in Fenix ! As I said, I'm using the tab tray as my "tabs/URLs of interest" which covers recently used, bookmarks and most visited tabs ; I reuse an old tab some time later only, at a time where it is perfectly normal to have to reload the page fully.

Maybe the best would be to have an global option to select whether the default action in various places in Fenix is to reuse a tab or to create a new one (ok, a bit more clever than that ;)). I would definitely use the second option, but I fully understand the need for the first behavior as well, which would definitely be the default one for parity with other browsers. And also a setting for maximum of loaded/active tabs (even if it is only 2 or 3 in practice ;) )?

And yes, tab management as a whole is quite shaky today, but progress is being made, the memory issue is being addressed.. so, there is hope :)

[maverick74]

This is probably close related to #23609

[robovoice1]

For future feature releases it would be a good idea to make sure the strings in fenix actually match and describe what the new feature function actually really does. (New Tab)

For decades no matter what operating system or word processing program/app or browser(s) and so on.... New Tab opens a seperate new tab New File/document opens a new empty text, doc file.

[maverick74]

I agree with @robovoice1

going to home screen from URL bar should load top sites in present page But going to home screen from new tab should load it in a new tab because that's what the user expects

[klint]

So, if we summarize everything, as far as I understood it anyway ;) Is this correct?

• If you press the tab tray & "+" buttons, or the menu button & "+ " option, in a tab/web page, any link obtained directly or indirectly from the Home Page should open in a new tab : -- whether it is a URL, a recent bookmark/search (same if you open the Bookmarks or History lists from the Home Page or from the menu in the Home Page), a top site, a shortcut or a collection entry... ---- for each of these links, there should be a "open in current tab" long press option -- with the exception of the "jump back" that should just go back to the tab you came from (I find the wording quite accurate actually)

• If you click in the address bar or press the Home button in a tab/web page, any link obtained from the Home Page should reuse the tab you came from ---- for each of these links, there should be a "open in new tab" long press option

• If you use the menu in a tab/web page to access the History or Bookmarks lists, it should open in the same tab as you are

• If you land on the home page when launching Firefox, it should open a new tab. Same if you open a link from another app

Quite simple 😉

[dahauns]

@klint, I'd like to give you my perspective on the dangers of the idea of "it's a feature because it works for me" :)

In a way, it seems to me that Fenix has merged the concept of bookmarks/visited sites/... with tabs open in the tab tray. And I find this way highly efficient on a phone, on the contrary to desktop. So for me, opening new tabs is not a problem, it is a useful feature.

I'm surprised - in what way do you see that more efficient on phone than on desktop? I mean, how you describe your usage is kind of how I use tabs on my desktop with lots of ram and a large 4k screen, but there it works for me because:

• overhead not (really) an issue
• tab management easier (tab pinning, extensions etc.)
• the Big One: tons of screen real estate and a mouse to instantly access the tab I want!

And even then I'm the first to admit that I'm kind of a "tab messie" and it's not neccesarily an elegant (or even that efficient) way to do things.

But on a phone? At least for me it quickly devolves into a tedious workflow with lots of gratuitous UI interactions, especially due to the lack of 3 (and somewhat 2) above. True, Fenix tabs might have merged those concepts, but even if that workflow might be usable for some: That's not a feature in itself - tabs have been there before - it's out of neccessity. It's only a "feature" due to lack of usable alternatives.

But yes, that summary sounds just about right and very promising! Exactly what would work for me...(oh, the irony ;) )

[klint]

@dahauns as you can see I can express both my view and the common one ;) To go back to the concept of tabs in both mobile and desktop world, I have some counterintuitive thoughts, as I truly find tabs as efficient on mobile as on desktop, if not more ;) Let me explain:

• On desktop, due to the large real estate, too much and too little information is displayed on the screen : too many tabs with too few/truncated information about each (think about how short are the visible tab titles with numerous tabs opened in the same group/window). One gets easily lost, even by grouping tabs. This can be made a little bit painless with addons like "Tab Retitle" and regex expressions, but of course, only geeks will use those :P
• On a smartphone, obviously one does not do the same with tabs and one manipulates less tabs (tens) than on desktop (hundreds). But in the end, those tabs are more easily visible and readable : for instance, with a tab tray in list mode to increase the number of tabs per screen, scrolling among those screenshots with less truncated tab titles shows more useful information than on desktop. So, as a conclusion, we should not be afraid of tabs on Fenix.
  Yet, it is true that it still lacks consistency in the way it opens tabs or reuse tabs today, as we all agree in this discussion :)

[maverick74]

• and one manipulates less tabs (tens)

Well... speak for yourself!!! XP Thanks to the actual behavior of fenix my tabs button is always showing a [∞] LOLOL

And even when i close them all fearlessly i easily get back to that in a very short time (some are obviously dups... i wish i had Duplicate tabs closer addon on fenix...)

[klint]

Thanks to the actual behavior of fenix my tabs button is always showing a [∞] LOLOL

Yes, here too, I have infinite forever :P, but unlike you, this is expected and wanted and I can understand your frustration!

[Cheap-Skate]

I read this article from the Mozilla blog with interest. It describes how people use their tabs tray to enable continuity between (eg) desktop and mobile.

I think it supports the idea that we all use the tabs tray as a kind of to-do list and we want it organised and relevant. Some users prefer less clutter, some are happy with more. But we all want to look at our tabs list to understand what we are doing now, and what we were doing in the recent past.

I think Fenix's current "everything opens in a new tab" paradigm goes against this article. It seems clear that some (perhaps most) don't want zillions of tabs opening all the time, because it dilutes the to-do list of "important" tabs with a lot of junk tabs. I think instead users want to curate their tab list more carefully and choose when to open a new tab vs when to re-use an existing tab.

Using the example of the user shopping for shoes, they want to easily see yesterday's "shoes" tab in their tab list. The problem with Fenix is that between yesterday and today Fenix could open tens or hundreds of new tabs, which means the "shoes" tab gets lost among all the junk tabs. The only way to avoid that is to constantly play the Whac-a-Mole game to keep the "shoes" tab prominent.

I really think "open everything in a new tab" is terrible design, both from an engineering perspective (tabs use lots of RAM, phones don't have much RAM, so lots of tabs leads to a poor Android experience) and a UX perspective (important tabs get lost in the clutter of junk tabs).

[plwt]

User feedback: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1367916

[DavidJCobb]

So it looks like the one attempt at fixing #13336 ended up falling flat on its face explicitly because it couldn't work around the fact that the home screen works the way it does. To summarize: an attempt was made to make bookmarks open in an existing tab, but an inability to detect when bookmarks were opened from the home screen meant that it became impossible to open bookmarks in new tabs when explicitly attempting to do so via the New Tab button (because "new tabs" don't actually exist anymore), and trying to open them in new private tabs could (if no other private tabs existed) cause them to open in a normal tab (for the same reason).

It is not a good idea to try and fix the usability issues that this issue here causes by slapping bandaids on each individual case of unintuitive behavior. The home screen is the root cause of the problem; the design is fundamentally flawed and never should've been implemented.

[Obscerno]

So it looks like the one attempt at fixing #13336 ended up falling flat on its face explicitly because it couldn't work around the fact that the home screen works the way it does.

To be fair, #13336 did end up being fixed. Right now on my phone when I open a bookmark it opens in the same tab. Here's the commit: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/commit/77c2ad90b46eca123e642e6acd481c2dd3ca5cbe

Doesn't invalidate your point though. I just wanted to share that it's not impossible and doesn't require a huge restructuring to fix. If we can't get the home screen replaced with a tab, it would be nice at least to get the weird behaviour fixed the way bookmarks was.

[maverick74]

If we can't get the home screen replaced with a tab, it would be nice at least to get the weird behaviour fixed the way bookmarks was.

I totally agree with this!

I understand @DavidJCobb point. And he's right. but @Obscerno does have a point because i don't see mozilla fixing the homescreen issue any time soon. So, having a working bandaid that allow us to work is better than nothing!!!