Option to Display Tab Temporarily by Hovering its Thumbnail
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A tab thumbnail is often too small to differentiate correctly 2 similar tabs. It would be great to be able to display the full tab by just hovering its popup thumbnail.
However, the tab would still NOT be selected until we really click on the tab/thumbnail. In other terms, moving the mouse outside the thumbnail would display back the currently selected tab.
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@guilimote If the tab is displayed on hovering the tab, there is no purpose to having a popup thumbnail.
I think the option should be a radio button to show Popup Thumbnails or to show the tab.
If Show Tab Thumbnails is enabled, then showing the tab on hovering the thumbnail still makes sense.
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@pesala It would be more consistent for tab stacks: I don't see any other way to preview than thumbnails for tab stacks. Having two different behaviour for stacks and non-stacks might be disturbing. With the need to hover the thumbnail, the behavior remain the same for stacks and single tabs.
Moreover: Even if from a personal point of view, I would love seeing the full tab immediately without thumbnail, I assume that a lot of people would find this "agressive". The need to hover the thumbnail might be a good compromise here too, because done only when the small thumbnail is not precise enough.
But, hey, you're right: an option to choose the behavior is even better
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@guilimote When popup thumbnails are disabled, tooltips are shown instead so thumbnails are not needed even for tab stacks if hovering shows the tab temporarily.
- Tab stack with 2 tabs (over the tab stack)
- Page Title when hovering over the 5 pixel tab selection handle
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I've got several tab stacks with 5-15 tabs in each. Hovering over that little tab selection handle (and clicking it) is quite difficult and slow. (Menu configured on the right.)
Hovering the tab stack and then seeing the thumbnails is super quick and useful for finding the tab you want -- but sometimes you need to see a larger version.
Showing a preview of the tab in the browser (so you can read text) will help you know if this is the exact tab you're looking for. (Useful specifically when you have a lot of similar looking tabs). A potential downside is that some of the page will be obscured, but depending on your browser size and how many tabs you have it could be useful.
Alternatively, and perhaps a better idea, having a hotkey that enlarges the tab you're hovering over could be very useful as well. So if I hover over a tab then hit space, or right click, or middle click, then I'll see a large preview of it which I can either click to go to, or dismiss.
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@Pesala Windows also does it the way OP mentioned: on hovering the THUMBNAIL and THUMBNAIL alone does it show the full screen preview. I think this feature would boost productivity by a lot; oftentimes, one doesn't intent to switch tabs, just peek the contents of one, plus with my auto MRU sorting of tabs, clicking on an unwanted tab has huge consequences...