Edge type vertical tab minimizing

[TheFlyingCelt]

@dobeye 3 years have gone by and Vivaldi's devs are not listening...

[Ayespy]

@TheFlyingCelt The devs always listen. That does not mean that they immediately implement each and every one of the thousands of outstanding feature requests.

[TheFlyingCelt]

@Ayespy you must admit 3 years is quite a lot of time to use an euphemism, therefore "immediately" is not the right word, buddy. Not to mention that making the tab bar auto-hide only takes a very short time to code.

[Ayespy]

@TheFlyingCelt It has taken up to eight years to implement a feature request, so 3 years is not remarkable. On the other hand, features that are really, actually easy to implement, and perceived as high value by the Team, have literally been implemented in a matter of days. This is quite rare. If there were a couple of hundred developers, everything would be faster. As there are fewer than two dozen, and as the browser UI is a whole separate layer with coding that is foreign to Chromium, everything takes longer than anyone believes it could.

[TheFlyingCelt]

@Ayespy alright. Then let's hope we'll see within the next 5 years what Brave (with very few devs) did in a matter of weeks..

[Ayespy]

@TheFlyingCelt Brave used the Chromium UI, as nearly all Chromium-based browsers do. Vivaldi does not. It uses coding languages that make it more customizable while, at the same time, often not being wholly compatible with the way Chromium does things, meaning that they have to code every feature from scratch, and then marry it up to Chromium, so that Chromium can display what Vivaldi is doing. So, we will see how long it takes. 52 upvotes is enough to attract attention, so we'll see where it lands in the developer priority hierarchy.

[iqaluit]

@Ayespy In my humble opinion if it counts at all, relevant portion of your recent comments should be somewhere visible for outsiders for them to have a better understanding of how Vivaldi is being developped. Though I understand that the wait time is due to what the community prefers as a whole. Thank you

[Ayespy]

@iqaluit Truly, wait time is due to multiple factors:

1. Vivaldi Team had a vision for the browser before the first lines of code were laid down. That vision is still the first consideration. A feature that was always meant to be (like mail client, tab stacks, tiled tabs, session management, moveable toolbars, skins/themes, spat nav, etc., etc. on into the dozens/hundreds of features) has highest priority.

2. Some things can and some things cannot be done on the framework of the chromium engine. Things that can't be done (like containers) will not be done. A different solution will have to be found. At least one Chromium browser has resorted to running multiple windows and making them seem like tabs within one window. Each window can host a profile, and be a "container." This scope of architectural modification takes a lot of manpower and a lot of maintenance (and a lot of money).

3. Some things are easier under Vivaldi's architecture and some are harder and take longer. A really hard, but really popular feature may be undertaken, so long as it fits the original Vivaldi vision, but it will still take a long time. An easy but pretty popular feature may get done faster.

4. EVERY feature has to be measured against whether Chromium has to be patched to support it, how much work maintaining that patch will be, and how likely predictable (and unpredictable) changes to the Chromium engine might be to deep six it. Vivaldi used to be able to "send" tabs to other synced instances of Vivaldi. Our Sync engineer had to write that into our sync engine to run on our sync servers, using Chromium APIs to do it. Then Chromium killed support for "sending" tabs.

5. Vivaldi Developers and designers are allowed to have vanity projects - something the particular staffer (and part owner of Vivaldi, as it is a employee-owned company) thinks would be fun and cool. No one asked for Razer Chroma, it was not in the original Vivaldi vision, but a designer really liked the idea, and was allowed to implement it.

6. A feature may be popular, but devs may believe there is a better way to get to the same result (with fewer lines of code or less user effort) and may do that instead.

Long story short, Devs and execs own the company, they have a vision, and while they highly value user input, users don't actually know what it take to implement features, and users do not run the company. Vivaldi company owners try really hard to keep as many users happy as practicable, but at the end of the day, they have to prioritize and plan out their own work, have to gauge effort against value, convenience against security, bling against utility, and have to be happy with their own product. All these factors go into when (and whether) a feature will see the light of day.

My $.02

[iqaluit]

@Ayespy That is worth more than two cents no doubt.! Thank you very much for taking your time and explaning this highly valuable process. I can assure you It is important for us many laypeople to understand the general approach within the production itself and its dynamics even though many of us do not grasp all the technicalities that are present in this process. It is still very important for those who are interested and trying to make choices about their digital tools. Even by this 6 point I feel I know have a much better understanding and wider angle to see things happening in the kitchen of this work. I appreciate your comment a lot, really.

[MikkoMakela]

There are few CSS mods that don't fit Vivaldi aesthetically and even use odd transparency.
In my opinion there should be built in option for collapsed tabs.

[ChillyHellion]

I would like this feature as well. It's the only thing keeping me off of Vivaldi on desktop.