Vertical Tab Bar needs (Auto)Scroll to Active Tab Functions

[dude99]

Currently the vertical tab bar is not very usable when there are more than 30 tabs within a window, because the active tab might be hidden off-screen, & there is no way to know if it's hidden above or bottom section of current screen view. Thus it's quite annoying when looking for the active tab from vertical tab bar.

We need some passive functions and commands for (Auto)Scroll to active tab to improve the vertical tab bar:

1. Option for Autoscroll to reveal active tab when mouseover the tab bar, if active tab is hidden.

2. Autoscroll to active tab when jump between 2 tabs located off-screen (example: from last/bottom tab to the first/top tab & vice versa).

3. Manual commands (keyboard/mouse gesture/menu) for Scroll to active tab.
   
   Thanks for all the support.

[ntoivola]

I would be happy with just suggestion 2 (autoscroll to active tab when jumping to a tab that is currently off-screen) if it makes this feature request more likely to happen. Thanks.

[dude99]

4. Add marker/highlighter on the scrollbar to indicate the position of active tab. Click on marker to scroll to active tab.

Vote here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/31491/marker-highlighter-for-active-tab-on-tabbar-s-scrollbar

[System32]

@dude99
+1
I think this feature would greatly improve user experience.

[Hadden89]

A command to "scroll to active tab" may be useful when tabbar is crowded

[dude99]

@ntoivola @Hadden89

Update: potmeklecbohdan have created an awesome mod in https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/352564 for this request!

[adamstyl]

Any chance that we see this implemented out of the box? The mod linked by @dude99 is useful and it works, but it's kinda counterintuitive to do it on every Vivaldi installation on every PC. The hacks/mods are growing waaay too many. Scrolling to make an out of view tab visible when this tab is activated seems to me like a "standard feature" for all tabbed containers, no?

[adamstyl]

@Gwen-Dragon Thanks for the reply. From my point of view, 19 votes for a niche feature for a niche browser that "it is first and foremost targeted towards technically-inclined users" (per Wikipedia) is kinda of a record But that's just me.

What I've also noticed is that when watching a youtube video full screen, scroll is reset to the top of the stack once exiting full screen. This adds up to the frustration. But then I guess I need to file another bug report.

[adamstyl]

Did I also mention that after upgrading all customizations were lost?

[iAN CooG]

@adamstyl said in Vertical Tab Bar needs (Auto)Scroll to Active Tab Functions:

Did I also mention that after upgrading all customizations were lost?

Sorry to hear, I haven't lost any of my settings which all seem ok and my custom css are applied as usual. I just have to use manual update of my custom js as they're not supported natively.
What do you mean by customization?

[adamstyl]

Hello @iAN-CooG and thanks for replying. The solution linked by @dude99 is a script which is lives in AppData\Local\Vivaldi\Application\2.11.1811.44\resources\vivaldi (or whatever the version is)

So the customization lives in browser.html and the vivaldi directory itself in a whatever-customization.js. These 2 were lost during the upgrade. I hope this makes sense.

PS: if you have a way to preserve these customizations then by all means I'm all ears.

[iAN CooG]

@adamstyl Only css mods are supported by Vivaldi, so far, and they are kept between releases, granted you have your css files outside the Vivaldi directory.
Any file in the Vivaldi/Application directory can (always assume they WILL) be deleted and replaced by new version files.
I keep my files in "C:\Program Files\Vivaldi\CustomCSS" and each mod in one .css, just rename the extension of those you don't want to be active and restart Vivaldi, they won't be loaded
js mods must be reapplied and and browser.html re-edited every update, and you have to make sure your .js files are in a safe directory outside the vivaldi directory to be ready for copying them after every update.
Follow the instructions in the pinned threads in https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/52/modifications
Windows users can use https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/30984/windows-vivaldi-mod-manager which does the work for you in few clicks
I still use it to restore my js mods after every update.

[Pesala]

If the active tab is out of sight on a vertical tab bar, commands to Next/Previous Tab (by Order) will scroll to it.

[dude99]

@Pesala Thanks for the head up. Is this a new feature added into Vivaldi recently,or it's an old undiscovered one?

I'm using the autotabscroll.js so I can't tell...
latest version is here: https://forum.vivaldi.net/post/352564

[BoneTone]

@dude99 I'm not sure how old exactly, but certainly been there quite some time. I modified the keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures I have assigned to these actions many months ago, last year I think.

[ntoivola]

@Pesala That is great news! However, I am on the latest Vivaldi 3.7 and my vertical tab bar does not autoscroll when I activate an out-of-sight tab using the Next/Previous Tab (by Order) keyboard shortcuts or Ctrl-Tab. What am I missing?

[Pesala]

@ntoivola It works fine here, though my old hardware cannot handle loads of tabs when I have several other applications open too.

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Specs: AMD A10-6800K, 8 Gb on Win 10 64-bit 1909 build 19041.685 • Stable 3.7.2218.45 (64-bit)

[ntoivola]

I'm not sure why it's not working for me but the mod linked earlier in this thread (https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/39940/autoscroll-active-tab-into-view-in-vertical-tabbar-on-mouseover) did the trick so I'm happy now. Would be nice if it worked natively, though.

[OakdaleFTL]

@dude99 Good list!
I wrastle with picking out the active tab! (Though it's my own fault: I use a custom theme for tabs background...aesthetics over functionality, silly as it seems, works -almost- for me.) Suggestions here are often worth consideration...
I have one: Flashing tab, like the strobe of a Mac mini's power light when the machine's gone into deep sleep.

Couple that with tab bar auto hide/show like Mac's dock, and you'd have what I want!)
_______________ (forgive please my odd punct.: UseNet days, emoticons and punct. show -personal!- logic:)_______________
Smileys only distract me... It's a personal thing-ie, I'd have Smileys be escaped chars. àla UNIX text, so mix-n-match is easy.

[SteveRoseWgtn]

@pesala Thanks for the Next/Previous tab tip.
I'm using two-level tabs on the left side and if I use F2 to jump to a tab, that tab appears along with the others in the stack, but the parent top-level tab doesn't scroll into view.
That means I don't know where the stack is or which way to scroll to see it.
The keyboard settings don't seem to provide keystrokes for moving up and down between tab stacks. Perhaps adding next/previous tab stack keystrokes would be a solution.
(Vivaldi 5.1 Feb 2022)