608916 - Panorama should take advantage of Windows 7 preview

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, enhancement)

Description

[Corey Farwell]

The separate 'windows' within panorama should appear in the Windows 7 task bar preview (the hover over feature) as separate windows. being able to select different panorama windows within the taskbar would be a great feature to solidify firefox panorama.

Comment 1

[Kevin Hanes]

Interesting idea! I'd love it if, when Panorama was left up, instead of the normal Aero Peek behavior, you were shown your groups, as you suggest.

Assigning to Aza for design.

Comment 2

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Bumping to the future, as Firefox itself is holding off in integration with Aero peek for now.

Comment 3

[Corey Farwell]

My original idea was to have Panorama integrated with the Windows 7 Taskbar Preview, as seen here: 
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-taskbar
Is there a separate plan to get Firefox somehow integrated with Aero Peek?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/peek

Taskbar preview also supports the ability to add buttons within the preview itself (see Windows Media Player or VLC).  Maybe there could be App Tab buttons? Though that could get cluttered very easily.

Comment 4

[Amiram]

I think it's a Must Have feature ...

If I'm right, the whole idea with panorama was to make it easier to deal with many tabs ...and for now i think it's confusing , u can arrange them but afterwards its almost impossible to pick the one u want .

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #3)
> My original idea was to have Panorama integrated with the Windows 7 Taskbar
> Preview, as seen here: 
> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/windows-taskbar

That page isn't about one particular task bar feature, so I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind.

> Is there a separate plan to get Firefox somehow integrated with Aero Peek?
> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/features/peek

Indeed, Firefox supports Aero Peek.

(In reply to comment #4)
> If I'm right, the whole idea with panorama was to make it easier to deal with
> many tabs ...and for now i think it's confusing , u can arrange them but
> afterwards its almost impossible to pick the one u want .

You seem to be in the wrong bug then. Win 7 task bar integration such as Aero Peek can only be an extra; Panorama couldn't depend on it, since Aero Peek is optional in Firefox, optional on Windows and non-existent on other operating systems.

But maybe this bug isn't actually about Win 7 specific taskbar features, as the summary and comment 3 suggest, but about generally exposing panorama groups as windows, as comment 0 suggests?

Comment 6

[Amiram]

i think u got me all wrong ...
im talking on the same thing as comment 0 .

i think that if win 7 taskbar preview could show the panorama groups instead of all the tabs it would be easier ...

Comment 7

[George Carstoiu]

This would be a good idea. Saves a lot of time for the user to get to the desired website.

Comment 8

[Tiger.711]

(In reply to comment #6)
> i think u got me all wrong ...
> im talking on the same thing as comment 0 .
> 
> i think that if win 7 taskbar preview could show the panorama groups instead
> of all the tabs it would be easier ...

Is this idea the same as Bug 629989 ?

Comment 10

[Corey Farwell]

Yes, Tiger.711 has the same idea as me, marked it as a duplicate

Comment 11

[Tiger.711]

Attachment: Aero Preview

Comment 12

[Thorsten Gebuhr]

Also missing this feature a lot.

It's good that in Win7's taskbar not every single Tab is shown any more - to much to find anything.

But when using Panorama to group tabs the "natural" way a Win7 users expects to switch between the groups is the taskbar preview.
I'm not sure, if the Win7-API allows such huge previews as Tiger.711 shows in his mockup - but at least give every "tab-group window" a separate window to select in taskbar.

Comment 13

[Thorsten Gebuhr]

Attachment: Tabgroup-Mockup for Win7 Taskbar

This is how I would expect the tab-groups to show in Win7-taskbar.

Similar to the download-manager today, they should show up as separate windows you can select.

Comment 14

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

we are going to switch to a model where windows == groups.  It might be the case that not every group is open, for instance you have 3 groups but only 2 windows.  Anyway, one of the use cases of panorama is to store a group of tabs away taht you are not planning on using for awhile, and displaying these tabs in the taskbar goes against that.  Users expect the windows 7 taskbar to only display open windows, which will effectively be open groups when the two are the same thing.

Comment 15

[Tan Wei Lin Jason [:Ryuji]]

if that is the case, won't this means Firefox will forces users to open windows when it has a new group whether or not users want it? Unless users are told that group = windows UX will be confusing and dataloss might occur. 

Now Firefox can only group tab per window and not from one window to another. How are you going to make windows and windows interact? Personally I think the current model is good. but panorama also need to have window to window interaction. But by forcing user to use windows as group is not the way to go I think.

Comment 16

[Tiger.711]

Alex Faaborg had in his mind that if it will be the one window with 3 groups and the second window with 2 groups then it will be 5 previews in superbar.

Comment 17

[Tan Wei Lin Jason [:Ryuji]]

(In reply to Tiger.711 from comment #16)
> Alex Faaborg had in his mind that if it will be the one window with 3 groups
> and the second window with 2 groups then it will be 5 previews in superbar.

Are you sure that is what he mean in comment 14? because I don't see it in his comment. Moreover, based on his new model, one window with 3 groups and the second window with 2 group is no longer possible. Instead it would be Firefox Panorama showing you that you have 5 Groups which are also 5 windows. He said that only active windows will be shown as previews in the superbar, that means that if you have 5 windows but only 2 active windows, only 2 previews will be shown in the superbar. (that is the best of what I can understand from what he commented).

Comment 18

[Tiger.711]

Was I right or not - it can say only Alex Faaborg, isn't it?

Comment 19

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Panorama has been removed from Firefox 45, currently in Beta and scheduled for release on March 7th. As such, I'm closing all existing Panorama bugs.

If you are still using Panorama, you will see a deprecation message in Firefox 44, and when 45 is released your tab group data will be migrated to bookmarks, with a folder for each group. There are also a few addons offering similar functionality.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal for more info.

We're removing Panorama because it has extremely low usage (about 0.01% of users), and has a large number of bugs and usability issues. The cost of fixing all those issues is far too high to justify, and so we'll instead be focusing our time and energy on improving other parts of Firefox.