Evidence tabs will get more attention in future Firefox releases

Google's Chrome developers -- some of whom have worked, and are still working, on Firefox -- acknowledged their debt of gratitude for Firefox's inspiration. But today's latest development in Firefox 3.1 suggests it's now playing catch-up.

Last week's release of Google Chrome placed a new emphasis on the tab as the repository for a Web browser, rather than the Web browser as the central location for tabs. Whether or not that catches on, the concept may be compelling developers to treat tabs more seriously, and the latest alpha build of Firefox 3.1 is an indication of this.

This afternoon, BetaNews constructed a new virtual Windows XP Professional machine in order to get a good, clean look at Shiretoko, the code-name for Mozilla's forthcoming Firefox 3.1. One of the features noted on the change log for Shiretoko is added support for dragging and dropping of tabs between open browser windows.

Now, if you're a veteran Firefox user already, you may think you can already do this. Yes, you can drag a tab from one Firefox 3.0 browser window into the workspace of another open browser window, with the result being that the URL from that dragged tab will be loaded into the other window's tab, taking the place of whatever was there before. And you can drag a tab into the address bar of another open window, accomplishing the same thing. In both cases, what Firefox 3.0 will do is simply trigger the receiving window to reload the same page from the Web.

What the Shiretoko team is working on is an effort at what they describe as, essentially, no longer faking it. What they want to do is move the content of the already open window without reloading the Web page, enabling the existing page to be scooted from container to container.

In BetaNews tests this afternoon, we discovered that, as Grandfather famously said in the classic movie Little Big Man, sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. For instance, we noticed that in Shiretoko, a Web page with mostly text and no editing controls, could be transferred from open window to open window without the recipient window ever reloading the page. When this happens, the open tab in the "from" window disappears, so you really are shuffling tabs between windows without intervention from the Web.

When that page had a more sophisticated DOM construction, however, the situation changed. On a page that has a multitude of editing controls, we tried entering text in some of those controls, to see whether that text would survive a transfer between open windows. It does survive...about six times out of ten. Sometimes the text we entered disappears, most often when trying to move an already moved tab back to the window from whence it came. And about one time in ten, Shiretoko cheats and reloads the original page from the Web, Firefox 3.0-style.

Also in our first tests of Shiretoko this afternoon, we noted that you can take a tab from one window and drop it into the links bar of another open window. In other words, the toolbars are now receptive to drags and drops from other windows. For Shiretoko's sake, this is a minor feature addition; but the underlying meaning could be more profound: Firefox's window adornments are becoming receptive to outside input...like Chrome's.

A browser window that "listens" to more user events may, in future alpha builds, have the freedom to go beyond the ordinary browser window enclosure, operating as a more independent, more functional device. A bigger, better gathering place for tabs is one possibility.

Conversation between Mozilla's developers -- on a thread about drag-and-drop that really did start in 2001 -- has this week become heated, with some suggesting it may take a serious rethinking of the underlying tabbrowser class in order for developers to integrate some of the next concepts on their list. In BetaNews tests, we noticed you couldn't drag a tab from one window into the bookmarks list of another; and while that might not be something the everyday user would want to do in the current setup of Firefox, a future setup where some tabbed windows are independent of another main window, could eventually mandate such functionality.

Another major new feature being tested in Firefox 3.1 is its built-in video and audio codecs, which enable use of the <VIDEO> and <AUDIO> tags that will be part of the next XHTML HTML 5 standard. We'll test those next.