Tag Archives: side tabs

Chrome 7 Goes Beta

Posted on 01. Oct, 2010 by . 2 Comments

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Last night’s Google Chrome release announcement for the Beta channel has flipped over to version 7. One of the major updates is the Google Chrome Labs feature becoming available for the first time in this channel. This is in an attempt to move some features out of the command line switch and into an easier toggle method by using the “about:labs” command from the Omnibox for the menu of options.

One interesting other feature included for Macs is an expose-like showing of all open tabs. CNET’s Steve Shankland has a photo of this, which looks like a great feature that has been on display as a variety of extensions, but is integrated for Apple users.

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You Want Sidebar Tabs in Chrome? Here’s How

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by . 10 Comments

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Many people have asked for the ability to move their tabs to the side in Google Chrome. This is a feature that first took off in Firefox, and fortunately the Chromium team has graciously put them into the early builds. Now, if you’re using Chrome 6 in the form of the development or canary builds, you can have sidebar tabs as well.

The first thing you need to do is add “–enable-sidebar-tabs” to your Chrome shortcut like this.

sidetabs1Open up Chrome again, and you can now right click on a tab and choose Use side tabs.

sidetabs2When I chose Use side tabs, my tabs simply disappeared, a strange sight for sure.

sidetabs3But when I hit Ctrl+T to open a new tab, they appeared on a sidebar to the left.

sidetabs4sidetabs5

To revert to regular tabs, right click on an open tab and uncheck the Use side tabs option.

sidetabs6Once again, you’ll need to open a new tab to make them appear at the top – a little quirk that shows this feature still needs refinement.

I’m not sure what to think about sidebar tabs – I’ve never used them, so I am accustomed to using regular tabs on the top. I think the feature also need a bit of UI polish as well, but if you’re using Firefox just for the sidebar tabs, you might want to grab yourself the development build of Chrome and give it a shot.