Tag Archives: sidebar tabs Chrome
How to Use Google Labs in Chromium
Posted on 28. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
0 Comments
Google’s calling the ability to use “crazy experimental stuff” within the browser Google Chrome Labs. Here’s what you need to do to enable Labs right now.
The ability to use Labs is only available in Chromium right now. So the first thing you need to do is get the most recent version. Head over to here to find the platform you use.
Scroll down to the very bottom of the list to get the newest build. You can see here that there are already several new builds for today, just pick the newest one.
Once you have installed the latest copy of Chromium using the appropriate installation files for your system, go ahead and enter in about:labs in the omnibox.
Right now the only Chromium Lab available is using side tabs. If you’re using Chrome, you can already use this feature, and I’ve already written a guide on how. According to ReadWriteWeb, Mac users will see something called expose-for-tabs, and right now Linux does not have any Lab features available.
I would expect to see some pretty cool stuff in labs, but it will usually require one to have the updated version of Chromium to get the newest features. We’ll keep you posted when new ones pop up.
Sidebar Window Could Come to Chrome Extensions, Webapps
Posted on 24. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 8 Comments
In a Chromium Blog post yesterday, a new contextual menu API was introduced, as well as two experimental ones: and Infobar and Omnibox API to offer developer more options when creating both extensions and webapps. Another possible API coming down the pipe would be sidebar functionality.
We’ve already seen the ability to move tabs to the side vertically as sidebar tabs; in June we got a glimpse of sidebars in some intriguing Chrome OS screenshots that were leaked.
As Google’s Aleksey Shlyapnikov has proposed, a sidebar API would give “an extension control over a sidebar panel – a per-tab split-pane HTML container with the ability to resize horizontally to the right of the main page content.”
It makes sense, since webapps are going to need as much flexibility as they can get from Chrome’s existing windows. Sidewiki, which is a Google-made extension that allows users to add additional content to web pages, could use this type of API; currently Sidewiki pops out under the extension as opposed to being a full sidebar.
You can read more about the experimental sidebar API here. In the proposal, Shlyapnikove says that sidebar functionality can be already be tested for development purposes by using the “–enable-experimental-extension-apis” switch.
You Want Sidebar Tabs in Chrome? Here’s How
Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 10 Comments
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.
Open up Chrome again, and you can now right click on a tab and choose Use side tabs.
When I chose Use side tabs, my tabs simply disappeared, a strange sight for sure.
But when I hit Ctrl+T to open a new tab, they appeared on a sidebar to the left.
To revert to regular tabs, right click on an open tab and uncheck the Use side tabs option.
Once 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.
