Discussion
Ooo, this is a cool feature. #Firefox users are going to love it. It's been in #Vivaldi for a while now, and it's super useful. I use it a lot, especially at work where I'm copying information from a ticket or something into a web form.
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2025/12/enable-firefox-split-view-feature
@mike its been in #zenbrowser for a while as well, but I very rarely use it. I guess it depends on your habits and workflow
@CedC I didn't realize that! I have Zen installed, but I rarely use it. It's a "backup browser" on my system, of which I have several. I do use the tab tiling in Vivaldi, but it's my go-to browser, so I guess I'm just more aware of its features.
@mike Oooh that does indeed look interesting. I'm wondering if they'll add it to the mobile versions of Firefox.
I'm also wondering if this is just an attempt to distract us from the AI bullshit they're adding to Firefox 😂
(Sorry for the swearing, I hope no AI crawler/bot/scraper was hurt scraping this post)
@graves501 Not sure. Those kinds of features are less functional with less screen real estate. Vivaldi doesn't seem to do it. It would be interesting if Firefox took it there.
@mike From the article "However, if you opt-in to test this experimental feature do keep in mind that it is not finished: you can’t grouse if it bugs out, doesn’t work or crashes during a critical browser session."
But you *can* file a bug report in the Mozilla Bugbase.
Played a bit with it, and it is almost usable. If the tab I right-klick and do "Add Split View" would open in the split, it would be useful already.
It don't, it just creates a new tab.
Now I dream of it ready and with a shortcut open https://fosstodon.org/publish in a 1/3 split on the right. Or other common web apps to make notes or other relevant stuff from the page I'm on.
That would make a sweet UX in my book.
@tsvenson Yea, it's still not in a full, production ready version with Firefox so I'm giving them a lot of slack. If it still works like it does now when it's billed as being fully ready, I'll be disappointed.
If Split View UX-improves like Tab Groups did, from when I about:config turned them on, then I'm not worried at all.
Only thing I really miss in Tab Groups is the ability to copy and paste, and it then also be possible to do to/from other browsers like LibreWolf.
@tsvenson Firefox used to have a feature called Panorama that I was a huge fan of at the time, but they discontinued it and no other browser has done that kind of feature that I'm aware of. There are still some extensions out there that do it, but I haven't found one that recreates the original magic.
@mike I may be old fashioned but I can't imagine myself using this over opening two separate windows side by side
@NasaGuy No feature in any browser is for everybody, but I personally like it. There are situations where I'd argue it's objectively better. Whether those come into play for you is a different matter. Some of those situations is screen sharing. I often share a single window when I'm presenting during meetings. I don't want to share everything on my screen. Tiling works much better for that. Also, what if you're using vertical tabs? Tiling works perfectly, two windows gets all kinds of messy.
@mike Sure, I'm not arguing with this feature's usefulness. I just noticed that lately there's been quite a bit of innovation in the desktop browser space but I'm personally such a creature of habit that I never use any of these shiny new features.
I'm sure they'd be useful if I did.
@NasaGuy Interestingly, browsers are where I tend to jump on the new feature bandwagon pretty quickly. They were so stagnant for a while, maybe I just got desperate for some improvement. There's some browser features I have no interest in too, and AI is one of them. I value my privacy too much for that nonsense. I guess that's one of the big reasons I like Vivaldi so much. It's packed to the gills with features, and I can pick and choose and adapt the browser to be as simple as I want it to be.
@mike That's why I recently switched to Vivaldi as well. It can be as simple and as innovative as you want it to be, while not spying on you and not shoving AI down your throat.
@mike Noticed this in Chrome too after recent update at work.
@mike ... Just open two windows? Am I missing something? You can even drag a tab outside the tab bsr to make a new window and then super + ← and super + → and you have this setup.
@tobtobxx Yea, two windows works, ish, but it's the same argument to claim that tabs aren't required at all. We can just open a bunch of windows. I honestly can't really tell you what about it is so much better, but I much prefer tiling (that's what Vivaldi calls it) two tabs than opening two windows. Of course, Vivaldi has a whole load of different configurations you can setup, not just two, but that's neither here nor there.
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