[Feature Request] Show tab's preview on hover

[emvaized]

Description

As it can be seen, Sidebery already can store tab's screenshots, to display them in tab group overview (when in list mode).

So it will be awesome to show a small popup on tab's hover containing preview of tab's content, as well as title and favicon.
I think of a great example of this feature in Vivaldi browser:

[emvaized]

@mbnuqw Would it be possible to implement this feature some day?
If it is problematic to show tooltip with image outside of the sidebar bounds, maybe Visual Tabs approach is possible?

Thanks

[mbnuqw]

I'd like to, but I don't know yet how to properly implement this feature. There are different ways, but each has essential (from my point of view) drawbacks:

Preview in window (like in Vivaldi or Edge)

Pros:

• Preview doesn't overlay sidebar tabs
• Can have a configured size (not restricted by sidebar)

Cons:

• Due to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1271047 it's not possible set initial position of the window, only update it after creation. This is resulting in undesirable movement on showing.
• Window titlebar (in Windows/macOS/most linux DE)

1.mp4

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Preview in popup inside sidebar

Pros:

• Predictable appearance

Cons:

• Size restriction
• It overlays tabs

2.mp4

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Preview in every tab (like in Visual Tabs)

Pros:

• Predictable appearance

Cons:

• Size restriction
• On sidebar start there will be a lot of empty previews because tabs will be unloaded (I don't want to save previews cache) (+ height of tab is a common static value)

---

So, I'll continue to experiment with this...

[schmurtzm]

"Preview in popup inside sidebar" seems more reactive than "Preview in window" and no flickering. So I prefer the second option ("Preview in popup inside sidebar").
In all cases this is a very nice feature !

[emvaized]

@mbnuqw
Thanks a lot for your detailed answer. I would agree that 2nd approach seems to be the most intuitive and easy to get used to.

However, I wanted to point out that by 3 (Visual Tabs-like approach) I actually meant that previews should be revealed on hover, not always visible on all tabs — extension has an option for this:

video.mp4

This way discarded tabs, which don't provide any preview, simply will not expand on mouse hover.

[guigirl42]

Looking forward to this so very much. It's a fantastic Vivaldi feature, sorely missed in FF, so if Sidebery would be able to provide this, i'll be delighted.

[megamorphg]

Firefox's MRU tab switcher has previews and for me it's the only ones I really would preview since I have very aggressive tab unloading policies (95% of my tabs are unloaded) with ATD.

Definitely would prefer the 1st option to make things more readable if it doesn't affect performance negatively too much.

[jathek]

Option 1 would be best, as it doesn't affect the sidebar's usability. The flickering is annoying though.

Next best is option 2 imo, since adding the preview to the tooltip isn't too bad when it comes to usability.

Option 3, where tabs change size when you hover over them, seems like it would have a lot of usability issues. Every time you hover over a tab, it looks like you triple the distance to the next tab.

[emvaized]

• Due to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1271047 it's not possible set initial position of the window, only update it after creation

By the way, it seems that this bug has been resolved 2 months ago...

[guigirl42]

this bug has been resolved 2 months ago

OMZ, does this mean that in fact, Sidebery can now have tab hover thumbnails... or i'm misunderstanding?

[emvaized]

@guigirl42 Nah, it only means that "undesirable movement on show" is probably gone now. But the titlebar issue of the 1st approach is still there though