Tile Tabs WE makes it easier to display tabs side-by-side in Firefox and Chrome

Remember Tile Tabs in Firefox? The classic extension for the browser added capabilities to it to display multiple sites in a single tab.

Tile Tabs WE is the successor of the extension, and since it is based on WebExtensions, compatible with all recent versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

WebExtensions APIs don't provide options to display multiple sites in a tab, and that is the reason why Tile Tabs WE uses the next best thing, windows, for its operations.

The change impacts the display, as windows do come with window controls that take up space.

The very first thing you do is install the extension in the Firefox or Google Chrome web browser. The extension should work in other Chromium-based browsers such as Microsoft Edge or Brave as well. Vivaldi browser users don't need it as the browser supports tab tiling functionality natively.

The extension adds a single icon to the browser's toolbar, but you may control it with keyboard shortcuts or context menus as well.

Once installed, right-click on the extension icon to display its menu. Here you may switch the layout and even create layouts of your own. The layout determines the number of tabs that the extension will split in windows on the screen. The default is two tabs, but you can go as high as displaying all tabs in windows side-by-side on the screen. Custom layouts can be saved, and exported and imported.

The extension will place the tiles in the location of the original browser window.

The number of tiles depends on the screen size to a large degree. To invoke the functionality, click on the extension icon. It uses the "default" tile layout for the operation. A second click returns the tiles to their parent window.

The extension selects tabs based on the following logic:

• If multiple tabs are selected, e.g. by holding Ctrl and left-clicking on tabs, these are tiled.
• Otherwise, it is the active tab and tabs to its right that are selected. If there are not enough tabs on the right, tabs on the left will be selected as well. If there are not enough tabs, blank tabs are created.

A small extension icon is displayed in the top left corner on each tab used in the layout. You can use it to add or remove tiles, change the layout, bookmark it, or enable scroll sync.

Scroll sync synchronizes scrolling between all tabs of the layout. When you use the scrollbar in one tab, all other tabs are scrolled as well provided that this is possible. The feature can be useful to compare two pages or sites, or two versions of an article to find differences.

You may also resize tiles while keeping the layout intact.

Closing Words

Tile Tabs WE adds tab splitting functionality to Firefox, Google Chrome and most Chromium-based web browsers. The feature is not as elegant as that of the Vivaldi web browser, but is useful nevertheless as it makes it easier to display multiple tabs side-by-side on the screen.

Now You: do you display tabs side-by-side in your browser of choice?

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