Tabbed browsing is essential today. Even the most basic browser has its tab bar at the top to be able to open all the websites that we want at the same time from a single window. Gone are the times when, to navigate, it was necessary to open dozens of different windows. The horizontal tabs at the top of the browser have been around for a long time. However, now Microsoft wants to revolutionize this with a new vertical tab system .
The vertical tabs offer us a series of advantages compared to the classic way of using them. The monitors are always wider in height, so we can take advantage of much more screen space. In addition, we can always see the name of the tabs in the column, which will allow us to sort them more easily.
Placing the lashes vertically is not exactly new or revolutionary. There are many browsers that already offer us this possibility, either natively or through the use of extensions. However, Microsoft wanted to go one step further and offer a new, totally vertical tab panel that is as simple as possible.
Vertical tabs now available in Edge Canary and Dev
This new function is still in development, so it can only be used by users who are using either the Canary version of the browser, or the Dev version of developers. Users who already have these versions will see a button in the upper left of the Edge window from which they can change the tab mode they want to use.
By clicking on it we can see that the tabs disappear from the top (being able to see the full title of the website in this section) and a drop-down panel appears on the left side of the window.
The way to use the tabs from this section is the same as using them at the top. We can click on any of the tabs to open it, drag them to place them, and even close them from the button that appears next to it.
Also, what if this column takes up a lot of space? Microsoft has thought about it, and has enabled us a button that allows us to collapse it to only show the icons of the pages . If we place the mouse over this bar we can see that it is automatically displayed, and it is hidden again when we select a website or move the mouse from it.
If we want, we can select several tabs by holding down the mouse control key, and thus we can perform operations with several selected tabs at the same time.
Turn vertical tabs on or off
Microsoft has added a button that allows us to enable or disable these tabs easily from the Settings menu, specifically in the “Appearance” section. To do this, we will write “edge: // settings / appearance” in the address bar and there we will find the option of vertical tabs in the ” Customize the toolbar ” section.
We can activate or deactivate the vertical tabs button depending on whether we want it to appear or not. But, since we have it, we should give it another try.
Availability
As we have said, at the moment this function is only available for the Canary and Dev versions of the browser. If we don’t have them, we can download these versions for free from this link . While users of these two versions test it, Microsoft will continue to debug and fix any possible bugs in this feature.
If all goes well, Edge’s vertical tabs could land on the stable version of the browser heading into Edge Chromium version 88 . And there are still quite a few weeks left for it.
