Bookmarking tabs, especially multiple tabs at once, is not a great experience on Zen at the moment ; not as good as on Firefox at least.
In Firefox, I am very fond of and used to using the bookmark sidebar to manage my bookmarks. My bookmark management routine often involves dragging multiple tabs over to the bookmark sidebar to save them in an already existing folder. It is a very intuitive workflow, and is in my opinion superior to using the "Bookmark Tabs..." button in the context menu, since you cannot put the selected tabs in a pre-existing folder this way, only in a new folder created specifically for those tabs.
Sadly, both Zen's tab tiling feature and the Zen sidebar interfere with this functionality. When the Zen sidebar is in compact mode, and the bookmark sidebar is deployed on the left of the browser, I cannot drag tabs into it because the Zen sidebar is rendered over it as long as the tabs are being dragged, making the bookmarks sidebar inaccessible.
On the other hand, when the browser sidebar is deployed on the right, trying to drag tabs into it from the Zen sidebar triggers the tab tiling feature. When moving the cursor holding the tabs above the bookmark sidebar to drop them in, the sidebar is pushed out of the way as the tab tiling features clears the right side of the screen, believing that the user wishes to tile the tabs there. Therefore, either way, it is impossible to drag tabs from the Zen sidebar into the bookmarks sidebar.
It is also not possible to drag tabs into the bookmark manager window (the one invoked with Ctrl+Shift+O by default). When the bookmarks manager is open, grabbing tabs from the sidebar will pull the main browser window to the foreground, hiding the bookmarks manager window underneath. Trying to bring the browser manager back to the foreground by alt-tabbing has no effect. In fact, alt-tabbing when dragging any element of the UI (tabs, links from a web page, links from the bookmarks sidebar, etc.) has no effect.
This is not only very inconvenient, it is also a regression compared to Firefox, where both dragging tabs into the bookmarks sidebar and into the bookmark manager window are possible. (In Firefox, the bookmark manager also falls to the background upon grabbing tabs from the tab bar, but it can be brought back up by alt-tabbing.)
To remedy this, I suggest that :
- When in compact mode, the tab bar shouldn't be pinned open like it currently is, but instead fold back when the cursor pulls away, as usual.
- The tab tiling algorithm should only affect the region of the browser window actually occupied by the contents of tabs. That way, when dragging tabs over the bookmarks sidebar (which is outside of the aforementioned region since it does not render the contents of tabs), the tiling algorithm will not push it away by trying to divide the screen.
- When dragging elements of the UI (like tabs or links), the user should be able to switch windows.
Bookmarking tabs, especially multiple tabs at once, is not a great experience on Zen at the moment ; not as good as on Firefox at least.
In Firefox, I am very fond of and used to using the bookmark sidebar to manage my bookmarks. My bookmark management routine often involves dragging multiple tabs over to the bookmark sidebar to save them in an already existing folder. It is a very intuitive workflow, and is in my opinion superior to using the "Bookmark Tabs..." button in the context menu, since you cannot put the selected tabs in a pre-existing folder this way, only in a new folder created specifically for those tabs.
Sadly, both Zen's tab tiling feature and the Zen sidebar interfere with this functionality. When the Zen sidebar is in compact mode, and the bookmark sidebar is deployed on the left of the browser, I cannot drag tabs into it because the Zen sidebar is rendered over it as long as the tabs are being dragged, making the bookmarks sidebar inaccessible.
On the other hand, when the browser sidebar is deployed on the right, trying to drag tabs into it from the Zen sidebar triggers the tab tiling feature. When moving the cursor holding the tabs above the bookmark sidebar to drop them in, the sidebar is pushed out of the way as the tab tiling features clears the right side of the screen, believing that the user wishes to tile the tabs there. Therefore, either way, it is impossible to drag tabs from the Zen sidebar into the bookmarks sidebar.
It is also not possible to drag tabs into the bookmark manager window (the one invoked with Ctrl+Shift+O by default). When the bookmarks manager is open, grabbing tabs from the sidebar will pull the main browser window to the foreground, hiding the bookmarks manager window underneath. Trying to bring the browser manager back to the foreground by alt-tabbing has no effect. In fact, alt-tabbing when dragging any element of the UI (tabs, links from a web page, links from the bookmarks sidebar, etc.) has no effect.
This is not only very inconvenient, it is also a regression compared to Firefox, where both dragging tabs into the bookmarks sidebar and into the bookmark manager window are possible. (In Firefox, the bookmark manager also falls to the background upon grabbing tabs from the tab bar, but it can be brought back up by alt-tabbing.)
To remedy this, I suggest that :