{"id":4413,"date":"2020-07-31T10:08:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T14:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/?p=4413"},"modified":"2020-07-31T14:29:09","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T18:29:09","slug":"ordering-browser-tabs-chronologically-to-support-task-continuity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/ux\/2020\/07\/ordering-browser-tabs-chronologically-to-support-task-continuity\/","title":{"rendered":"Ordering Browser Tabs Chronologically to Support Task Continuity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Product teams working on Firefox at Mozilla<\/a> have long been interested in helping people get things done, whether that\u2019s completing homework for school, shopping for a pair of shoes, or doing one\u2019s taxes. We are deeply invested in how we can support task continuity, the various steps that people take in getting things done, in our browser products. And we know that in our browsers, tabs play an important role for people carrying out tasks.<\/p>\n

Task continuity model<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2015, Firefox researchers Gemma Petrie and Bill Selman developed a model to explain different types of task continuity strategies<\/a>, which are represented in the middle of the diagram below.<\/p>\n

\"Task<\/figure>\n

Passive strategies include behaviors like leaving a tab open, such as a page for a product that one is considering purchasing. Active strategies include actions like emailing a link, for example a link to a recipe to cook at a later time, to oneself. Share strategies might involve using social media to share content, such as a news article, with other people.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to this year and the team working on Firefox for iOS<\/a> was interested in how we might support task continuity involving leaving tabs open. We continued to see in user research the important role that tabs play in task continuity, and we wanted to explore how to make tab retrieval and overall tab management easier.<\/p>\n

In most web browsers on smartphones, tabs are ordered based on when a person first opened them, with the oldest tabs on one end of the interface (top, bottom, left, or right) and the newest tabs stacking to the opposite end of the interface. This ordering logic gets more complex if a new tab is prompted to open when someone taps on a link in an existing tab. A site may be designed to launch links in new tabs or a person may choose to open new tabs for links. The new tab, in that case, typically will open immediately next to the tab where the link was tapped, pushing all other later tabs toward the other end of the interface. All of this gets even trickier when managing more than just a few tabs. This brief demonstration illustrates tab ordering logic in Firefox for iOS before chronological tabs using the example of someone shopping for a food processor.<\/p>\n

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