> I had some tabs (mostly YouTube) opened thrice when clicking on a YT link.
Some of the multiple tabs issues have been fixed in version 6.0.0. And the upcoming version will fix them completely.
> They don't automatically switch back to the default container. That's a big problem
I've added an "Isolation" feature to the just published version 0.67 of the Temporary Containers Add-on that gives you several ways to avoid accidentally staying in the same container - including an option to only allow "Always open in" assigned domains to load in their container.
> container tabs, which are now relegated to being an extension
Now? Haven't they always been?
> simply are not cutting it for me.
Do you mind explaining why? I had some problems with them initially (when they first went into production FF), but some small tweaks since then and they've mostly worked exactly as I would want.
The only complaints I have are Google, which I try to relegate to a container, making it really hard to open stuff in different containers because of how they send links in Gmail through a redirect to protect referrer info and making it hard to have separate Google accounts in different tabs (which i could probably resolve mos the issues by not assigning Google to a container by default so some of the switching is more smooth, but ick), and LastPass, which I only really need for work (as I use FF sync for my passwords).
LastPass doesn't seem to be able to deal with containers and work SSO which auto redirects to a container, so I can't even sign in with LastPass without tweaking container domain assignments, and toggling that stuff every time I want to log in is ridiculous.
Other than those, everything works pretty smoothly, IMO. I have 18 containers, of which 6-7 see consistent heavy use, and the most rest are for occasional things and are used once every few days.
> Edit: you might be interested in the Firefox add-on Temporary Containers. You can open a new tab in its own container that isn't shared with anything else
Thank you for the suggestion but....
"Containers are disabled .... when Never Remember History is selected in your privacy settings."
> Container tabs are a similarly interesting idea with a weird implementation that requires you to micromanage your tabs, which I certainly don't want to, and provides a "techie" solution to something that should just be invisible and default (i.e. all web sites should be "contained").
All websites contained would be an interesting default. With ways to “re-open current tab in container [X]” and “merge current tab with container [Y],” it would involve less micromanaging. That’s still not invisible, the container process and UX warrants plenty of thought.
"Anyone thinking of installing Firefox should check out the Multi-Account Containers addon. I'm pretty sure such functionality doesn't exist for Chrome, and it makes it possible to isolate different sites and logins from each other."
Remind me - is this different than the "Container Tab" choice in the File menu ?
I find the built-in container functionality in Firefox to be surprisingly awkward and poorly thought out ...
For instance, the very first use-case that I attempted (create a Window, not a tab and have all new tabs inherit that same container) is impossible.
It also appears to be impossible to clear the history of just a container.
These are basic use-cases that came up, immediately, in a cursory exploration of the feature - I wasn't digging deep to find these ...
"I do get it. I've been using it for several months, and I run into problems fairly often. Nothing wrong with the implementation, AFAICT, but it takes a fair amount of thought to assign sites to different containers, and you can easily end up following links that cross container boundaries and then don't work right because of the context change."
See my comment above - I think the obvious workflow for containers is a container window, not a tab, and all tabs created in that window inherit the container settings.
As I also note, above, I don't see how to manage per-container cookies and history ... I can't clear history for just my "banking" container (or whatever).
I really want to make heavy use of a container-like feature but keep stumbling over things like this.
> However, I wonder. What is the technical reason for not making it default to 1 container by site? Sure that would mean hundreds of containers...but does that pose performance problems?
It would break some webpages. Also, yes, the vast majority of broken things will be tracking, but as a browser vendor you sort of need to not piss off webpage owners (which often benefit from tracking, directly or indirectly), as otherwise they'll stop testing their webpage against your browser.
Multi-account containers are great. I just wish switching to one wasn't as jarring as the tab closing immediately after opening and then re-opening in the correct container - I'm assuming that's still how this extension works?
Of course, I can appreciate that such behaviour is technically far more challenging. It's merely as a user that it's disappointing, and it makes Temporary Containers [0] practically unusable.
> One of my favorite features in Firefox is containers
Container tabs are great. Combined with Tree Style Tabs and Containerise addons, you have something unbeatable in both terms of security, privacy and user friendliness.
> I envisioned a world where I could open a couple of different browser windows and have all the tabs share a container. This would be great for things like working in multiple Google accounts, or multiple AWS accounts.
I really like this! First time I've actually tried it out now that it's an extension. Seeing an issue with the always open in this container feature though - clicking on a YouTube link set to always open in a 'Personal' container, it's opening multiple new container tabs. At first it was just a duplication with new tabs, but now it seems to be opening three tabs.
Edit: Above is when opening from a default tab. Maybe this is expected, but the clicked links show as visited in the default tab even when they're opened in a container tab. Perhaps this is to be expected, but it seems like a type of information leakage across containers? Actually, seems like links clicked in the default container show as visited in other containers. Odd as well is that I'm not seeing the duplicate tab issue when clicking YT links from a non-default container.
Edit 2: Is there any way to opt-out of "always" opening a specific site in a given container? Say I configure youtube to always open in a personal container, but for some reason I now have to test something in a work container on youtube. Is that possible? Or do I need to go edit out the config and then replace it when I'm done?
This add-on's options include opening each (sub)domain in its own container. These containers are temporary: they're deleted a short time after you close their last tab, so you have to log back into each site on each visit. (This may be something you do anyway.)
I don't (yet?) know of an add-on that automatically assigns each domain you visit to its own permanent container, and automatically creates new containers for each new domain.
> I already use the multi-container accounts to do this.
How? Specifically the part where clicking a link inside the FB container that leads outside of FB opens outside the container?
AFAIK it's impossible, and that's why I stopped using the multi container stuff in Firefox.
It's such an obvious oversight. When they implemented "get into the container when clicking xyz.com" how come they never thought of "get out of the container when clicking something that's not xyz.com"?
Yeah, the implementation could use some work. I also use the temporary containers plugin so by default tabs open in new containers. I think this gives better security than either of these defaults. If I need a site to open up in a particular container, I can always set that too.
I disagree. I think the current system works great.
When the "always open" setting conflicts with a current container, you get a prompt. If you want to open a specific container, long press the create tab button to get a selection of containers so you can browse to the website manually.
Using multiple accounts works great for me. Clicking on links will open in the same container, opening the website in a specific container is easy, I don't see the blocker here.
I don't know how many containers you intend on using but I don't find the feature problematic at all. Maybe the Tree Style Tabs integration is fixing a problem I don't know about, but it's working great for me.
> If you want to isolate Facebook and click a link to Spotify it will open Spotify in the Facebook container :(
If you are talking about the Temporary containers extension, that's not the case. The extension is not the most easy to use, but it certainly supports opening Spotify in a different container when clicking a link in FB. You either don't have the Navigation?Target Domain set to Different from Tab Domain & Subdomains or you have Exclusion Patterns set which exempt Spotify.
I love treestyle tabs and being able to autohide it until I mouse over, but I can't get containers to ever work as expected. I would expect when I click a link to e.g. ebay it would open in my ebay container in a new tab, and when I google something it puts me in a google container, and when I click a reddit link it puts me into the reddit container. Instead I am often still in the ebay container. Temporary containers are even worse with this, I would think opening up a new link to a different domain would put me into a new temporary container, but I am still in tmp7 or whatever the numbers have marched up to. I have regressed to just facebook container because its simpler to deal with just one container and associated issues.
A fantastic feature, but has a really frustrating UX issue still not fixed which is that you can't auto open a 'homepage' site for a new container tab, so say for example you have a container for one specific site, you have to open a new container tab and then open that site using a bookmark or similar.
What you can do is have a certain site auto open in a specific container, that way you can just go to the site from a bookmark, link, the address bar etc and it is just one step, but this breaks when you have more than one account on the same site and want a container for each.
If anyone does know a workaround for this, or knows if there's a fix coming, would be really interested to hear!
Some of the multiple tabs issues have been fixed in version 6.0.0. And the upcoming version will fix them completely.
> They don't automatically switch back to the default container. That's a big problem
I've added an "Isolation" feature to the just published version 0.67 of the Temporary Containers Add-on that gives you several ways to avoid accidentally staying in the same container - including an option to only allow "Always open in" assigned domains to load in their container.
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