Tabs vs Spaces - Mozilla changes sides

In a surprise move the Mozilla Foundation announced to join team spaces in the ongoing developer dispute Tabs vs. Spaces.

Rationale and Value proposition

In a recent statement Mozilla confirmed: "_We are seeing the errors of our way being team tabs for so long_". Mozilla sees an number of advantages in the switch from tabs to spaces:

• Differentiation: IE, Edge, Chrome, Safari, Brave and all the other browsers will look dated compared to the spaces based Firefox
• Freedom from patent US20070136665A1
• Value delivery: a tab only delivers a paltry HEX09, while a single space delivers already a HEX20 and gets delivered two to four times in the same visual space
• Upgradable: HEX20 can be upgraded to HEXA0 with no optical change (OK, your YAML will break, but it will break anyway)

Consequences

Mozilla will rollout "Firefox Spaces" in phases:

• In the first interation warnings will be generated if a site you visit uses tabs. The warnings are on the console only
• Phase 2 will feature warning banner overlays
• Phase 3 will see the replacment of tab navigation by "Firefox in Space"
• Finally sites using tabs will be blocked and reported to NIST's Cyber division

As usual YMMV