If you are using a tiling window manager, then having tabs in your GUI applications might be sub-par. Whenever there's redundant functionality the question arises: Which option should I pick? Additionally, the tab and menubar of modern browsers take up a lot of real estate. That's certainly good for the user who wants to see all their options. Personally, I prefer shortcuts and more screen real estate. If you're of a similar mindset, this short tutorial is for you.

NB: I have used this setup for the better part of 5 years now. If the past is any indication of the future, it'll continue to work without too much manual adaptations on your part.

Here's a demo of how the final setup looks like:

I use the i3 tiling window manager. It has excellent support for window and tab management. Additionally, I'm using rofi, a window switcher and application launcher. It is similar in functionality to dmenu. Using i3 and rofi, it is trivial to start applications, order them into workspaces in different layouts and later find them, again.

In the demo screenshot above, there are multiple FF windows open, some are tabbed (by the wm). On top, I'm assuming that I have many workspaces open and I forgot where the 'hackernews' window was. I ask rofi, it fuzzy auto-completes the query. If I hit 'enter', it would take me to the workspace and bring the window to the foreground.

To set it up, follow these steps:

1. Write a bit of CSS to hide the tab bar
2. Disable tabs, use only windows

#tabbrowser-tabs {
  visibility: collapse !important;
}

.private-browsing-indicator {
  background-image: none !important;
}

#tabbrowser-tabs, #navigator-toolbox, menuitem, menu {
    font-size: 15px !important;
}

#TabsToolbar {
  visibility: collapse !important;
}