Hi Opera Team,

First off, I love Opera — as a power user, nothing else on the market comes close, and I can’t go back to other browsers. However, after testing the new Vertical Tabs, I wanted to share some feedback from the perspective of someone running 200–300 tabs across multiple Workspaces on a 43-inch monitor.

While Vertical Tabs sound great on paper, forced "either-or" mode feels unintuitive for heavy multi-tab workflows. I believe the true strength would be a Hybrid Mode that combines both horizontal and vertical tab spaces.

Here are the key pain points and suggested solutions:

1. The Core Issue: Finding Newly Opened Tabs
   When using Vertical Tabs with hundreds of tabs open, middle-clicking a link opens a new tab somewhere in the vertical list. I end up having to scroll and hunt to find where it landed. It breaks the active workflow.

2. Proposal: Hybrid Tab Layout
   Instead of locking users into only vertical or only horizontal tabs, allow us to mix both:

Horizontal Bar (Active Workspace): Keep currently active/working tabs and newly middle-clicked links on the traditional horizontal bar at the top for quick, immediate access.

Vertical Bar (Tab Islands & Storage): Use the vertical panel as a visual overview for inactive Tab Islands, grouped content, or tabs kept for reference across the workspace.

Auto-Archiving / Restructuring: Newly opened horizontal tabs could be manually dragged into a vertical Tab Island, or automatically sorted into their respective vertical island upon restarting the browser.

3. Flexible Pinning
   Give users the choice to pin tabs either in the vertical sidebar or on the traditional horizontal bar above the address bar.

4. Tab Target Size on Large Displays
   With hundreds of tabs, misclicking is a constant battle (even on a 43-inch screen). A hybrid approach—where the top bar handles current task tabs and the side panel holds organized islands—would make target areas much easier to click.

Summary:
Forcing a choice between pure horizontal or pure vertical feels like a missed opportunity. Giving users the freedom to customize which tabs/islands live horizontally and which stay in the vertical panel would make Opera even better.

Thanks for constantly pushing the browser forward!