I stopped using Firefox forks and made regular Firefox do everything they did

Long-time Zen user has transitioned from using Firefox forks to sticking with regular Firefox. Zen is a Firefox fork that focuses on tab management and interface design while maintaining the same Gecko engine. It offers a similar experience to Arc, while allowing users to stay within a non-Chromium browser. There are many other forks that provide their own unique take on an improved Firefox, but this reporter has now returned to regular Firefox.

Features that initially drew this reporter to several forks are now achievable through built-in tools, extensions, and interface customization. One of Zen's most appreciated features was its workspaces, which allowed users to organize tasks in separate spaces. Now, Firefox offers extensions such as Sidebery that provide a comparable organization system.

Sidebery arranges tabs into a sidebar with separate panels that can be named and organized according to specific tasks. For example, one panel can be dedicated to work, another for personal browsing, and a third for research. This feature is particularly useful for research, as it allows users to organize tabs related to a topic together.

Another feature of Sidebery is its tree structure, which enables users to collapse branches when they're working on something else and expand them when needed. Sidebery can also save information about open tabs and windows, making it easy to preserve a collection of pages without the need to bookmark each one individually. To set up Sidebery, users can install it from the Firefox Add-ons, open it in the sidebar, and create panels through its settings.

Recently, Firefox has introduced native vertical tabs, which address one of the main reasons users might consider a browser like Zen. With vertical tabs, horizontal tabs become easier to read when there are too many open. Regular Firefox also offers tab groups that work with vertical tabs, allowing users to group related pages together and collapse them when finished.

These features provide sufficient organization for most use cases without the need for additional extensions. To enable native vertical tabs, users can right-click the Firefox toolbar or tab strip and select "Turn on Vertical Tabs." They can then right-click a tab to add it to a group. Although Zen's interface was a significant draw for this reporter, installing a tab extension doesn't automatically provide regular Firefox with the same level of polish.

However, Firefox allows users to customize the toolbar, move frequently used controls, and remove unnecessary buttons. Themes can also be used to change the browser's colors, making the sidebar and the rest of the window appear more cohesive. For more significant changes, Firefox supports interface customization through userChrome.css, a file that lets users alter the appearance of various browser elements.

While Zen remains appealing due to its interface, this reporter is willing to invest some time in configuring Firefox to achieve the desired browsing experience, and regular Firefox now meets many of their needs without the necessity of returning to a separate browser.