> Sadly the community prefers to solve this at the application level rather than the desktop level
Not only does it "prefer", they actually enforce this. I haven't found any sensible way of completely disabling tabs in either Firefox or Chromium. FF has some janky extension that kinda sorta works, but it's a hideous workaround consisting of hiding the tab bar and automatically detaching most new tabs. With the rest of the tabs, you're SOL. Haven't found anything at all for chrome.
I very much prefer managing windows with my my... window manager. Which works the same way with all applications.
I think there are, see the other comment about tree-style tabs or similar for Firefox. I can absolutely see the value in that and I don't argue for that option to be removed or otherwise degraded.
But that's not the point. I'm not against applications offering those possibilities, and when I have to use Windows for work, I'm happy browsers have them.
My point is that they shouldn't force users into this way of working. Browsers already support multiple windows. Why can't I just disable the whole tab feature if I don't care for it? A while ago, when tabs were still new, you had to actively opt in. The default was a new window for everything. Now this option is completely gone for some reason.
Not only does it "prefer", they actually enforce this. I haven't found any sensible way of completely disabling tabs in either Firefox or Chromium. FF has some janky extension that kinda sorta works, but it's a hideous workaround consisting of hiding the tab bar and automatically detaching most new tabs. With the rest of the tabs, you're SOL. Haven't found anything at all for chrome.
I very much prefer managing windows with my my... window manager. Which works the same way with all applications.