Some kind of syncing and export functionality is on the todo list, though probably won't make an appearance for some time. I want to get most of the planned core features in place first, which will give me a good idea of what should be syncable/exportable and how it should function -- i.e. what should be synced when, should everything be considered one big "shared session" or do we want to have separate "work", "home", etc. sessions, and so on.

Regarding a manual export/transfer mechanism, there isn't a real clean way to do this right now. While it is possible to dump all of Sidewise's settings and pagetree/notepad content and import it on another machine, the bigger problem is getting the specifically currently-open tabs to carry over from one machine to another, which is more of a Chrome-specific thing. This might be well-accommodated by Chrome's own ability to sync "open tabs" but I haven't tried it.

That being said, if you want to give it a try, I'll give you the basic starting points.

Firstly go to Chrome's Extensions page, check the Developer mode checkbox in the upper right, then click background.html under the Sidewise entry in the extension list. From there switch to the Console tab. We'll be entering Javascript commands into Sidewise's background page to export/import its state data.

Quick and dirty export of Sidewise's state:

copy(JSON.stringify(localStorage))

This exports a copy of Sidewise's state data to your system clipboard.

Quick and dirty import of state from the clipboard:

var s = <PRESS CTRL+V TO PASTE THE DATA><press Enter>
for (var k in s) { settings.set(k, JSON.parse(s[k])); }

This imports the state data from the clipboard into Sidewise's current settings, overwriting whatever's there currently.

Then disable/enable Sidewise from the Extensions page to restart it.

I haven't tested this across multiple machines but I was able to export, hand-modify, and then import the state data on my single Chrome instance and after restarting Sidewise the modifications were there.

But again this doesn't address the issue of which tabs are open on each machine. During its startup, Sidewise will do its best to figure out which open tabs correspond to which entries in the tree, but this is definitely unexplored territory :)

Good luck!

Some kind of syncing and export functionality is on the todo list, though probably won't make an appearance for some time. I want to get most of the planned core features in place first, which will give me a good idea of what should be syncable/exportable and how it should function -- i.e. what should be synced when, should everything be considered one big "shared session" or do we want to have separate "work", "home", etc. sessions, and so on.

Regarding a manual export/transfer mechanism, there isn't a real clean way to do this right now. While it is possible to dump all of Sidewise's settings and pagetree/notepad content and import it on another machine, the bigger problem is getting the specifically currently-open tabs to carry over from one machine to another, which is more of a Chrome-specific thing. This might be well-accommodated by Chrome's own ability to sync "open tabs" but I haven't tried it.

That being said, if you want to give it a try, I'll give you the basic starting points.

Firstly go to Chrome's Extensions page, check the Developer mode checkbox in the upper right, then click background.html under the Sidewise entry in the extension list. From there switch to the Console tab. We'll be entering Javascript commands into Sidewise's background page to export/import its state data.

Quick and dirty export of Sidewise's state:

copy(JSON.stringify(localStorage))

This exports a copy of Sidewise's state data to your system clipboard.

Quick and dirty import of state from the clipboard:

var s = <PRESS CTRL+V TO PASTE THE DATA><press Enter>
for (var k in s) { settings.set(k, JSON.parse(s[k])); }

This imports the state date from the clipboard into Sidewise's current settings, overwriting whatever's there currently.

Then disable/enable Sidewise from the Extensions page to restart it.

I haven't tested this across multiple machines but I was able to export, hand-modify, and then import the state data on my single Chrome instance and after restarting Sidewise the modifications were there.

But again this doesn't address the issue of which tabs are open on each machine. During its startup, Sidewise will do its best to figure out which open tabs correspond to which entries in the tree, but this is definitely unexplored territory :)

Good luck!

Manually adding a separator (as its own type of row) is definitely on the todo list. I will probably make these separators accept a label as well, so they can be used as simple "headers" or category separators by the user.

Regarding retheming, the fancytree.css and pages.css files are the ones to look at. I agree they are rather complex right now; before I add proper theming support to Sidewise, I will be converting these to LESS which will make changes much simpler to make.

Agreed. This is the first major new feature that is planned after I wrap up some existing bug fixes and other core improvements.

You are correct, Chrome gives us no way to control the visibility of the tab bar. I doubt they will ever change this, but your best bet would be to submit a request to let users manually toggle the tab-bar visibility on http://crbug.com. Post back here if you make a request for that, I for one will go and vote for it :)

Right on. I suspected that bug existed; it's near the top of my to-fix list now.

Regarding styling: I personally didn't like Tree Style Tabs' "looks like tabs" styling as much as the more common "Windows style" tree view. So I think I will probably implement this request as a theme option for users who want something that looks very similar to the FF extension. Theming support is probably a few months away.

Regarding auto-collapse: I'll play with this in FF Tree Style Tabs to get a feel for how it works. Most likely will implement after a couple other core features get wrapped up.

Regarding "clicking on the icon does nothing": 

• In Chrome's Settings page, if you click "show advanced options" and scroll to the bottom of the page, is the "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed" option checked?
  
  
• Once this problem occurs, can you please do the following to help me track this problem down?: Right click the Sidewise icon, go to Manage extensions, check the "Developer mode" checkbox in the upper right, scroll down to Sidewise in the list, click on "background.html", then in the window that appears click the "Console" button along the top buttonbar, copy all of the text in the console window and paste it here (or into a new Userecho issue)?
  
  

Thanks.

The next version will very probably be out by the end of the month. Most of the work that has been going on since the last release has been internal stuff that won't have any visible difference from the end-user perspective, but is laying the groundwork for faster features/releases to follow.

The main visible feature that will be in the next release is that the tab order will be synchronized between Chrome's horizontal tabbar and Sidewise's vertical tree. This also improves how tabs are initially placed in the tree and will improve overall compatibility with other Chrome extensions.

Most of the remaining visible changes are bug fixes, particularly fixes regarding pinned tabs and fixes related to drag-and-drop vs. prompt dialog boxes. I may also include a new set of options that allow you to disable/enable/reorder which sidebar panes show up in the sidebar, depending on timing.

A roadmap is a good idea, I think I'll put something together after this next release for interested folks to keep an eye on. I will also probably be putting together an "early/nightly release" version in the near future for those who want to use the latest, possibly buggy in-development version.

I'm not quite ready to enlist outside help yet -- the codebase is still a little messy and I want to get everything reasonably tidy and comprehensible before I share it. I'll also be looking for help with non-English translations and custom sidebar themes in the not too distant future.

Thanks for your interest!

I'll give this request some consideration. Two considerations:

1. Chrome team is working on a keybinding API that extensions can use, but it is not yet out of the "experimental" stage. I am waiting to add any global keybindings of this type until they release this API, which will make it possible for such keybindings to work everywhere in the browser; without this, keybinds such as Ctrl+Tab would not work when viewing certain kinds of tabs, e.g. Chrome's own History, Downloads, Bookmarks tabs don't allow us to register keybinds without that API.
   
   
2. I am debating whether this feature makes sense to add to Sidewise, rather than as a separate extension. My general rule for adding stuff to Sidewise is "does this affect Sidewise directly and work inseparably from (with) Sidewise?" If the answer is no, then it suggests that feature might actually be something that would make more sense as a separate extension, so that for example somebody could install it to get that feature *without* needing Sidewise installed too.