I know this is old news by now, but I was not sure how to activate vertical tabs on all of my browsers. It certainly is not obvious, so I wanted to include the instructions here in case anyone else wants to try it out.
Type about:config into the address bar of Firefox. You’ll be greeted with a warning that you are accessing advanced settings - click “Accept the Risk and Continue.” Search for the boolean preference sidebar.verticalTabs and set to true. That’s it! Enjoy your vertical Tabs!
Edit: You may also need to set sidebar.revamp to true if it is not already/automatically set.
I like it better than the horizontal tabs, but it’s still got nothing on the Tree Style Tabs extension. With that you can group tabs together, collapse trees, close trees, etc. Makes it much easier to keep things organized