I guess one could make a point that competition will no longer have the access to the scraped data.

Sideberry for Firefox has settings that allow changing how new tabs behave. One of the settings allows placing new tabs on top of the list.

It seems Sideberry only allows opening new tabs at the beginning of the list. That is not the same as just sorting newest at the top, since it also switches the order of native tabs as well. I want native tabs (since we can't hide them) to remain left to right. And I can't even move the "New Tab" button to the top.

changing "place new tab (general rule)" to "panel start" in sidebery will put the new tab right at the top. unless you mean you want it only at the top of the group?

zen also has a "compact mode" than hides the native tabs, but it hides other things you might want as well

Kate does support it. There is a checkbox somewhere in the settings to enable exactly this behavior. I use it together with sessions.

Confirmed; just as you noted this functionality from Notepad++ exists in Kate!!! I guess i now am fully going to dive in to Kate even for Windows (nothing against Notepad++, but no need for it now)! Thanks!

Nice! I will have to check that out. Thanks!