Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs

The ability to use tabs for web browsing was one of the key reasons why I switched over from Internet Explorer 6 to Firefox all those years ago.   

Now that IE7 has come along and has incorporated tabs in their own browser as well, does it make Firefox any less appealing?  Not with amount of development which has taken place with the tabs function. Here are some prime examples:

1. Color tabs to make them more distinct

chromatabs

The ‘Chromatabs‘ Firefox extension tints browser tabs with a color specific to the website loaded. This helps you identify tab contents based on a distinct visual cue.  It can pick a random color automatically (based on the site’s hostname), or it can pick a color based on the site’s tab icon.

2. Group tabs automatically

With the ‘Separate Tabs‘ extension, tabs can be grouped automatically by host URL making the arrangement of tabs much more logical.

3. Preview all tabs at once

showcase

Showcase provides a new way to manage your Firefox tabs and windows by showing them as thumbnails in a single window, tab or sidebar. Includes a find bar that will filter the thumbnails, and the capability to select the thumbnails in the same way you would select files in your system.

4. Preview tabs as you mouse over

tabscope

While the ‘Showcase’ extension described above is useful, Tab Scope provides a much more subtle approach to the situation, displaying tab previews only when the mouse is moved over the tab.  Don’t be fooled though, it even allows interaction navigation within that preview itself.

5. Share your tabs to a friend via email

The ‘Send Tab URLs’ extension adds a File menu command to the main browser window; when choosing this command, a new email message is automatically created, containing a list of URLs from all browser tabs in the current window.

6. Enhance your tabbing options with Tab Mix Plus

‘Tab Mix Plus‘ enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.

7. Save space to view more tabs in a single screen

favourite

This extension adds a new ‘FaviconizeTab’ option to the context menu of the tab.  When it is clicked, The width of the tab becomes small up to the size of favicon.  It returns to the former size when ‘FaviconizeTab’ is clicked again.

8. Count the number of tabs you have open

‘Tab Counter‘ is a simple extension that counts the number of open tabs per window and displays the count in the toolbar.  Mainly for fun or you need an indication of how much system resources you are clogging up by having that many tabs open at once.

9. Identify unused tabs

aging

If you have too many tabs open and need help identifying the tabs which you are probably no longer using, the ‘Aging Tabs‘ extension makes unused tabs fade with age.  This highlights potential tabs which may be just adding to clutter.

10. Control Tabs With Your Keyboard

Firefox makes mouse-less browsing a breeze with these simple shortcuts:

  • Ctrl T will open a new tab
  • Ctrl shift T will undo closed tab
  • Ctrl Page Up and Ctrl Page Down will scroll through your tabs
  • Ctrl Number will bring you instantly to a certain tab.  eg. If you hit Ctrl and ?3? you will go to the third tab
  • Ctrl D will bookmark the current tab
  • Ctrl Shift D will bookmark all the tabs in the window

Bonus Tip #1: You can move Firefox browser tabs from one window to another by dragging and dropping it.

Bonus Tip #2: Disable tab scrolling : Although it does make tabs slightly easier to read on occasion, scrolling through tabs is a hassle.  The How-To-Geek blog goes through two useful ways to work around this scrolling feature.

How do you deal with your Firefox tabs?  Tell us in the comments!

[tags] firefox, firefox extensions, firefox addons firefox tabs [/tags]

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    • 60 Responses to 'Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs'

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    1. Zia said,

      on July 13th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

      Fantastic post. Thanks for this review,

    2. Sara said,

      on July 13th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

      i suggest you the vertigo add-on, which displays tags in vertical on the left side of the browser, so that you can open a lot of tabs and be able to recognize them as they don’t get small

    3. Jon said,

      on July 13th, 2007 at 9:27 pm

      While I have nothing against Tab Mix Plus, you don’t have to load a plugin to eliminate tab scrolling. You can simply type about:config into your browser bar. From the list, set the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth key to 0.

    4. eLearning Service » Blog Archive » Tech links for Friday the 13th — no bad luck here said,

      on July 14th, 2007 at 2:12 am

      [...] of development around managing Firefox’s tabs, continuing to make it a good choice over IE.  Friedbeef’s Tech has a nice list with illustrations and links.  If you typically have a lot of tabs open at one time, there are [...]

    5. James Yeang said,

      on July 14th, 2007 at 5:38 am

      @Zia - thanks for the kind words
      @Sara & @John - thanks for those tips. Really appreciate them :)

    6. papajoneh said,

      on July 14th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

      Thanks for this info. Appreciate it. Been your silent email reader all this while. :)

    7. BigNerd said,

      on July 14th, 2007 at 8:49 pm

      James,
      Nice roundup here. Coincidentally, I was playing around with IE7 last night and liked it’s ‘view all tabs’ in a window, thumbnail view. I was searching for a FireFox plugin to do the same. Wah-lah your post comes to the rescue. Thanks!

    8. syahid ali said,

      on July 15th, 2007 at 1:02 am

      i am a fan of tab mix plus. the colored tabs are quite a nice addition to my firefox arsenal. thanks.

    9. Barbara said,

      on July 16th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

      The only caution I might issue with Tab Mix Plus (I believe) is that once you remove the extension, there are some preferences that are changed in Firefox that you have manually change or delete by going into the config page. It is a real hassle.

      For instance, I couldn’t use the “recently closed tabs” function native to Firefox until I started fresh with a new profile or spent the time looking for the Tab Mix Plus add-ons in the about:config page.

    10. Ben Clapton said,

      on July 20th, 2007 at 11:36 am

      stumbled upon this post. Got a few that were really useful - Chromatabs and GroupTabs. Also got the tab counter, just for fun. However, notices that Group Tabs seperates the tabs by blank tabs that you can’t view anything in, but Tab Counter still counts it as a tab, so while I may only have 3 tabs open, Tab Counter says I’ve got 6. But All very useful extensions, cheers for the links.

    11. sz-iris said,

      on July 21st, 2007 at 12:34 am

      Great！I love the FF！

    12. M-dude said,

      on July 21st, 2007 at 5:35 am

      I also stumbled upon this page, very nice grouping of all these useful plugins. Thanks!

    13. Steve said,

      on July 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am

      I also use Ctrl+Tab to move among my tabs. It moves you down the line in order

    14. ReviewSaurus said,

      on July 21st, 2007 at 11:07 am

      Good list out there. Some real good extensions…although Tab mix plus has to be the best!

    15. rollenc拼博 said,

      on July 21st, 2007 at 8:23 pm

      Links for 2007/07

      06
      gophp5
      07
      HTML elements index 有HTML5和XHTML2.0两列，不过好像还没有BETA吧。不明白。不过，乱乱的。
      08
      网易译客怎能如此抄袭
      Ubuntu Performance GuidesUbuntu效率优化指引
      Hacking Ubuntu to Improve Performa…

    16. boy_1-der said,

      on July 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 pm

      I stumbled upon this page. I liked (installed) the Tab Scope add-on. For me, it’s much more useful than any other tab-previewing add-on. Nice job!

    17. Benedict Herold said,

      on July 22nd, 2007 at 11:02 pm

      Great list. I like the item #4 and #9. Good work

    18. anonyomous said,

      on July 25th, 2007 at 3:23 pm

      hi
      in case you don’t close you tabs accidentally, this is what you do:
      1.) Type about:config in the address bar.
      2.) find browser.tabs.closeButtons
      3.) right-click on it and press modify
      4.) choose one of the following:
      type 1 in the box to have close buttons on all tabs
      type 2 in the box to have no tabs close buttons
      type 3 in the box to have a close button on the end of the tabbar to close the active tab

    19. anonyomous said,

      on July 25th, 2007 at 3:25 pm

      hi
      The comment i just posted forgot to say about 0 in the box:
      in case you don’t close you tabs accidentally, this is what you do:
      1.) Type about:config in the address bar.
      2.) find browser.tabs.closeButtons
      3.) right-click on it and press modify
      4.) choose one of the following:
      hi
      in case you don’t close you tabs accidentally, this is what you do:
      1.) Type about:config in the address bar.
      2.) find browser.tabs.closeButtons
      3.) right-click on it and press modify
      4.) choose one of the following:
      type 0 in the box to have a close button on the active tab only
      type 1 in the box to have close buttons on all tabs
      type 2 in the box to have no tabs close buttons
      type 3 in the box to have a close button on the end of the tabbar to close the active tab
      type 1 in the box to have close buttons on all tabs
      type 2 in the box to have no tabs close buttons
      type 3 in the box to have a close button on the end of the tabbar to close the active tab

    20. matt said,

      on July 25th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

      Does anyone know if there is a plug-in that allows you to “tear” a tab out into it’s own window?

      I swear I read about it in the comments of a story about Safari bc Safari lets you do that…

    21. Søren’s Blog » Blog Archive » Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs said,

      on July 26th, 2007 at 1:22 am

      [...] read more | digg story [...]

    22. Fernando said,

      on July 26th, 2007 at 10:57 pm

      Muy practicas!!!!

      Saludos y gracias por el TIP. d(-_-)b

    23. Ari said,

      on July 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am

      In response to Matt- I haven’t found a plugin that does that, but I did discover a way to ‘move’ a tab to a new window. All you have to do is open a new window, put it side by side with the window with the tab, click the tab and drag it do the tab area of the new window. That would basically just copy and reload the tab in the new window, rather than actually moving it (so you’d just have to close the old one).

      Hope that helps.

    24. matt said,

      on July 27th, 2007 at 11:29 am

      Thanks ari, that’s exactly what I wanted :)

    25. Kimberly said,

      on July 27th, 2007 at 10:20 pm

      Another one who stumbled upon this and gave it a thumb up, excellent tips, very helpful for me who loves FF and tends to end up with countless tabs.

    26. richard Mellersh said,

      on July 28th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

      Fantastic. I added Chrometabs and tabscope. They make it loads easier to use. Thanks

    27. Ashwin said,

      on July 28th, 2007 at 9:12 pm

      Nice article!
      By the way, Ctrl+W is for closing an active tab…useful addition to the keyboard shortcuts list

      -Ashwin

    28. What is Firefox? said,

      on July 29th, 2007 at 6:07 pm

      I just installed FishEye tabs and it has made a huge difference in my ability to organize tabs for research. Other than that, I use Aging Tabs and TabMix Plus.

    29. Cool Websites and Tips (makeuseof extra #76) » MakeUseOf.com said,

      on July 29th, 2007 at 9:04 pm

      [...] 10 Ways to manage Firefox tabs [friedbeef.com] [...]

    30.   links for 2007-07-30 by Marc Forrest.com said,

      on July 30th, 2007 at 9:19 pm

      [...] Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs (tags: internet tab browser tabs firefox tips TOOLS) Permalink Comment on this post [...]

    31. geek stink breath « sCa1LyWaG said,

      on July 30th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

      [...] Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs - very useful [...]

    32. misty said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 12:31 am

      Its cool. Love Firefox a lot better than IE. Thanks for the tips!!

    33. Rene said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 12:59 am

      I use “Tab Groups” (http://paranoid-androids.com/tabgroups/) — it works really well for organizing your tabs however you like.

    34. Scott Caplan said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 1:35 am

      CTRL + 9 takes you to the rightmost tab.

    35. Drainedge Link Tank » Today’s Links said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 3:36 am

      [...] Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs - Friedbeef.com [...]

    36. Derek Adams-White said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 4:35 am

      My biggest problem is how to easily identify the active tab, any ideas?

    37. James Yeang said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 5:19 am

      Thanks everyone for their great feedback!
      @Derek Adams-White: The aging tabs extension will do the trick

    38. El Queso Magno » Blog Archive » links for 2007-07-30 said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 7:39 am

      [...] Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs con varios links a extensiones bastante útiles (tags: tools firefox extensions) [...]

    39. eyn said,

      on July 31st, 2007 at 8:04 am

      I personally find FishEyeTabs to be really useful when you have a lot of tabs opened (might take a while for you to get used to how it works). Also, people should get used to using Mouse Gesture (all-in-one is a great mouse gesture extension) for effective tab switching via gesture.

    40. links for 2007-07-31 « toonz said,

      on August 1st, 2007 at 7:23 am

      [...] WordPress › Error (tags: firefox tips tabs extensions) [...]

    41. chee kiam said,

      on August 1st, 2007 at 1:52 pm

      @Derek Adams-White: If you use the Stylish extension, there is a app style (Colorize Firefox 2.0 Active Tab) that does exactly that as well.

    42. Technology » Blog Archive » Firefox Tip: Take charge of your tabs said,

      on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:45 am

      [...] or more general tips that will help you make better use of your favorite tabbed browser. Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs [Friedbeef’s [...]

    43. Zepy Top Articles and News for Today #2 - ZePy said,

      on August 3rd, 2007 at 1:18 pm

      [...] 10 Ways to manage Firefox tabs [...]

    44. Keeping Tabs on FireFox! : Kevin Magee | Philosopher Geek said,

      on August 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am

      [...] being said, I found a great blog item on Friedbeef’s Tech via Lifehacker that outlines the “Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox [...]

    45. tech.twomadgeeks.com » Blog Archive » Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs said,

      on August 9th, 2007 at 6:29 am

      [...] Link: Fried Beef [...]

    46. Richard Murphy said,

      on August 10th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

      OK, but why try as I might won’t Firefox open new tabs for me when I expect it to e.g. when I follow a link (and I’ve changed all the settings in autoconfig)?

      Any help?

    47. Richard Murphy said,

      on August 10th, 2007 at 7:13 pm

      This to ensure I get an email response

    48. James Yeang said,

      on August 12th, 2007 at 12:41 am

      @Richard:Not sure - but you can try holding down CTRL and clicking the link By default that is the open in new tab hotkey

    49. Co-render.com Walk On « said,

      on August 16th, 2007 at 3:15 am

      [...] tabbed browsing cannot contain your world wide web ramblings, then Walk2Web is perhaps the macro view of the [...]

    50. KC said,

      on September 14th, 2007 at 11:12 pm

      Does any add-on exist to number each of the tabs? It would be useful to jump to tabs using the CTRL+# shortcut.

    51. Robert said,

      on September 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

      I must be stupid or something, because I just don’t see the usefulness of tabs at all. Once the tabs are shown, the “back arrow” no longer works, and the page I was just on is frequently buried somewhere in the other tabs. I have just continued using the old version of Firefox. Is there any way to eliminate tabs in the newest version of Firefox?

    52. James Yeang said,

      on September 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm

      @Robert - For me at least - it’s so much easier to navigate… just don’t open so many tabs at once if it’s confusing. It sure beats opening a separate window all the time!

    53. Jean-Francois Messier said,

      on September 26th, 2007 at 8:16 pm

      I have a problem with the tabbing of FireFox. When using the right-click menu to open a link to a new tab, the newly opened tab is at the far end of the tab list. If I click a link while holding CTRL, it opens the new tab right next to the current one. How can I change this to at least have a consistent behavior when surfing the net ?

    54. James Yeang said,

      on September 27th, 2007 at 10:17 am

      @Jean-Francois Messier - Haven’t heard about that feature before…. but you could try installing some of the more powerful tabbing extensions like Tab Mix Plus, and ask them to add this feature.

    55. n1ce said,

      on October 22nd, 2007 at 10:17 am

      Tab Kit is my essential tab add-on for firefox. mouse wheel scrolling between tabs is just so cool.

      http://jomel.me.uk/software/firefox/tabkit/
      (requires Mozilla login and sandbox enabled)

    56. Gerg said,

      on April 15th, 2008 at 5:56 am

      Thanx for the nice review. I also appreciate the informative comments.

    57. VHB said,

      on May 14th, 2008 at 10:43 am

      Does anyone know if there is a shortcut for ‘list of tabs’ the top-down select at top-right firefox window(on top of right-vertical-scrollbar)”??

      att
      Bilouro.com

    58. Dan V said,

      on June 20th, 2008 at 10:28 am

      I need help reading the tabs on firefox. The text is just too small. I have a new Imac OS x operating system. Can anyone help me?

    59. firefox tabs open default home pages said,

      on June 24th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

      [...] when I expect it to e.g. when I follow a link and I&8217ve changed all the settings in autoconfig?http://www.friedbeef.com/2007/07/13/top-10-ways-best-ways-to-manage-firefox-tabs/Using Firefox/Browsing with Tabs - Wikibooks, collection of open …In the image, the default [...]

    60. DUTRY said,

      on July 15th, 2008 at 4:16 am

      Firefox showcase feels like a heavy weight. So I prefer tabsidebar extension. For some reason this is not in firefox addons site, but this extension was there before.
      U can try it from this website
      http://www.oxymoronical.com/web/firefox/TabSidebar
      Have a try

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