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Match Your Tabs to the Sites Your Browsing

Aug/04 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

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There are a number of different add-ons that will change the way your Firefox tabs look.  How would you like to have one that made your tabs match your web site you are browsing.  FabTabs does that.

How does it work?  I’m happy you asked…

FabTabs is kind of an experimental extension for now that will color your Firefox Tabs in a way you have never seen before. By taking a small screenshot of the website you are currently viewing, and calculating the most commonly used color from that screenshot, it tries to take the 1 essential color from the website and applies it to the tab.

Sounds like a good idea.  If your looking to make your tabs appear more like the pages your surfing, pick up the FabTabs add-on for Firefox.

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Disable and Undo Tab Tearing in Firefox 3.5

Jul/08 in Tabbed Browsing

Disable Tab Tearing in Firefox 3.5 One of the new features coming to Firefox 3.5 was tab tearing.  What has become a nuisance for some, it lets you drag a tab outside of Firefox and launch in a new window.  I kind of like the feature, however if you do not – there is an add-on that will help sooth your pain.

You will want to pickup the bug489729 add-on for Firefox.  This oddly named extension comes with two main controls. You can:

  • Disable Detach Tab – use this to disable tab tearing
  • Enable Drop URL – use this to be able to drag a tab to your desktop to create a shortcut.

Now, what if you want to keep tab tearing, however you would like the ability to undo a tab detachment?  Then you need to pick up the Undo Detach Tab add-on for Firefox.  As the name says, it will add a context menu option where you can undo your tab tearing.

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Hide the Tab Bar When Only One Page is Open

Jul/07 in Tabbed Browsing

Turn off "Always show the tab bar" in Firefox 3.5

When your only looking at one single page in Firefox 3.5, for some reason – they still show you the tab bar.  If you would like to disable this feature, it is an easy thing to do.

Via the contact page, I got asked an interesting question.  How can you make Firefox hide the tab bar in Firefox 3.5 when you only have one page open?  From within Firefox, go to Tools, and then Options.  Now, got to the Tabs menu, and un-check the “Always show the tab bar” selection, and hit the OK button.

By default, Firefox 3.5 has this feature turned on – however if you want to have it go back to hiding the tab bar each time you only have one tab open, now you have an easy way to fix it. 

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Love (or Disable) the New Tab Button

Jul/03 in Hacks and Tweaks, Tabbed Browsing

New Tab Button in Firefox

Love it, or hate it – Firefox got one more addition to it’s browser that seems to have gotten a mixed reaction from the fans. The open new tab button rests at the end of your tab bar in Firefox 3.5 giving you an easier user interface to open a new tab.

Clicking on the little “+” icon at the end of your open tabs, opens a new tab.  Seems simple enough, and I do like the fact that it gives one more clean way for new users to instantly figure it out.

How do I remove the new tab button? Well, if you are handy with editing your userChrome.css file – this should be an easy customization to put in place.  Just add this line:

.tabs-newtab-button {display: none;}

To edit your userChrome.css file, you must first locate it inside of your profile folder.  Depending on your operating system of choice, that location might differ.  Check out “where is my Firefox profile folder?” for more information.

So how do you feel, love the new icon or is it in your way?

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Cluster Tabs in Firefox

Jun/13 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

Since the release of collections of add-ons for Firefox, it seems like everywhere I turn I see somebody else offering ways to bring things together (although I am sure Opera would say they did it first).  With that in mind though, I would like to introduce you to Cluster Tabs.  This add-on for Firefox will let you easily cluster web pages together for easier sharing and saving.

Cluster Tabs Example in Firefox

Creating your own tab cluster is easy to do.  Once you have installed the extension for Firefox, all you need to do is:

  • Use the Cluster Tab button to create one from the current active tab
  • Click the "+" icon on any tab and select ‘create cluster from tab’
  • Alternatively simply drag one tab into another

Be sure to check out the ClusterURL.com about page to find out the other two ways you can cluster your tabs together.  Want to see what a cluster looks like?

Overall, very excited to see what all they do with this in the future.  It is a very interesting idea – and the human aspect of it is something I really think has a good chance of taking off. You can pickup the Cluster Tabs add-on yourself from the Mozilla Add-ons site or get more information about the project from ClusterURL.com.

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Get a Chrome-ish Tab Page with JumpStart

Jun/08 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

JumpStart for Firefox

You can always tell when a new way of navigating through pages becomes popular, because you end up with three or four extensions for Firefox that do the same thing.  With that said, I have one more add-on for Firefox that tries to copy what Google Chrome does with its page you get on a new tab or browser window.  New Tab JumpStart does a great job at bringing Chrome’s thumbnailed pages you have seen before.  One nice feature that I haven’t seen others follow up on is the ability to permanently “pin”  page so it never goes away.  You can pickup New Tab JumpStart from the Mozilla Add-ons web site.

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Easier Multiple Tab Handling

May/27 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

There are many extensions out there that allow you to tweak your tabs, however not many will let you close multiple tabs all in one swift movement.  The Multiple Tab Handler extension for Firefox does that and a lot more.

Select Multiple Tabs!

The idea here is simple, to provide the user with any easier way to handle multiple tabs at once.  This is so you can highlight more than one tab, then reload them, close them and so on.  Once the Multiple Tab Handler add-on is installed, when you press the mouse button and drag over tabs (you should wait a while to start drag after you press down the button!), they are selected. After you release the button, the popup to choose command will be shown.  

Multiple tabs can be dragged and moved if you select multiple tabs by Ctrl-click or Shift-click before you start to drag.  Once you have selected the tabs you want to work with, here are some of the actions you can take:

  • Close selected tabs
  • Close not-selected tabs
  • Reload selected tabs
  • Duplicate selected tabs
  • Move selected tabs to a new window
  • Bookmark selected tabs

For those of us who move backwards and forwards through multiple tabs all day long, this extension for Firefox is well worth downloading.  You can pickup the Multiple Tab Handler add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons site.

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Master’s Guide to Reloading a Tab in Firefox

Apr/21 in Add-ons Reviews, Best of Firefox, Tabbed Browsing

Reload a Tab, Any Tab!There are a number of different ways you can reload or refresh a window in Firefox.  For such a simple task, you would have never imagined that people have put so much work into making it easier.  The truth of the matter though is they have, and I want to share with you all the tab reloading secrets that I know of (and hopefully you can share your own favorites with me).

Here are the add-ons to help you with your page loading and re-loading.

Now, I know a lot of people will say, “How hard is it to hit the refresh button in your browser?” So with that in mind, here are a few additional ways to reload that web page in question.

Refresh That Tab! Reloading Keyboard Shortcuts

Windows/Linux: F5 or Ctrl + R = Reload a Page

Apple: F5 or Cmd + R = Reload a Page

Extra Tip: Another way to reload that tab you are on is to left-click on the tab, drag it into the browser window and the release.  That will give it a quick refresh too.

How do you reload your browser window?

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4 Ways to Add Rounded Tabs to Firefox

Apr/20 in Best of Firefox, Tabbed Browsing

There are many ways you can customize Firefox to make it fit your personal needs.  Don’t like the fact that the tabs are just a little rounded, and wish they were more rounded?  No need to try to find a theme that fits your needs.  I have for you, four ways to round off your tabs in Firefox using the Stylish extension.   You can round off all tabs, one tab corner, just the selected tab or forget about all this rounded stuff and make them all square.

All Tabs are Rounded

Want to make all of your tabs more rounded inside of Firefox?  This user style will help you get that look and feel inside of Firefox.

Make ALL Tabs Round!

Slightly Rounded Tabs

If you are not that crazy about the idea of having too many rounded edges, you could just round the upper-right of the tab, if needed.

Just a Little Roundness...

I HATE Rounded Tabs

Now, if you have absolute distain for the idea of rounding off your tabs, I have a user style for you too.  With this one, you can make the tabs less rounded, and more square.

All Tabs are Square!

Only Round the Selected Tab

Last, but not least, you could also decide to round off only the selected tab.  The reason for doing this is to help visually make it different from the others so that you can pick it out from the crowd of tabs in your tab toolbar.

Only Selected Tab is Round

You now have more than a few ways to make your tabs stand out from the rest of the crowd.

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New Tab King Shakes Up Your New Tab Experience

Apr/17 in Add-ons Reviews, Tabbed Browsing

New Tab King? I always love to look at any kind of stats, because they interest me.  I like to know what people are doing, how many people are doing it and where they are coming from.  With that said, there is a new Firefox add-on that will let you keep tabs on your tabs.  All hail the New Tab King!

The New Tab King extension for Firefox gives you one spot to see all the web sites you use the most.  Instead of getting a blank page when you open a new tab, the New Tab King add-on delivers to you  the web sites and bookmarks you have visited the most in the past 30 days.  Each site is displayed with its description text and the web site’s favicon.

This add-on for Firefox could definitely become a fan favorite over time.  So if you want to replace your new tab screen with something a little more useful, give New Tab King a shot.

Bonus – check out our second look at New Tab King, and their new features!

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