Need some built-in note taking features when it comes to browsing the web?  The Web Notes add-on for Firefox might be the extension that makes your day.  This simple add-on features a floating window that can be placed anywhere on the screen for your note taking needs.

Here are a few more features of this handy browser extension:

• You can right click a tab for options.
• Saving notes is automatic.
• Anytime you change a default note it will be saved for that web site.
• You can directly access a web site that has a saved note by left clicking the site in the Sites menu item in the Options menu. If you right click the site you can edit the site’s name.
• The Web Notes window may be minimized or restored by clicking on the Web Notes menu item in the Tools dropdown or, if you have installed it, the Web Notes toolbar button image. The minimized window can also be restored by resizing it.
• If you move the minimized note to a convenient location, it will stay there and be remembered the next time you open Web Notes.The minimized Web Notes window will automatically be restored for web sites that have a Web Notes’ note. Those that do not will have a minimized Web Notes window. This behavior (auto min/restore) can be turned off and on in the Options menu. This setting will also be remembered the next time you open Web Notes.

Now, while it might not yet substitute my current Notetab Std being open 24/7 for my note taking needs, it is a good start.  It has many more features than one would think, and you really have to try it out to see if it is right for you or not.  Anything that helps organize wins my vote, so go give Web Notes a shot.  You can download Web Notes over at the Firefox Add-ons website.

I have made no secret about the fact that the one feature I am looking most forward to in Firefox 4 is the new Firefox Panorama tool (formerly known as Tab Candy).  Now, I have shown you why Panorama is really handy when it comes to getting rid of the extra browser windows, but now they are also introducing a very nice search feature too.

So lets say you have all your tabs grouped up, you have several websites loaded up – but you want to find your email in a hurry. You can click the little magnifying glass on the side, type the name of your email client (like Gmail) and it will be highlighted for you.

Here is a short video from Aza explaining more about how the new search feature would work:

Overall, this is one more thing that is making me want to get my hands on Firefox 4 even more. I love the fact that the search is so fast, and I can’t wait to start using Panorama in my everyday browsing.

Did you know that Opera already has a Tab Candy-like feature? No? Neither did the anybody else apparently.

Who would have guessed, the Opera browser has yet again jumped on the, “but we did that first!” claims against Firefox.  For those who might have not followed the history between the two browsers – Firefox gained a lot of free press, for having tabs in its browser.  Of course, Opera had done this before – and they made a big stink about the fact that they did it first. Now Opera is at it again, this time saying that they had Tab Candy before Tab Candy was cool. Here is what Haavard Moen from Opera had to say…

There has been a lot of focus on grouping of tabs in browsers lately as a new and wonderful way to manage tabs, but did you know that you have actually been able to group tabs in Opera for many years already?

You can check out more about the debate over at The Register and Haavard’s Opera blog.  My thoughts on the issue are simple.  Opera needs to pay less attention to saying, “hey, we did it first!” and maybe a little more attention to saying, “hey, we did it best”. Right now first doesn’t mean a whole lot, because people will always head towards the better execution of any idea.

Now, most of the time, when I see Firefox asking if I want to save my tabs for the next time Firefox starts, I quickly click through whatever I have to do to turn this extra warning off. However, I was thinking the other day, I wonder how I could toggle this interesting Firefox feature on or off again?

In the Firefox menu toolbar, click Tools and the select Options. Next, under the Startup section you want to check the drop down menu next to where it says, “When Firefox starts:”.

Click the drop down menu, and then select, “Show my Windows and Tabs from Last Time”.  Once you do that, click the OK button at the bottom of the screen and you should be set.  To turn it off, you can just go from the previously mentioned setting to one of the other two.  The other two options are to show your home page or show a blank page.

Want Firefox to ask you if you want this option each time?  If so, go back into the menu toolbar, go to Options and then the Tabs section. You can go in here and check the box for “Warn me when closing multiple tabs”.

There you have it.  Now, for this to work – you will need to make sure your saving your browser history between sessions too.  Hope that helps you either turn back on this feature, or maybe even turn it off as well.

With just one keystroke, you can zoom out of your browsing experience and see all your open web pages like thumbnails.  You can then reorganize and arrange these windows in different ways.

What is so special about Tab Candy?

You could easily create a group for your mail, calendar and RSS reader.  Then you could make another group of tabs for your work related web pages you have to look at.  Many extensions out there for Firefox try to do this, but Tab Candy is the first execution of this tab reorganization that has really gotten me excited to see more.

Check out this video by Aza Raskin to get a better picture of what Tab Candy will mean to the way you really use the browser.

Mark my words, this will be the must-have feature in the next generation of the browser wars.  I might sound like a fan boy when I say it, but this is why I love Firefox.  They don’t tell you how you have to browse – they give you many different ways to get the job done, and you can use the way that works best for your own needs.

Right now Tab Candy’s future in Firefox 4 has been delayed due to some implementation challenges, so let me be one of the first to tell them, “Please get this feature added to Firefox 4, I really need it!”.

With Firefox 4 coming soon, we will be finding a lot of new hacks, interface customizations and more we can do to make Firefox more personalized to our own needs.  So, with that said, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the most popular hacks for Firefox 3.5 and up to give you all one last chance to try them out before Firefox 4 changes the game again.

How to Disable the New Tab Button

For some people out there, the new tab button on the tab toolbar was a waste of space.  By editing your userChrome.css file, you can easily remove it.

Speed Up Flash Videos (like YouTube)

Want to speed up your flash video watching?  By default, Firefox takes a sort of “snapshot” of whatever you are doing every ten seconds.  Why?  It is so that the browser can restore itself, just in case of a crash. With a little about:config tweak you can speed up the videos you are watching on YouTube and other video sharing websites.

Quicker Route to Private Browsing

Yes, we did finally get a way to enable private browsing in Firefox.  The problem is, it is a pain to enable!  Well, to save you a few clicks, I figured out a way you can start private browsing mode in Firefox from within the awesome address bar.

Move the Close Tab Button

In an effort to simplify the Firefox interface, did you know you can make a few changes in the about:config page to move the close tab buttons around?  I’ll show you how to move it to the far right of the browser, in just six easy steps.

Enable the Visual Tab Switcher

With Firefox 3.6’s release, we can all do a quick about:config tweak that will enable the prettier tab switching.  By default, when you hit the keyboard keys Ctrl + Tab you just rotate through your tabs.  By making some quick adjustments though, you can pull up the new tab switcher that you see in the picture above.

Make New Tab Pages Open in the Far Right of the Tab Bar

New to Firefox 3.6, when you are on a page, and you want to open a link in a new tab – rather than opening the link in the far right of the tab bar, Firefox will now open the link right next to the tab you are in.  Now, while this might be convenient for some, it is a feature I don’t really need.  Now, let us put things back the way they were.

Change the Firefox Spell Check Font Format

Want to make your misspelled words stand out a ‘bit more when composing a message in Firefox?  It is easy to do with this quick about:config tweak.  You can select no highlighting, a dotted line, long dots, a single straight line, a double underline or the default squiggly line.

I hope you enjoyed this collection of classic Firefox 3.5+ interface hacks and tweaks you can do to make the browser a little more customized to your own browsing needs.  Have another favorite customization tip I might have missed?  Leave it in the comments!

Tired of seeing your tabs under your navigation or bookmark toolbars? Maybe you just want to see how Firefox would look with tabs on the top?  With the Firefox extension, Tabs on Top – you can easily move your browser tabs to the top of the screen.

Once this add-on for Firefox is installed, your tab bar will work more like its Chrome browser cousin from Google.  Also, if you have TabMixPlus – you can use the multi row feature to have multiple rows of tabs across the top of the Firefox browser window.

You can pick up the Tabs on Top add-on for Firefox on the official Firefox Add-ons web site.

We are all looking for ways to get more done in the browser visually, and at times I would like to look at two tabs at the same time.  Looking for a way to tile my tabs, I found a great add-on that does the job really well.  The Tile Tabs add-on for Firefox does exactly what you think it would – it tiles your tabs in the browser.

Now, dividing up your tabs within 24 new frames and trying to check them all out would be a ‘bit crazy.  However, I could see this add-on being helpful with viewing two or three pages at once.

Here is a little more about the add-on from the developers:

Tile Tabs allows an unlimited number of tabs to be tiled within the Firefox tabbed browser content area. The Firefox tabbed browser paradigm is fully maintained. The tiled layout is achieved by presentational changes rather than functional changes. All features (menu commands, url bar, search bar, tabs buttons) continue to operate as normal.

Excited about dividing up your Firefox browser?  You can pick up the Tile Tabs add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons web site.

I can tell you from experience, having too many tabs open can be a real pain.  On occasion though, it is something you have to do, so you might as well find an add-on that will help you navigate through your tabs more effectively.  That is where TooManyTabs comes into play.

This great extension for Firefox can store as many tabs as you like.  How so?  Well, it adds extra tab rows to Firefox.  Rather than wasting your PC’s RAM, you can store your textra tabs in the other rows, remove them from being seen by your PC’s RAM and restore them all qhen you need them again.

This tutorial does a great job at explaining some of the basics of TooManyTabs:

Are you a tab-a-holic?  Then you need to at least give the TooManyTabs add-on for Firefox a shot.  Some of the other features include:

• Color coded tabs, pinned tabs (like perma-tabs), view tab history, restore recently closed tabs
• Customizable & multiple rows for tab storage
• Backup & restore features, tabs can be transferred across machines easily

You can download the TooManyTabs add-on for Firefox on the Firefox Add-ons web site or learn more about it on it’s official web site.

I have one more Firefox 3.6 about:config tip up my sleeve.  By toggling one setting, you can go from having a drop down list of tabs to a thumb-nailed view of each tab that is open.

Here is how you too can enable this secret Firefox 3.6 feature.

How to Enable the Tab Preview Menu Button

• Type about:config in the address bar. Then, if needed click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Next, in the filter box – type in:
  • browser.allTabs.previews
• Right-click that about:config entry, and select “Toggle”

This will change it from false, to true.  You could take the same steps to disable it too.  Now when you click that icon with the four tiny squares, you will get a visually prettier way to check out all your tabs.

Also once this has been enabled, you can use the keyboard combination:

Shift + Ctrl + Tab

To get the same tab previews, just without the button clicking.

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