Tab Popup is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension allows you to see the contents of a tab. It’s ideal if you have a bunch of tabs open at the same time.

Just mouseover a tab, and a small preview window will appear right below it. In the example below, I moused-over the first tab (CyberNet):

You’ll notice that the preview window contains the Title of the webpage (at the top), as well as the URL (at the bottom).

Experienced Firefox users may be reminded of a similar extension called Tab Scope, which I reviewed here. At this point Tab Scope has a few more nice features, but I do like the larger preview window offered by Tab Popup.

Find In Tabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension allows you to perform a search in all your open tabs at the same time.

To perform a search, just click Ctrl + F on your keyboard to bring up the search bar. In this example, I have two open tabs and will search for the term “Firefox.”

After typing “Firefox” into the search box, I click on “Find In Tabs”:

This will search for the term “Firefox” in all open tabs. Below you can see the results. The Tab # is shown, and the location of the term “Firefox” is highlighted in yellow:

Clicking on a search result will take me to that particular Tab, as well as the location of the term on the page.

Open Tab Count is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension displays the number of open tabs that you have. For example, let’s say you have 5 open tabs in your Firefox browser. You can see the count in your status bar:

Now let’s say that you open another browser window. In this new window you have 2 open tabs.

The tab count will now look like the following:

It shows that you have 2 open tabs in the current window, out of a total of 7 open tabs when you add the two windows together.

Tab Sidebar is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension will be familiar to users of the Safari web browser. It allows you to open a tab in a new window.

Just right-click on a tab, and you will be given two choices:

• Move to new window – the tab will not remain in the old window.
• Copy to new window – a copy of the the tab will remain in the old window.

You can also use the File menu to perform the same actions:

Finally, if you have the need for speed, just use the keyboard shortcuts:

• Move to new window – Ctrl+Shift+N.
• Copy to new window – Ctrl+Alt+N.

Tab Counter is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension will display the number of tabs you have open in your Firefox browser.

After installation, just look to the top-right corner of your browser to see the number:

If the top-right corner is not the ideal place for you, the counter can always be moved.

Just go to View > Toolbars > Customize:

Then left-click on the counter and drag it to another spot. In the example below, I’ve placed it next to the Home button:

There are no further customizations at this point.

FlagTab is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension gives you the ability to color code your tabs; making it easier to recognize which tabs are related to one another.

For example, after installing FlagTab, double-click on one of your tabs and you’ll notice that it instantly changes color:

Double-click again on the same tab, and it will change to another color:

You can choose one of four colors for each tab: Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow.

If you don’t want to double-click a tab, you can always right-click and choose a color from the context menu:

As you can see from the above screenshot, you can also remove any (or all) of the FlagTabs from the same menu.

If you like to keep lots of tabs open at the same time, you can quickly see which tabs are related to each other. For example, let’s say you color code your articles-to-read in blue, and search results in red. It would probably look similar to the screenshot below:

Tab Sidebar is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension allows you to view thumbnails of your open tabs in your browser’s sidebar.

There are several ways to open the Tab Sidebar. First, you can hit CTRL+Shift+E on your keyboard.

Or, you can go to the the top of your browser window and click: View > Sidebar > Tab Sidebar:

Or finally, you can manually place the Tab Sidebar button on your toolbar. To do so, go to View > Toolbars > Customize and locate the button:

Then left-click on the button and drag it to your toolbar.

Whenever you open Tab Sidebar, you’ll see thumbnail snapshots of all your open tabs. The site that you are currently viewing will be highlighted. In the example below, you can see that I had 3 open tabs:

These thumbnails are actually more than just snapshots, they’re a live representation of the page. In other words, as you scroll down one of the pages, you’ll notice the change reflected in the tab sidebar as well.

You’ll also notice navigation buttons on the bottom of each thumbnail. You can refresh each page, and navigate forward and backwards, right from the sidebar!

Finally, here is the Options Window for the Tab Sidebar extension:

Next Tab is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

If you’re one who likes lots of tabs open at all times, you may be interested in the Next Tab extension.

Normally, when you come across a hyperlink that you’d like to open in a new tab, you right-click on the link and choose “Open Link in New Tab”:

However, the link will open after all of the tabs that you currently have open:

What if you don’t like that?

What if you want the link to open next to your current tab?

That’s where this extension comes in. After installing it, you can choose “Open Link Next to Current Tab” in your context menu:

And that’s exactly where the hyperlink will open.

You can now keep all of your related tabs closer together.

Multiple Tab Handler is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension gives you the ability to perform actions that affect multiple tabs.

To select the tabs, just left-click on a tab and drag your mouse over the other tabs that you’d like to select. The tabs will change color to indicate that they’ve been selected.

Once you release your mouse button, you’ll be presented with a menu:

In the above example, all 3 tabs have been selected. Whatever is chosen from the menu will affect all 3 tabs.

There are few things that caught my attention:

First, what if you don’t want to select tabs that are adjacent to one another?

Second, this extension overrides the default funtion of rearranging the order of tabs when left-clicking and dragging them. What if you don’t like that?

Fortunately, in the options window, you can take care of both issues:

Under “Action for dragging of tabs” choose “Default.” This reinstates the function of rearranging your tabs when left-clicking and dragging them.

Under “Action for Ctrl(Command)-Click of tabs” choose “Toggle Selection of Tab.” Now to select multiple tabs, just hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and left-click on the tabs that you’d like to select. You’ll notice in the screenshot below that the 2 tabs that were chosen are not adjacent to one another:

Here are the rest of the customizations available in the options window:

Informational Tab is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension places a thumbnail preview inside of each tab, as well as a progress meter.

Below are screenshots of the Informational Tab options window:

FishEyeTabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension can be helpful if you like to have lots of tabs open in your browser window.

As you keep opening tabs, less and less of the tab names remain visible.

At a certain point, you may have so many tabs open that you forget what they are.

With this extension your tabs will expand on mouseover, thus showing you the full name of the tab:

This feature is activated only when your tabs occupy the whole width of the window.

Undo Closed Tabs Button is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

If it hasn’t happened to you already, the time will come when you accidentally close one of your tabs.

It isn’t the end of the world. There are several ways in which you can dig up the lost tab. But the “Undo Closed Tabs Button” may be one of the quickest ways to get the job done.

Just click the toolbar button and your last closed tab will re-open in your browser window.

You have to manually place the button on your toolbar. To do so, go to View > Toolbars > Customize:

Locate the “Undo Closed Tab” button:

Then left-click on the button and drag it to one of your toolbars:

Clicking on this button will re-open your last closed tab.

You’ll also notice a black downward pointing arrow to the right of the button. Clicking on this arrow will bring up a drop-down list of your 10 most recently closed tabs:

If you’d like to forgo the toolbar button altogether, you can always use the Context Menu option by right-clicking anywhere on a webpage:

Finally, you have a few customizations that are available in the Options Window of this extension:

Duplicate Tab is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension gives you the ability to create an exact copy of a tab (and its history).

There are several ways to duplicate a tab.

The first way is to right-click on the tab itself, and choose “Duplicate Tab”:

You’ll have two identical tabs in the same window:

You also have the option to duplicate a tab to a new window.

Finally, you can choose to “Merge Windows.” This will consolidate the tabs from all of your open windows into the same window.

There are a couple of toolbar buttons that you can use if you’d prefer not to right-click on the tabs:

There are also a bunch of tweaks available in the Options Window. Here are the screenshots:

New Tab Button on Tab Bar is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

After installing this extension, you’ll see the following button in the very left corner of your Tab Bar.:

Clicking on this button will create a brand new tab.

You will notice, however, that your Tab Bar will always be visible…Even when only one page is open.

If this bothers you, it can be changed.

Just go to the top of your browser and click Tools > Options:

Make sure that you’re in the “Tabs” section.

Uncheck the box labeled “Always show the tab bar”:

Now when only one page is open, the Tab Bar will remain hidden.

However, when you have multiple tabs open, the “New Tab” button will still appear.

Vertigo is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension changes your tab layout from the default horizontal view (see below):

…to a vertical view:

Below is a screenshot of Vertigo’s Options Window. The developer makes note that there may be a conflict if you have Tab Mix Plus installed:

I highlighted the “Tab Bar Splitter” for you below. It can be dragged left or right to better display the name of the tab:

Finally, here is a screenshot of the Close buttons; should you decide to make them visible:

ReloadEvery is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension reloads your webpage(s) every so many seconds or minutes.

For example, let’s say you have a bunch of tabs that you like to keep open at all times. Going back and reloading each tab individually can get to be a pain. This extension will automatically reload all of those tabs for you. And you can set how often you’d like those pages to reload.

There are two ways to use ReloadEvery. The first is from the Reload button that is located in your Navigation Bar. After installing the extension, you’ll notice a small black arrow to the very right of the button.

When you’re on a page that you would like to reload automatically, click on that black arrow:

Choose the amount of time between reloads, and then click “Enable.” If you would like to use the same amount of time for all of your tabs, click “Enable All Tabs.”

What if you don’t find a time that you like? What if you’d like the pages to reload every 1 min. 30 sec.?

In this case, click on “Custom”:

Then enter your custom time:

The second way to access ReloadEvery is from the Context Menu. Just right-click anywhere on the page to bring up the Context Menu:

The best thing that I like about this extension is that you can choose different reload times for each individual tab. One site you can have reload every 5 minutes, while another can be reloaded every 30 minutes…Nice!

Tabs Menu is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension adds a “Tabs” menu to the top of your browser window:

Clicking on it shows a list of your open tabs:

Normally, the more tabs you have open, the less you see the tab’s title. But with Tabs Menu, you get to see the full title of every open tab.

There are a few customizations that can be made to this extension. Below is a screenshot of the Tabs Menu options window:

If you check the boxes labeled “New Tab” and “Close Tab,” these commands will be placed in the Tabs Menu:

“Page Icons” places the favicon for each site to the left of the tab’s title (as can be seen above). Below is a screenshot of the “Radio Buttons” setting:

Finally, you can choose whether or not you’d like to use Numeric Keyboard Shortcuts.

Aging Tabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

With this extension, your open tabs will change color with age. So if there are sites that you haven’t visited in awhile, Aging Tabs will bring them to your attention.

The first thing that I recommend after installing this extension is to configure it to your liking. Below is the Options Window for Aging Tabs:

• In the first section, you can customize the color of all tabs and their text. You can also set the target color for an aging tab.
• In the middle section, you can customize the the focused tab (i.e., the tab you are viewing).
• In the last section, you can choose what will cause a tab to age, and how fast it will age.

Now let’s look at an example:

Whenever you click on an old tab, you breathe new life into it and it starts the aging process once again:

If you’d like to see Aging Tabs in action, click on the “Play Video” button below:

Separate Tabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension automatically groups your tabs by the host URL.

For example, below you’ll see two tabs that have different host URL’s. They are separated by a vertical orange bar:

Now lets create a new tab for Google Bookmarks. Since it has the same host URL as Google Search, it will be grouped with it:

Add a tab for Google Reader, and once again it will automatically be placed next to the other Google sites:

What if you create a tab for www.Live.com?

Since it has a different host URL than all other tabs, it will have it’s own section:

Can you still drag-and-drop tabs?

Yes, but if you drag it out of its section, it will automatically be put back when you create a new tab.

This extension can be helpful if you have lots of tabs open at once and you’d like a general overview of where everything is located.

Tab Scope is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

The Tab Scope extension allows you to preview the contents of a tab (in real-time) in a small popup window. You can also navigate the tab contents from the same popup window.

After installing the extension, just mouseover a tab to see how it works. Here’s an example:

As you can see, a small popup displays the contents of the tab.

You’ll also notice a small toolbar inside the popup window:

From this toolbar, you can navigate through the tab. You can also Refresh, Stop, and Close the tab.

Clicking on the magnifying glass will expand the size of the popup window. Here’s an example:

Finally, there are a few customizations that are available:

This extension is ideal for checking the contents of a tab without having to leave your current tab.

Tab Catalog is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

Tab Catalog gives you a thumbnail snapshot of all your open tabs.

To watch a short video of Tab Catalog in action, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

After installing this extension, you will have to manually place the “View Thumbnails” button onto your toolbar. There are ways to access the thumbnails without the toolbar button, and I will get to them later. But if you’d like to have a toolbar button:

Go to the top of your browser and click View > Toolbars > Customize:

Find the “Thumbnail View” toolbar button:

Left-click on the button and drag it to your toolbar.

Now let’s say that we have 4 open tabs:

Clicking on the toolbar button will display those 4 tabs as thumbnails:

You can view any particular tab by simply left-clicking on the thumbnail with your mouse.

You can also close any of the tabs by clicking on the [x] located at the top-right corner of each thumbnail.

So how do you access Tab Catalog without the toolbar button?

Well, there are several ways:

• Press the F8 key on your keyboard (this can be changed to another key in the options)
• Click your right-and-left mouse buttons together at the same time.
• Use the Ctrl+Tab shortcut.

Tab Catalog also allows a bunch of customizations.

Here is the “Catalog” section:

The “Appearance” section:

And the “Auto Popup” section:

ColorfulTabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

The ColorfulTabs extension adds a little “personality” to your tabs. It does so by assigning each tab a different color.

Let’s do a quick comparison.

First, we’ll open 4 tabs using the default Firefox setup:

Next, we’ll open those same 4 tabs…but this time with the ColorfulTabs extension installed:

As you can see, each individual tab is distinguishable from every other tab.

This extension provides one option for you to customize:

Clicking on the drop-down box will allow you to choose how strong you want the color of your tabs to be, with 0 being the darkest and 9 being the lightest.

***Note*** ColorfulTabs has known incompatibilities with the Tab Mix Plus extension. The developer of ColorfulTabs is working on the issue.

Tab Effect is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

This extension adds a little eye candy to your Firefox browser.

With Tab Effect, you’ll get a 3D cube effect when changing from one tab to another:

Linux users, who have used XGL or Beryl, will appreciate this extension. The main difference being that in Linux you’re switching between virtual desktops, and here you’re switching between tabs.

Tab Effect probably won’t help you from a productivity standpoint, but it’s pretty cool feature to show off to your friends.

To watch a short video of Tab Effect in action, click on the “Play Video” button below.

***Note*** In the video, the tabs change a little faster then they do in actuality. But you can still get a good idea of what to expect from this extension.

Close All Tabs is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the developer’s website or the Firefox Add-Ons site.

The Close All Tabs button is a toolbar button that (when clicked on) closes all open tabs in your browser window.

To watch a short video on the “Close All Tabs” button, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

After installing this extension, you have to manually place the button onto one of your toolbars. You can do so by going to the top of your browser and clicking View > Toolbars > Customize:

The “Customize Toolbar” window will appear.

Find the “Close All Tabs” button:

Left-click on the button and drag it to one of your toolbars:

You’ll notice in the above screenshot that there are 4 open tabs (Live Search, Yahoo, Firefox, & Google).

Clicking on the “Close All Tabs” button will close every one of those tabs. This will not produce a blank screen. Instead, you will be left with the website on the very left…In the above case: “Live Search.”

FaviconizeTab is a Firefox Extension.

You can download it from the Firefox Add-Ons site.

FaviconizeTab is a great extension to have for times that you have lots tabs open at once. With this extension, you can shrink any tab down to the size of a favicon.

To watch a video on using FaviconizeTab, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

Let’s say you have 4 open tabs:

Right-click on any one of the tabs and choose FaviconizeTab:

That tab will shrink down to the size of a favicon, resulting in more free space on your Tab Bar: 

To make the tab regular size once again, just repeat: Right-click on the tab and choose FaviconizeTab.

You can shrink down all 4 of your tabs:

Or, maybe just 2 of them:

It’s up to you!

FaviconizeTab also let’s you do a little bit of customization. Just go to the “Options” window. If you’re not sure how to get there, click here to find out how.

1. You can set it so that a tab will be “faviconized” with a combination of keystroke + mouse click, or

2. You can have certain websites automatically “faviconized.” Just check the box labeled “Enable auto faviconize,” and list the websites in the space provided below.

To watch a video on closing other tabs, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

Let’s say that you have 4 tabs open, but you only want to keep 1…The other 3, you’d like to close:

You can take the time to close each tab individually, or, you can do the following:

Right-click on the tab that you want to keep open.

Select “Close Other Tabs”:

A confirmation window will appear alerting you that you are about to close multiple tabs. You can disable this confirmation by unchecking the box labeled “Warn me when I attempt to close multiple tabs.”

Click the “Close tabs” button.

The other 3 tabs will close and you will be left with the 1 page that you wanted to remain open.

It can be kind of frustrating, especially if you close a website that took you an hour to find on Google.

Well, there’s no need to get upset because Firefox has you covered.

To watch a video on recently closed tabs, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screensshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

Let’s say you have 3 tabs open and you accidentally close one of them:

To recover your lost tab, go to the top of your browser and click History > Recently Closed Tabs:

Click on the site that you accidentally closed and you’re back in business!

To watch a video on opening a link in a new tab, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

Let’s say that, in the article pictured below, the circled hyperlink catches your attention. You’d like to check it out, but you don’t want to leave the page that you’re currently on. After all, you’re not finished reading yet.

With Firefox, you can open the link in a separate tab. You can then go to that tab whenever you’re ready.

This is how it’s done:

Right-click on the hyperlink and choose “Open Link in New Tab:”

The hyperlink will open in the background in a separate tab.

When you’re finished with your current article, you can quickly and efficiently move on to the next one:

To watch a video on opening multiple tabs, click on the “Play Video” button below. Or, scroll down for step-by-step instructions with screenshots:

Step-by-Step Instructions with Screenshots

Let’s say that you have a folder in your bookmarks that contains three of your favorite websites:

Normally you click on each individual link to view them. But this time, you’d look to open all three websites at once. Here’s how:

Directly under the bookmarks, there is an option to “Open All in Tabs.” Click on it:

All of the bookmarks contained in the folder will open at the same time:

But what if you have your bookmarks listed in the sidebar?

In that case, you would:

1. Right-click on the folder that contains the bookmarks.
2. Click “Open All in Tabs”:

By default, the tab bar is hidden. It only appears when a new tab is opened.

You do have the option of having the tab bar visible at all times. If you’d like to try this option out, go to the top of your browser and click Tools > Options:

Make sure that you are in the “Tabs” section.

Click on the box labeled “Always show the tab bar”:

Click “OK,” and the tab bar will now be visible at all times.

To go back to the default, just uncheck the box labeled “Always show the tab bar.”