January 4th, 2009

5 Awesome Firefox Tab Addons

I am a big fan of tabbed browsing and today I decided to see how I can become even more browser efficient by using firefox tab addons. So I searched for tab addons in the official firefox addon directory and found 5 that I really like and am now using.

Addon 1: Aging Tabs

This plugin basically tracks your tab activity and the more you use a tab, the more “active” it will be. Activity is defined by color. The less active tabs are darker, while the more active tabs are light and thus appear more active. You can also define your tab settings such as color, text color and even a custom aging color. Another cool feature is the ability to define how the addon determines more or less activity in a tab. You can use time, the amount of times you switch between tabs or when the URL changes in the tab . This is a very cool plugin and definitely worth installing.

(Click image to enlarge)

Addon 2: FaviconizeTab

FaviconizeTab is a cool little plugin that is probably my favorite of them all. It simple lets you display the favicon in the tab instead of the favicon and website title which helps save some space.

Faviconize Tabs Firefox Add-On

Addon 3: Tabs Menu

This plugins adds a “Tabs” menu to your menu bar. It is quite useful in that it lists all your open tabs with the favicon and full title of the website in the tab. If you have a ton of tabs open, it really makes browsing them and finding the right tab a breeze.

Addon 4: Undo Closed Tabs

Undo Closed Tabs is another one of my favorites. It gives you a “undo” button which you can click to open the last tab that you closed. Not only that, next to the button is a little drop down arrow, which you can press to open any of your recently closed tabs. Obviously you can do the above with the “History” menu, but this plugin provides a nice, neat and quick way of doing it.

Undo Closed Tabs Firefox Tab Add On

Addon 5: Find In Tabs

I haven’t yet exploited this plugin yet, but I can definitely see its uses. What this does is adds the option to find text in all your tabs, rather then just the current one. It opens a neat little box when you click “Find In Tabs” which displays your search results and helps you navigate between the different results.

(Click image to enlarge)

Addon 6: Not Available Yet!

There is one addon that I really really want but couldn’t find. That is a decent tab grouping addon. The closest I could find to what I want is this one. That plugin is no longer supported though and can only be installed on firefox 3 by forcing it to install. So I decided not to use it. I also checked out Group/Sort Tabs, but it isnt what I was looking for.

So, check out those 5 plugins above if you haven’t already and I am sure they will improve your firefox tab browsing experience.

Firefox