Working with Tabs in Firefox

Last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6, an upgrade that doesn't have a lot of new features, but it reminded me that I've been wanting to write a post about some of the things you can do with tabs in Firefox, so this seemed like a good time to do so. If you're interested in learning more about the benefits of 3.6, including a faster performance improvement, read this review from ZDNet. (There is one feature I will mention at the end of this article. Stay tuned... :)

Tabs were one of the best features ever added to browsers (remember when you had to have multiple browsers open on your computer to have access to several websites at a time?). Here are just a few tips on ways to work with them in Firefox.

Open a new blank tab
Like with most software, there are multiple ways to do this. You can use the menu (File > New Tab) or a keyboard shortcut (CTRL + T). You can also click on the mini-tab with the plus sign at the right of any existing tabs to open another one.

This lets you open them one at a time. There's another way you can open several quickly. (I do it this way all the time, but don't ask me why I want to have several blank tabs open at a time. I just do...)

Right-click anywhere on one of the toolbars and choose Customize from the pop-up menu. It brings up a window of buttons that you can add to the bars, including one for adding a new tab.

You can click on the icon and drag it to where you want on the toolbar.

Now you can just click that button several times to quickly open a bunch of blank tabs at a time.

Move your tabs around
In addition to having multiple blank tabs open at one time, I often like to have my tabs in a certain order. For some reason, I find it easier to switch to the right one when they're in certain spots, especially relative to each other. Fortunately, you can just click a tab and drag it to the position you want.

Set some preferences for your tabs
There are a few behaviors you can set as defaults for your tabs through the Tools > Options > Tabs dialog box. For example, you can set it so that if a website has their links coded to open new browser windows, they open in a new tab instead, which saves memory resources.

Note: In an earlier post, I showed how you can open any link in a new tab by right-clicking on it and choosing that option from the menu. This is a big benefit if you don't want to risk losing your spot in the original page, which can happen when you open the link in the same tab and then click the Back button. This can be a major nuisance in Facebook, for example, when you click on a link your friend posted, then go Back and have to scroll through your entire news feed again to get back to where you were.

There are a few more tab options available, like adding the pages in all your open tabs to your bookmarks, when you right-click on any of them.

I think that's about it for what you can do with your tabs. Now for the one new thing in Firefox 3.6 I wanted to mention...

Get Your Persona On!

Firefox has added a gallery of thousands of "personas" you can add to your browser to give them a new look.

All they really consist of is a header and footer graphic and some color settings, but you can waste a LOT of time testing them out. :)

In reality, because of all the stuff on your toolbar that is superimposed over the image, you don't necessarily a great visual result. But they are fun to play with.

Even MORE fun, you can create your own persona, either just for your personal use or to add to the gallery.