A few friends of mine still don't understand the benefits of Firefox over IE 6, so this post is an attempt to showcase just one of the many features that make FireFox a powerful web browser for web surfing power users.
I think most people understand the concept of tabbed browsing, but for those not familiar with it, it's basically the browser version of the tabs you're probably familiar with from Microsoft Excel. You're able to open many sessions of an application within one window, which saves time you'd spend hunting for the other windows you happen to be using at any one time. This is particularly valuable with web browsing if you, like me, use browsers for many routine tasks throughout the day like email, news reading, and blogging.
Here is what my FireFox browser workspace tends to look like at the start of the day:
Notice that I have eight tabs open at once. They happen to be:
1. The admin section of this blog, so I can approve news comments.
2. Technorati, so I can get my blog ranking fix.
3. Feedburner, so I can check our latest subscriber stats and earnings.
4. Our stats program.
5. Meebo, for chat.
6. Bloglines, for news.
7. My work email program.
8. My outside of work email program.
Here is how I COULD start my day:
1. Open a browser window with one of the eight sites set as my homepage.
2. Click to open a new tab.
3. Open next site in tab.
4. Repeat six more times.
Or I could select "Bookmark All Tabs..." from the Bookmarks menu while I have the sites I want to have opened open.
Then create a new bookmarks folder called "startup" on my Bookmarks Toolbar (it doesn't have to be there, but it's convenient):
Now when I open FireFox, I can simply click the "startup" button, then select "Open in Tabs" to open all eight sites at once in tabs:
Which brings up back to this:
That's a major time saver for me.
Worth noting: FireFox will override any tabs you have open already when you select "Open in Tabs." So make sure you don't have anything critical open when you use this feature.
1. Posted by: Pat Phelan on October 11, 2006 1:09 PM:
fantastic helpful post thank you.
One question please ?
when I do this all my tabs are grey,on your screenshot your tabs are different colours.
Would be grateful for the solution to change this.
Cheers