Firefox needs a tab well
Update: See also my MozillaZine forum post for this idea.
I was reading a post on Web Worker Daily, which made me stop and think about my browser tab usage style. After a few moments, I commented:
I usually have email and some Backpack page open at any given time, but beyond that I have a tendency towards cleanliness.
However, as the WebOS becomes increasingly useful, the demand on users to keep individual tabs open for these often used web services becomes frustrating. What would be great is if browsers offered a “tab well” — something similar to the palette well in PhotoShop — that always kept our core web services open and running in the background. They be [sic] accessed by clicking on the “tab well” tabs, via a keyboard shortcut or by dragging them onto a foreground tab.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. But I can’t be the first one to think of this; does something like this already exist? I made a quick mockup to give you a better idea of what I mean:
Through comments on the same Web Worker Daily post I learned that with the PermaTabs extension you can make certain tabs permanent, which provides something similar. But I would personally prefer that permanent tabs be more visually separated from open tabs and not be selectable via the standard control-tab keyboard shortcut.
- 28 Feb 07
- browser, interaction design, interface, tabs
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I think there’s also an extension that lets you group tabs into meta-tabs, though I forget its name.
Andrew on 28 Feb 07
I am searching for a meta-tab extension that would help me to group tabs into related meta-tabs, with option for delayed fetching that fetches the pages under a meta-tab only when it is clicked, so as to save on memory used.
I have been waiting for a loooooong time for such an extension.
If only I had time to write it.. May be I should..
Mohan on 25 Apr 07