I never hesitate to point out that Opera has the best tab management experience of any browser on the market. And while Safari’s new tab management options are pretty close to Opera’s, it’s still way ahead.
That doesn’t mean other browsers can’t compete. And while they’ll never reach the heights Opera has reached, they can certainly make your tabs easier to manage.
You may be wondering why I constantly insist on tab management in web browsers. One of the reasons is that users like me tend to work with way too many open tabs.
It’s not uncommon for me to have over 30 tabs open each day. Without a good tab management solution, this would cause serious problems. These tabs would be so small that I would have a hard time telling them apart. Thanks to tab management, not only can I see them, but I can also organize them in a way that makes my day-to-day life much more efficient.
What is Tab Workspaces?
Although the Firefox browser does not (yet) have an integrated solution for managing tabs, there is an add-on, called Tab Workspaces, which allows you to categorize your tabs.
As I said before, this solution is nowhere near as good as the Opera Workspaces option. One of the main reasons is tab pinning. Unlike Opera and (now) Safari, when you have pinned tabs in Firefox, they appear in each tab management space. For this reason, Firefox tabs aren’t as organized and clean as those in Opera or Safari.
The features of Tab Workspaces are as follows:
- Assigning tabs to a specific workspace.
- Automatically add tabs to the current workspace.
- Easily switch between workspaces from the toolbar.
- Multiple windows with their own workspaces.
- Easily move tabs to another workspace using the context menu.
- Keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+E) to open the list of workspaces (you can then press keys one through nine to move between workspaces from the keyboard).
- Search for a tab in the address bar by typing ws TEXT (where TEXT is your keyword).
How to add Tab Workspaces to Firefox for a more organized and efficient experience?
If Tab Workspaces seems like a tool you want to use, let’s install it.
Prerequisites
The only thing you will need is an up-to-date version of Firefox. It doesn’t matter which platform you use, but it should be the desktop version of the browser. Once Firefox is ready, we will install Tab Workspaces.
1. Open the Firefox Add-ons window
Open Firefox, then click the menu button (three horizontal lines in the upper right corner). In the context menu, click Extensions and Themes.
2. Locate Tab Workspaces in the add-ons store.
In the window that appears, type Tab Workspaces in the search bar. When the results appear, click on the Fonso developer entry.
3. Add Tab Workspaces to Firefox
In the next window, click Add to Firefox. When prompted, click To addthen on OK. You should now see a smiling tab icon in the Firefox toolbar.
Image: Jack Wallen
How to use Tab Workspaces?
It’s actually quite simple. If you click on the icon, you will only see one default workspace. On the other hand, if you click on +, you will add a new workspace. However, if you add workspaces this way, they will be named Workspace 1, Workspace 2, Workspace 3, etc. It’s not ideal.
To fix this problem, click Edit Workspaces and, in the window that appears, you can rename these workspaces. To rename a workspace, click the icon pencilgive the workspace a new name, and then press Enter on your keyboard.
Image: Jack Wallen
When you’re done changing all of your workspace names, click Stop Editing.
Once you have created your workspaces, you can click the icon to select the workspace you want to work on. Open the necessary tabs for each workspace. To send a tab to another workspace, right-click on it and select Send Tab To Workspace XXXX.
Image: Jack Wallen
That’s all there is to mastering your Firefox tabs.
Source: “ZDNet.com”