Tab Vault is an extension for the Opera web browser that can probably be best described as advanced bookmarking, or temporary bookmarking. You can add open tabs to the extension’s storage which looks on first glance much like another bookmarking folder.

You can move open tabs to the vault to store them there until you delete. The main advantage of this method is that you can close the current tab to save memory and space in the interface.

The extension places an icon in the browser’s main toolbar that displays the number of saved websites. So far so good.

A click on the icon displays all tabs that have been previously stored in the vault.

A left-click loads the selected website in a new tab in Opera, you can use the Ctrl key to open the url in a background tab instead.

New sites are added with a click on the Save Tab link in the extension interface. That’s not as comfortable as it could be, a keyboard shortcut or context menu link to add open tabs to the vault would improve the usability of the extension.

Websites that have been moved to the vault stay open by default, you can change that and several other settings in the program options.

All those features until now are more or less available via bookmarking as well. Tab Vault comes with several features that cannot be replicated that easily. It is for instance possible to configure the extension to move stored tabs to the trash when they are opened again.

The extension comes with a tab grouping feature which unfortunately is very limited at this point in time. I’d expect an option to open all tabs of a group at once, but the feature appears to be missing. For now, it only offers to group multiple tabs under a group for identification purposes.

Tab Vault supports the importing and exporting of sessions which may be handy if Opera is used on multiple computers, or if you want to save the tab listing to hide it from other users of the browser.

Tab Vault shows promise but falls a bit short in its current stage of development. The developer could improve the extension by making the adding of open tabs to the vault easier, and by optimizing the tab grouping feature so that all tabs of a group can be opened at once.

For now, it acts like a temporary storage solution for tabs that can more or less be replicated with bookmarks and bookmark folders.

Opera users who would like to take a closer look at the extension can do so at the official Opera extension’s repository.

It is a pretty solid walkthrough that unfortunately lacks images to go along with the article. The tips and tweaks are divided into these five subjects:

• Give tabs more space
• Prevent unwanted close
• Change tab logic
• Use hotkeys
• Show tabs in full screen mode

Most of the tips and tweaks describe Opera settings and options that can be changed to make it easier and more convenient to work with many tabs in the Opera browser. Probably the most useful tip for a “minimal user interface” type of user like me is the description of how to remove interface elements from the toolbar to provide more space for the tabs.

The article is worth a read for all users who work regularly or partially with the Opera web browser.