Mozilla back in July released a Firefox add-on as part of the Mozilla Prospector series which acts as a prototyping test ground. OneLiner basically merges both the address bar and tabs bar in the Firefox web browser.

The following screenshot shows the standard Firefox layout and below that the browser interface after OneLiner has been installed.

In order to combine the navigation and tabs toolbars, the location bar is given a small fixed size while the search bar is collapsed to a single button.

The address bar functions exactly as before. The search form on the other hand has turned into a search button which loads a search engine on click in a tab. The actual tabs that are open in the web browser are displayed on the right of the search button.

The developers have added additional features to OneLiner. The back and forward buttons are automatically hidden when not in use to make more room for the location bar. The search form will be automatically filled with selected text or clipboard data to speed up the process of searching using the new interface. Firefox users who have OneLiner installed can also use the new keyboard shortcut Cltr-K to focus or open the search form in a new tab.

There is a downside to merging the location bar and tab bar. The space that is available for tabs is reduced which means that you won’t see as much of their titles as before. Firefox users interested in OneLiner can download and install it directly from the Mozilla Add-On repository.

Firefox users can make use of the browser’s excellent customizability to counter some of those effects. It is for instance possible to reduce the width of each tab in the browser to make room for more websites on the visble tabbar, pin tabs that are always open to reduce their width or to install add-ons like Tab Utilities that support multi-row tabbars.

The Focus Last Selected Tab add-on for Firefox adds three comfortable options to Firefox’s tabbar:

• Focus last selected tab: This puts the focus back on the last active tab if you close the current tab.
• Tab flipping: A click on the current tab displays the last active tab on the screen. Another click displays the current website again.
• Restore recently closed tab: A middle click on an empty area on the tab bar restores the last closed tab in the browser.

Firefox users can disable some of the functionality in the extension’s options. Here they can also enable faster tab flipping which switches tab when the mouse button is pushed down, and not when it is released. The developer notes that this disables Firefox’s drag and drop feature.

The keyboard shortcut Ctrl+ that is enabled by default is not working on the other hand. Firefox users Ctrl+ to zoom in on a page, and it is likely that a conflict prevents this from working properly.

Update: The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl..

The feature that I personally like is the ability to switch between two tabs by clicking on one of the tabs on the tab bar.

Firefox users can download and install the Focus Last Selected Tab add-on from the official Mozilla add-on repository.

A click on the icon opens a new blank tab in the browser. I personally do not need the functionality of the new tab button as I open new tabs with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-t instead, which is faster and at least for me more comfortable.

I always try to find a way to do away with interface elements that I do not use regularly, and the new tab button in Firefox is no exception to that.

It is a lot easier to remove the button in Firefox 4 than it was in previous versions of the web browser. Right-click on the new tab bar icon and select customize from the available options.

The browser is now in customize mode which means that you can drag and drop elements from the interface to the Customize Toolbar window and vice verse.

To remove the new tab button drag and drop it on to the Customize Toolbar window. You can do the same for some of the other elements displayed in the interface including the list all tabs dropdown. Some elements are locked and cannot be removed this way.

Click done in the window once you are finished. The new tab button should be gone for good now and you have saved up some space in the tabbar.

The benefit of running tabs in the sidebar, either left or right, is the same as running the Windows Taskbar at the left or right side of the computer screen: Space.

A vertical placement can display more information and more tabs openly than a horizontal tab bar can.

firefox tabs sidebar

This is especially obvious if the computer uses a widescreen monitor, as most websites do not make use of the full screen width, especially on large resolutions such as 1920×1200. This resolution for instance often means more than 400pixels of white space on the left and right side, if the browser is running in full screen mode. The display width is usually sufficient to display all website contents on the screen, the height however is not. More horizontal space means that the website has more space to display.

Rarst has already mentioned how to switch to a vertical tab bar in Opera ( Right-click tab bar > Tab Bar Placement). I have decided to take a look at the Firefox browser instead.

Firefox does not offer vertical tab placements out of the box. Add-ons have been created that can move the tabs to a sidebar. One of the add-ons is Tab Kit.

The add-on automatically moves the tab bar to the left sidebar upon installation and restart of the web browser.

The colors that are initially displayed can be deactivated, the position of the bar switched to the right side, top (default position, or bottom.

The display can be further customized in the options. It is here for instance possible, and advised, to display a close button next to each tab. By default, the close button is only displayed at the bottom of the screen, which is not very functional to say the least.

tab kit

Tab Kit supports mouse gestured to quickly switch between tabs, and it is of course still possible to display the first ten tabs by pressing CTRl-[1-9] on the keyboard.

The benefits of running tabs in the sidebar

Below are the benefits of running tabs in the sidebar, the disadvantages or situations where you should not do that are listed in the next paragraph instead.

• If lots of tabs are often open at the same time, especially if that means that not all tabs are displayed all the time in the horizontal bar.
• If width is not a issue, e.g. on widescreen monitors.
• If every pixel of height is of importance.
• If you prefer to have the page titles visible all the time

When you should not run tabs in sidebar

There are situations where it is not advised to run tabs in a sidebar.

• If the computer monitor is only capable of small resolutions, e.g. 1024×768.
• If only a handful of tabs are opened all the time
• If the sidebars are already occupied
• If the user likes to align windows on the screen so that the web browser is only displayed in part of it.

There is one last thing to address. Should you place the tab bar in the left or right sidebar? This again depends on a few factors. If the left sidebar is already occupied you may want to move it to the right. The right side has the additional advantage that the scrollbar is there as well, which usually means that the mouse is often located in that area to navigate the page.

The left sidebar placement on the other hand is closer to the browser menus and the url form. It is however more distracting on the left, especially in the beginning after making the switch.

Where is your tabbar located? Are you using a vertical or horizontal placement, and why?

The latest Firefox 3.7 nightlies (called firefox-3.7a5pre) enables customizations for additional elements that could not be moved at all previously. It is now for instance possible to move the new tab and list tabs buttons from the Firefox tabbar into another toolbar.

More interesting than this, especially in situations where screen estate is a premium is the ability to move elements into the tabbar which actually makes it possible to place all visible navigational elements into one toolbar in the Firefox web browser.

Moving all elements into the tabbar has consequences on the other hand, especially in situations where many tabs are opened at the same time as they reduce the width of forms to a minimum making it extremely difficulty to enter new urls or perform searches.

Mozilla Links has information about the other changes in this new release:

On Windows, you can also notice the slightly updated tabs style: more separated and rounded and more contrast for the active tab.

Important changes are still to come for tabs including nice animations when adding, closing and moving tabs, and Aero Glass for all toolbars on Windows Vista and 7.

Which brings us to an interesting question. How would your browser look like if all browser toolbars and elements were customizable?

I for one would love to see an option to integrate the titlebar into one of the bars, maybe make it fixed to a toolbars background or something like that.

Users interested in this latest feature can download the pre release of Firefox 3.7 alpha from the Mozilla ftp site. (via Mozillalinks)

Update: Make sure you use a different user profile or portable version for testing. It otherwise could impact another installed version of Firefox.

The basic idea of App Tabs is to offer Firefox users a way to pin selected web services and websites to the tabbar of the web browser making them available always in the same spot. The idea works perfectly for websites that do not require back and forward navigation like Gmail or Google Docs but also for any other website or service that the user accesses all the time.

App Tabs pins selected tabs to the left side of the tabbar in Firefox. The tabs are minimized so that only the favicon of the website or service is displayed. This saves space in the tabbar and is usually appreciated by most users.

The new version of the App Tabs add-on adds comes with the following features:

• App tabs can be saved across sessions! (default)
• App tabs can be merged when closing a window. (default)
• App tabs can be protected from being closed individually.
• If you have Tabberwocky installed, App Tabs will automatically also lock app tabs that you create. This feature can of course be disabled by going to about:config and setting extensions.apptabs.lock to false.

Tabs can be converted into app tabs by ctrl-clicking them in the Firefox tabbar. App Tabs is currently compatible with all versions of Firefox 3.5x to 3.7x. The download is available at the Firefox add-on’s website.

Update: App Tabs has been pulled. probably because it is now a built-in feature of the soon to be released Firefox 4.

The Firefox add-on will add several of its features (like protecting or duplicating tabs) automatically to the right-click menu when right-clicking on tabs in the tabbar in Firefox. Other features like opening tabs to the right of the current tab or switching to the last selected tab upon closing a tab are also activated right away.

Many of these features can be customized in the add-on’s options. Here it is possible to disable context menu entries, change the behavior when opening or closing tabs, alter the design of the tabbar and configure the action when the backspace key is pressed in Firefox.

The backspace key can be configured to navigate back and forward or perform a page up or page down action. Tabberwocky does not offer all of the features of Tab Mix Plus yet. This includes the ability to display tabs in additional rows in the web browser or offering session management.

Not all users need that functionality on the other hand. Tabberwocky can be downloaded from the profile page at the Mozilla Firefox website.

The permanent tabs are loaded automatically when starting Firefox with the difference that their contents are loaded when the user first accesses the tabs in the tabbar. Permanent tabs can be displayed in a different color to make their identification easier for the user. New permanent tabs can be added by right-clicking a tab and selecting the Permatab option from the menu. This is also the way to undo the action so that the tab once again behaves like any other tab in Firefox.

The PermaTabs Mod is a great way to add indestructible tabs to the Firefox browser which should be interesting for users who work with the same basic set of websites all the time. It could for example be used to protect services like Gmail, Google Search or an individual website from being closed accidentally. The Tab Mix Plus add-on can protect tabs as well but some users might prefer a solution that is not coming with such a huge feature set.

That’s exactly what the experimental Firefox add-on Hide Tabbar is doing. Hide Tabbar works by configuring a keyboard shortcut to hide and display the tabbar in the web browser. The default combination has been set to CTRL F11 which is not that comfortable as it can only be accessed with both hands.

The keyboard shortcut can be changed easily in the options of the add-on so that only one hand is needed to hide and display the tabbar in Firefox. Hide Tabbar offers an auto-hide function as well which will automatically hide the Firefox tabbar after a certain time. The tabbar will be displayed again if the user hovers the mouse cursor over the area were it was initially displayed.

Hide Tabbar is an experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that is compatible with all versions of Firefox.

Whenever you click on a new folder in the Windows Explorer it will be opened in a tab in the same window and you can switch between all open tabs in that window. This is great to reduce the size of the windows that are open at once. QT Tabbar adds more functionality to the Windows Explorer. The feature I like most besides the tabbed function is called subfolder tips.

You can navigate into subfolders without opening them. A little arrow appears whenever you hover your mouse over a folder showing all files and folders that are inside. It is even possible to hover about another folder and see everything inside as well.