Take a look at the following screenshot to see what I mean. The limit varies depending on the size of the Chrome window and the resolution of the computer monitor.

If you look at the Firefox web browser, you will notice that its developers have added a minimum tab width in the browser to avoid this issue.

Back to the Chrome browser. The only viable options for Chrome browser users are to either limit the tabs that they open at the same time in the browser or to install a tab management extension that provides alternate means of identifying and working with tabs in the browser.

The TooManyTabs extension for Google Chrome is one of the most popular Chrome extensions. Here is a video showcasing the tab management extension’s primary features.

The extension adds a single icon to the Chrome address bar. You can click on that icon at any time to display an overlay of all open tabs in the browser.

Each tab is displayed with its page title and a thumbnail screenshot of the actual web page. Sorting options are available at the top to sort by name, web address or creation time. If you have many tabs open you may also find the search function helpful as you can use it to narrow down the tab listing if you want to find specific websites.

A left-click on a thumbnail or title switches directly to the tab so that it becomes the active tab in the browser.

The right sidebar menu displays a list of suspended and recently closed tabs which can be restored with a single click of the mouse. It is furthermore possible to suspend tabs with a click on the arrow icon in the interface. The benefit here is that suspended tabs do not use memory or cpu cycles.

TooManyTabs is a handy Google Chrome extension for power users who often have dozens if not hundreds of open tabs in the browser. The extension can be installed directly from the official Chrome web store.

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.

FabTabs introduces another, automatic, option to distinguish and identify websites. The Firefox extension takes a screenshot of each website that is open in a tab, analyses it to find a dominant color and replaces the standard tab color with the dominant color.

Is it a practical solution? That depends largely on the color configuration of the add-on, and the websites visited. Take a look at an example below.

The screenshot shows five open tabs that all have their own distinctive color. The extension takes a low res screenshot by default so that only the header area of each web page is analyzed. This sometimes means that a less than optimal color is selected for that website’s tab, especially if the dominant color is dominant on the page but not in the header.

It is however possible to change the width and height of the screenshot. This puts more strain on the computer and browser, but may result in more appropriate colors being selected.

The options of the add-on are divided into the three tabs Color, Screenshot and Miscellaneous.

Color

All color related settings are configured here. Changes can be made to the color matching strength, hue and saturation, the inactive and active tab opacity, the contrast threshold for white text and to the prevention of white and black colors.

Some settings should be self-explanatory, others may require explanation. Color matching strength combines similar colors so that they count together when the dominant color is selected.

The prevent white colors strength and prevent black colors strength define rgb colors that will not be processed by FabTabs. Setting the values to 0 will include all colors in the calculation (with the likely effect that black and white win on most websites), raising the limit will skip more colors.

Screenshot

The size of the screenshot that FabTabs takes from every website, and the beginning X-axis and Y-axis are defined here. A larger screenshot will use more processing power, especially if caching is not activated in the Miscellaneous settings.

Miscellaneous

Caching can be enabled here which has the effect that the color information are taken from cache and not processed again (no new screenshot is taken).

Verdict

FabTabs is an interesting experiment. Can it be used to identify websites? That depends largely on the screenshot resolution, the color settings and the websites that the user opens regularly.

The user eventually recognizes websites based on the color calculated by the Firefox add-on. It is less likely that a website can be identified the first time a color is assigned to it.

An option to override the automatic color mapping for specific domains would improve the extension a lot.

Users who like the idea of customizing the color of their tabs may want to take a look at the add-on. It is available for direct installation over at the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

The Google Chrome extension Tab Title Search offers an interesting approach to handle the problem that not all tabs may be displayed in the browser window at the same time. The extension adds functionality to Google Chrome to display titles of all open tabs in an overlay window on the active tab page.

Tabs are selected with the up and down keys on the keyboard or the mouse, the enter key switches to that tab.

A search is offered in addition to filter page titles. The search supports regular expressions. The overlay window is closed again with the ESC key.

The extension can be used without leaving the keyboard at all. All options, to display and close as well as to navigate, search and select, are accessible via the computer keyboard.

A blank search box is displayed on pages that are internal. This is for instance true for the web history, new tab page or extension management page. Tabs that have been open before installation of the extension need to be reloaded before the functionality becomes available when they are active.

The default keyboard shortcut to trigger the page title listing is Alt-G. It can be changed in the options to any letter plus Alt or Ctrl combination.

Tab Title Search is available for direct installation at the Google Chrome extensions gallery.

The tabbed browsing extension TabJump might be one of those extensions. TabJump adds a button to the Google Chrome address bar that will trigger an overlay window that is helpful for tabbed browsing.

The window displays a list of tabs that have been recently closed, related tabs and the open tabs each with a favicon of the website and the website’s title.

The recently closed tabs section does not only display the last page of the tab that was closed but also all other pages that have been accessed in that tab.

Related tabs are tabs that have been opened from another open tab. A left-click on an entry in the listing either switches to the active tab or opens the page in a new tab.

Tabs can also be locked which protects them from being accidentally closed by the user. The browser will display a popup window asking the user if the tab should be really closed.

TabJump is an interesting extension for the Google Chrome 4 web browser. The extension only displays the eight latest results in its interface with no option to change that number. That’s probably the biggest shortcoming that the developer’s should fix for better usability especially for users who regularly open dozens of tabs at the same time.

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.

Windows Tabifier takes the concept a step further by breaking out of the Windows Explorer limitation. It can be used to put any application or window that is currently running in a tab. It will create a new window if the process is initiated and add all selected applications, processes, folders and files into tabs in there.

Windows Tabifier provides two ways of adding windows to the tabbed browsing interface. The first is by using the System Tray icon to move open windows into the interface. This can be done in just a few clicks and has to be done at the beginning to create a tabbed browsing window.

The second option is to drag files or folders into the tabbed browsing interface once it has been created. This will automatically create a new tab in the interface.

You can browse in the interface by hovering the mouse over the tabs or by using the keyboard shortcut [CTRL 1-9].

It is possible to create multiple windows for tabbed browsing, for example one that contains all Windows Explorer folders, one for Internet and one for multimedia. The Taskbar icon will always display the icon of the active Window in the Taskbar. Minimizing the tabbed browsing window will move it into the System tray. Windows can naturally be released from the tabbed browsing interface at any time.

Windows Tabifier provides the means to tidy up the Windows Taskbar by joining multiple windows into one window. Users who have to cope with tiny computer screens and those who like their desktop to be organized and clean all the time should give this application a try.

The software program is Open Source and portable. It does require a version of the Microsoft .net Framework but the software developer fails to mention which. It was tested with the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 SP1 on a Windows XP SP3 test computer system.

A blank tab however is not useful at all. A better solution would be to open another website or service in the blank tab, something that is quick to load, is usually the right choice and does not delay the process for to long if the user wants to do something different with the tab.

A tab is usually created when the user wants to open a new url or search for something. He could do CTRL T and enter the url that he wants to visit. What if he uses a search engine most of the time that way? What if the search engine could be loaded automatically when a new tab is created?

That is the basic principle of the New Tab URL extension for Firefox. The user can select a default url that opens when a new blank tab is created. This can the his homepage, the current page, the blank (default) page or a custom url.

The custom url is probably the only option that makes sense in the options. The user could pick Google, Yahoo, a specialized search engine, his favorite message board or online shop to open whenever he creates a new tab in Firefox.

It’s however not comfortable to surf that way and users who regularly open more tabs than their screen size can take could find the Tab Kit extension for Firefox useful. One of the main features of that Firefox add-on is the ability to span Firefox tabs across multiple rows. While that opens up new space for additional websites it also means that the remaining screen estate for the active website is reduced.

While that is definitely one of the main features of the Tab Kit extension several others are available which also deserve to be listed. The tab bar can be moved from the horizontal row to the sidebar which is an excellent option for uses with widescreen monitors or large monitors in general.

Tabs can be grouped which is another interesting feature. Grouped tabs are being displayed in the same color or next to each other in the vertical tab menu. The add-on makes use of colors not only to display grouped tabs but also tabs that are active, unread or protected. This option can be disabled, it really does get colorful if you keep the default settings and that might not be something for everyone.

Other features of this excellent Firefox add-on include:

• Sorting Tabs in numerous ways
• Mouse Gestures
• Tab Dragging
• Positioning tabs
• Setting the minimum width and close button preference

Tab Kit provides several useful features for users that work with a large amount of tabs on a regular basis. It offers many options that more or less regulate every aspect of the tabbed browsing in Firefox.

The extension has so many options that it is hard to focus on some that could be worth mentioning. Playing around with it revealed several ones that I did activate and like. You may specify a minimum and maximum width for all tabs, changing the default Firefox values of 100 to 250 pixels to different values. I have great success with 80 to 150 pixels which should be enough to identify most websites.

It is furthermore possible to change the erratic behavior that downloads sometimes open in blank tabs which do not disappear after the download finishes. Tab Mix Plus is able to prevent this from happening. You can select which events should open a new tab and which should not, I have selected to open all javascript popups in tabs, all links that normally open in new windows, all links from other applications and when I want to open bookmarks.

You may also set the behavior for mouse clicks. Define actions when double-clicking, middle-clicking, shift-clicking, ctrl-clicking and alt-clicking a tab and the tab bar. Actions range from closing, duplicating and reloading tabs to merging and protecting them.

Unread tabs and the current tab can be displayed in different colors and fonts to distinguish them from the rest of the open tabs. A progress meter will be displayed in tabs that are currently loaded which is a nice feature as well.