Page Snooze for the Google Chrome web browser adds another option to the Internet browser. The extension hides inactive tabs for a certain amount of time on a special page, before it pushes them again to the tabbar of the browser.

Chrome users have two options to work with the extension after installation. They can first and foremost right-click on any page to select the new Page Snooze option in the context menu, or click on the extension’s address bar icon instead.

The context menu displays different inactivity periods, from 5 seconds to up to two weeks. The tab is automatically removed from the tabbar once a selection has been made.

The address bar icon on the other hand will always hide a tab for one week. The tab is automatically added to the tabbar again after the selected time period.

The icon furthermore indicates the number of tabs that are currently hidden in the browser. A right-click and the selection of options displays the list of tabs that are currently hidden in the browser.

Each entry displays the website’s favicon, page title and the date and time it will be moved to the tabbar again.

Google Chrome users who would like to try Page Snooze can install it from the official Chrome Web Store. It could prove useful to Chrome users who know that they do not need to access specific tabs for a specific amount of time.

One of the things that I find handy to have as a consequence is the number of all open tabs in a particular window of Firefox.

No modern web browser, as far as I know, displays the open tab count in the interface if the number of open tabs exceeds the visible space of the tab bar.

One of the great things of the Firefox browser is that if you are missing a feature, it is likely that someone else has already created an add-on for it.

The above screenshot shows two different tab counting add-ons at work.

Open Tab Count displays the number of open tabs of the active Firefox window and the number of total tabs that are open in all windows in the Firefox status bar. The add-on has not been updated since 2009 but it still works perfectly under the latest versions of the browser.

Tab Counter on the other hand displays the tab count at the end of the tab bar. It only displays the count of the active window and not the total count like Open Tab Count does.

It does however come with options to change the displays’ appearance in the browser. This includes changing the font, color or size of the displayed number.

Double Click Close Tab is an add-on for the Firefox web browser that adds additional tab closing options to the browser. A double-click on a site in the tabbar closes that tab automatically in the browser. While that’s more convenient than using the right-click context menu it is not the most efficient option that the extension provides.

Closing tabs by moving the mouse to the tabbar to either double-click or click on the x icon is inefficient because of that initial mouse movement. The keyboard shortcut works directly but can only close the active tab.

Double Click Close Tab adds two additional tab closing options to Firefox. Users can alternatively triple left-click anywhere on the page to close the active tab. This may interfere with some actions in the browser, for instance double-clicking on text to highlight it. If you click three times instead of two, which can happen, you’d inadvertently close the current website instead.

The options of the add-on provide preferences to change the default behavior. Both the default tab clicking and on page clicking behavior can be altered there. Alternatives are a single middle-click, double right-clicks or triple right-clicks.

It is furthermore possible to disable one of the tab closing options completely, and to change the triple click time (that is the time in which three clicks need to be registered).

Double Click Close Tab can be downloaded and installed directly at the Mozilla add-on repository.

Some users may prefer a different order of things. Someone with one hundred or more open tabs would not necessarily want a blank tab opened at the rightmost location of the tabbar as it is easy to lose the orientation this way.

The Google Chrome extension Tab Position Customizer empowers the user to select the tab order. In particular it is possible to select the tab opening position, the new tab behavior and the behavior after closing a tab in the Google browser.

Here are the available options:

• Tab Opening Position: Always first, Always last, Right of the current tab, Left of the current tab, Chrome default
• Activate Tab After Tab Closing: First tab, Last tab, Right tab, Left tab, In activated order, Chrome default
• New Tab: Activated (foreground), Not activated (background), Chrome default

As you can see, there are lots of options to configure the tab opening and closing behavior in Google Chrome.

Chrome users need to open the extension’s options via the Wrench > Tools > Extensions > Options menu first to make the changes to the tab behavior in Chrome. The changes made on the configuration screen are active immediately which is handy for testing purposes.

The Tab Position Customizer extension empowers Chrome users to pick the tab opening and closing behavior that they want. You may have noticed that the extension has another option under Miscellaneous which configures Chrome to open pop-up windows always as new tabs in the same browser window.

Chrome users can download the extension from the official Google Chrome Web Store.

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.

There is also the option to click on a tab directly with the mouse to open it. Some users however may prefer to use the mouse-wheel to flip through tabs. That’s what the Firefox extension roTab offers.

Once installed, it adds two options to the browser to flip through all Firefox tabs with the mouse-wheel.

You can flip through all tabs by hovering over the tabbar. Moving the mouse-wheel down flips through the tabs in a forward motion while up does the opposite of that.

You can alternatively use the keyboard in combination with the mouse-wheel to scroll through all open tabs without hovering the mouse cursor on the tabbar first.

The default modifier ist Shift-Ctrl. If you press those two keys you can use the mouse-wheel to scroll through all open tabs.

The modifiers and other options can be changed in the add-on options. Available as the hotkey is a combination of Shift, Ctrl, Alt or Meta.

It is furthermore possible to disable either the scrolling on hover or the scrolling when modifiers are used in the options.

App Tabs are handled like normal tabs by default, which can be changed to either ignore them completely or to use another modifier to scroll through them.

The scrolling itself is fluent with no delays or interruptions, regardless of the method used to scroll.

The add-on roTab can be installed directly at the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. It is compatible with all versions of the Firefox web browser from version 4 on.

That’s inconsistent and something that has bothered me for quote some time. See, I use the Multi Links add-on for Firefox to open multiple links at once in the browser. These often open at the end of the tab row which is not how I want it to be.

Lets take a look at the available options in Firefox. The Tools > Options > Tab menu offers no help. It offers general tab related settings but no configuration option to change the way new tabs are opened.

The only other built-in option is to enter about:config in the Firefox address bar, hit enter, confirm the notification if it appears and filter for the term “browser.tabs”. Please note that this has only been tested under Firefox 4, the parameters may be different under Firefox 3.6.

Locate the browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent parameter. It is set to True which is the default behavior. True basically means that related tabs will be opened to the right of the current tab. Firefox users who want to change that behavior can double-click the parameter to set the value from true to false.

False means that all tabs are opened at the end of the tab row.

But what about users who want new tabs to always open direct next to the active tab?

Those users need to install an add-on, like the restartless Always Right add-on. The Firefox extension configures the browser to open all tabs, regardless of their relation to the active tab, to the direct right of the active tab.

There you have it. Users who want all tabs to open at the end of the tabbar need to make the change in the about:config dialog, users who prefer that all tabs open directly next to the active tab need to use an extension for that.

What’s left to say? How do you like your tabs?

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.