Load Websites On Schedule

Loading websites on schedule might come in handy in a few situations. The Firefox add-on Tab Timer offers this feature by allowing users to configure websites that should be opened at a specific time in the future. Possible scenarios where this feature might come in handy are opening websites while on break, shopping for gifts before anniversaries or birthdays, opening eBay auctions before they end or looking up the weather report in the morning.

The configuration of Tab Timer is pretty straightforward. All that needs to be done is to select a date, time, frequency and website in the program's interface. Each website that has been configured this way will then be opened automatically at the exact point in time.

Date and time can be added using the built in calendar. The frequency in which the websites are opened can be switched from once - which is the default option - to daily or weekly. Tab Timer is an interesting extension for Firefox that is compatible with Firefox 1.5 to 3.0. It is possible to force compatibility with Firefox 3.x.

Update: Tab Timer has not been updated for almost a year at the time of writing. This may indicate that the author has abandoned the project, and that users may run into compatibility issues in newer versions of the browser.

We have reviewed a few alternatives in the past. Morning Coffee for Firefox allows you to open websites on a specific weekday or all days of the week.

The more sophisticated My Weekly Browsing adds weekly, monthly or yearly schedules to that, a backlog to open websites in case the scheduled date was missed, and other options that make it more versatile than Morning Coffee.