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7 Ways To Become More Productive With Firefox Tabs

I remember the very first reason why I started using Firefox which was its “tabbing” feature (it was long ago and Internet Explorer didn’t have tabs then). It seemed so handy that I was amazed.
Now I still use Firefox (even though all other browsers have tabs now) and I am still pretty excited at the ability to open links in new tabs. Sometimes I have dozens of them opened and this is when it stops being handy (and usable).
Luckily Firefox is awesome and there are plenty of addons that make it even more awesome, so this post lists 7 most useful (for me) ways to get productive with Firefox tabs.

1. “Tabbing” Shortcuts

The best way to navigate through your open tabs is to learn related Firefox shortcuts. I am listing them below in a somewhat easier-to-digest way:
The Shortcut The Action
Ctrl + 1 Select the leftmost tab
Ctrl + 2-8 Select each of the tabs in order from left to right
Ctrl + 9 Select the rightmost tab
Ctrl + F4 Close active tab
Ctrl + T Open new tab
Ctrl + Tab Select the next tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Shift + Tab Select the previous tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl-W Close tab
Ctrl-F4
Ctrl-Shift-T Undo close tab

2. App Tabs

This is an amazing productivity enhancer: this addon allows you to “app tabs” you want to refer to a bit later. “Apping a tab” means moving it to the left side of the tab bar and shrinking it to the size of its favicon.
App tabs
Note: for some reason the addon is not on official addons resource, I got it from here and have had no problems with that version so far.
I’ve been actively using the addon ever since I discovered it. The only issue with it is that the number of “apped tabs” is hard to control (like the number of regular open tabs), and sometimes they become too much.

3. Find In Tabs

Find In Tab is another great Firefox addon that I am constantly using. It adds an alternative option to the CTRL+F command to search through all open tabs:
  • Clicking the “Find in Tabs” button on the find bar will search for text in all open tabs, and show a list of search results.
  • Clicking any of the results will jump to the tab on which it was found, and scroll directly to the highlighted text.
Find in Tabs

4. Next Tab

Next Tab is another time-saving Firefox extension that adds another option to your right-click menu allowing you to open the link right next to the current tab. This way, if you have multiple tabs open you won’t have to scroll to the last one to find your new tab. The link will open in the next tab to the current one:
Next tab

5. Tab Preview

No more clicking through dozens of open tabs looking for the one you need: Tab Preview shows you the preview of the page in each tab on mouseover for you to find the one you are looking for.
I’ve been using the addon for quite some time now and never noticed it slow down the browser performance. In fact, it works amazingly fast:
Tab preview

6. Tab Navigator

TabNavigator is a Firefox addon that allows desktop style tab navigation. What it basically means is that you can navigate between your active tabs using a shortcut {ALT+R}. Moreover, it allows you to guess the target tab by showing you the domain favicon.
Tab Navigator

7. Rights To Close

This addon saves time immensely by making closing tabs really fast and easy: just right double-click anywhere on the webpage to close the current tab.
Rights to close

More FireFox Tab Productivity Tips To Enjoy:

What productivity tips do you have for more effective Firefox tabbing? Please share them in the comments!
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