tabcandy

Firefox Friday, a weekly round-up: Beta 4, Beta 5, Panorama, breaking add-ons and our Private Browsing habits analyzed

Submitted by admin on Fri, 08/27/2010 - 14:00

This week has produced some fantastic Firefox news. That's a good thing, but because we covered it all on Download Squad in a timely fashion, it leaves me with a bit of a problem: there's no new news to share with you. I've been left with producing a round-up for this week's Firefox column. I've never done a round-up before, but I'm sure it'll be good.

I think I'm meant to take each nibble of news and provide a refreshing, opinionated point of view that throws it into a new light. Let's start with one that got a lot more interest than we anticipated:

1. Firefox 4 Beta 5 will feature a two-column main menu

I think I actually told Lee that this one wasn't worth posting..., how wrong I was!
"It's like one of those Google-search-box-grows-by-18-pixels stories." Personally, I hate Chrome's unified wrench menu, and I'm disheartened to see it make an appearance in Firefox.

Video: TabCandy is coming -- and it's like a virtual desktop manager for Firefox

Submitted by admin on Mon, 07/19/2010 - 18:15

 

With our Web browsers becoming more and more like an OS -- or actually becoming an OS as with Chrome -- it's not surprising to see developers turning their eye toward features which provide a desktop-like experience. Over at Mozilla, they've been working away at TabCandy -- which offers a whole new way to manage your Firefox tabs.

TabCandy is a bit like a full-featured virtual desktop manager -- think of Web pages as applications and browser windows as desktops. Install TabCandy and a button is added to your Firefox toolbar. Click it, and you'll see a view like the one above. You can group tabs, label them, and move tabs between groups with a simple drag-and-drop.

The layout is totally customizable -- resize group boxes however you want and reposition them, and the thumbnails automatically resize and re-order themselves. You can also add a new tab to a group by clicking the icon in the bottom-left corner. Click a thumbnail, and the page zooms into the foreground.

Want to see TabCandy in action? Check out my brief screencast after the break!

The extension is still unfinished, but TabCandy has come a long way since I first checked it out -- and it's definitely fun to play with now even if it's not quite ready for prime time. You can find the TabCandy.XPI on Mozilla's server (it's near the bottom of the list).

Who knows -- you could be looking at the tab management interface for Firefox 4!

(worth noting: Mozilla's Aza Raskin has gotten in touch with Sebastian and reports that the .XPI is somewhat out of date. Still, it's the easiest way to play with TabCandy if you're so inclined.)