Tip of the Week: Landscape Mode Firefox
Does it annoy you that your screen is short and wide while web pages are mostly tall and skinny? Johnathon Weare has come up with a hack to create a widescreen version of Firefox. He calls it Widefox. It puts tabs into a vertical sidebar that takes advantage of the extra horizontal space you have on your display. You can see way more tabs at a time this way — up to 40 or more.
It’s not too hard to do: just install Firefox add-on Tab Mix Plus with Johnathon’s Firefox user chrome file, then configure Tab Mix Plus to correctly arrange tabs in your new tab sidebar. Get the detailed instructions here.
You should also check out Firefox Showcase, which has a sidebar mode that displays small previews of tabs while hiding the horizontal tab bar. It’s very configurable and great if you’re not a huge tab monger (25 or fewer tabs at a time).
If you’re using Opera you can do the same thing by opening the “Window” sidebar panel. Not trying to be a fanboy, just pointing it out for those (like me) who didn’t know it was there at first.
Anne
I tried this and i was underwhelmed by it and had to basically get rid of it in less than 20 minutes.
[...] Johnathan’s custom layout moves the tabs to the right side of your browser (which should be a familiar home for anyone who likes moving their Windows sidebar or Mac dock to the side of their screen). If you like to maximize your browser and end up with a lot of unused whitespace on the sides, the Widefox set up is a nice idea. — Adam Pash Widefox [via Web Worker Daily] [...]