There are a number of Firefox extensions that interact with tabbed browsing. These are designed to make it easier to set the preferences exactly how you like, and one adds some useful new features via the creative use of tabs and keystrokes. New extensions are being written all the time, so check the Mozilla Updates web site (http://updates.mozilla.org/) for the latest additions.

Tabbrowser Preferences

The Tabbrowser Preferences (TBP) extension (http://www.pryan.org/mozilla/site/TheOneKEA/tabprefs/), by Bradley Chapman, organizes all of the preferences related to tabbed browsing into a single pane in the Preferences window. You can set all of the same preferences via the special about:config page, but by using TBP, you don’t have to remember what the different preference names mean or what value to set in order to get the behavior you want.

Quick Tab Pref Toggle

The Quick Tab Pref Toggle (QTPT) extension (http://jedbrown.net/mozilla/extensions/#QuickTabPrefToggle), by Jed Brown, allows you to maintain two sets of tabbed-browsing preferences. The idea is that you’ll usually want to divert all new windows into new tabs, but occasionally you’ll work with a page that really should pop up a separate window. This extension lets you put a small button (a toggle) in the toolbar to flip back and forth between two sets of preferences with a single click.

Magpie

Magpie (http://www.bengoodger.com/software/tabloader/), by lead Firefox developer Ben Goodger, is not a tabbed-browsing extension per se, but it has a related feature that demonstrates a completely different use for tabs. Magpie can save all of the tabs to the right of the one you’re currently viewing to files on disk. (It’s intended for media files, such as pictures.)

For example, if you open a photo album web page that contains thumbnails of a dozen pictures, you could Ctrl-click (Command-click) each of them to open the full size photos in separate tabs. Then, a single use of Magpie’s Ctrl-Shift-S would save all of those images to disk in a single folder and close the tabs. This is much faster than saving each image to disk one at a time.