Firefox Extension - Tab Mix Plus

Reader Ken Kennedy wrote to tell me about a better extension for tabbed browsing and about a mouse-gestures extension.

Good Evening,


Thank you for another interesting newsletter. In it you wrote:
One of my most recent additions to my system is "undoclosetab" - that's Undo Close Tab! Ever closed a browser tab and immediately said "OOPS!" I have. Undoclosetab comes to the rescue and lets me reopen the tab on the same web page.

Finally, the "Tabbrowser Preferences" extension gives you much more control over tabs in Firefox than you get in the standard Firefox browser.
Allow me to introduce you to TabMixPlus.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1122/

This extension is way better than the two you mentioned. It includes many extra features which you can customize extensively.

Undo Close Tab
Undo Close Tab (depending on customization, can reload any or all of tabs closed that session)
Customize main context menu, tab context menu, tools menu
Session Manager (depending on customization) will open ff with all the tabs open from when ff was closed
Many Other tweaks.

Another excellent extension is Mouse Gestures

http://optimoz.mozdev.org/gestures/
It does require that you train yourself, but once trained, you'll wonder how you managed before. Highly customizable.

Ken Kennedy
London, ON
I've made 3 changes to the defaults in order to fine-tune Tab Mix Plus to my liking:

I don't like a loading progress bar shown in the tab, so I opened the Tab Mix Plus options and unchecked that option;
I like to use multiple tabs, even if a web site specifies that a click should open a new browser window. I was able to check "Force links that open new windows to open in a new tab. And,
On the Tab Mix Plus Display option, the Tab tab, I unchecked Show "Close tab button." I really did not like close buttons on each tab; they were distracting.
One of the features I really like, which was formerly provided for me by a separate extension, is the "undo close tab" function. As Ken wrote, Tab Mix Plus goes one step farther than the older extension — it keeps a list of the tabs you've closed. As long as you have a large enough cache (temporary internet files) setting in Firefox, you'll be able to choose among several tabs you've already closed. Cool!

I haven't tried mouse gestures in a long time, mainly because I use multiple computers with different types of mice, and even the touchpad on my notebook. However, after Ken's recommendation, I think I'll try this Firefox extension.