Coming soon to Firefox 3: tab previews

by Brad Linder Nov 8th 2007

While Mozilla may not have officially released Firefox 3 beta yet, that hasn't kept us from drooling over some hot new features in the next generation of the popular web browser. The new places bookmark manager, for one is pretty sweet. And Mozilla Links points out another feature that may or may not make it into the official release: a new tab preview feature that works like Alt+Tab on Windows machines.

With Firefox 2, you can switch between tabs by hitting Ctrl+Tab. You can also see a list of open tabs by hitting a little arrow on the right side of your tab menu bar.

The new extension (which is currently experimental, but which might wind up in the final release of Firefox 3), replaces that little button with a black box. Click on it and thumbnail images of all your open windows will pop up over a black screen. If you hit Ctrl+Tab, you'll get an Alt+Tab style window on the center of your Firefox screen, letting you scroll through your open tabs without actually scrolling through your open tabs.

In the grand scheme of things, the advanced tab switching application might not actually save you any time. But it sure looks pretty.

Tags: alt-tab, ctrl-tab, firefox, tab-preview, tab-switching

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

littleubuntu said 2:30PM on 11-08-2007

wasn't there a firefox addon just like this feature? eh

http://www.FreelancerForums.org

LeeH said 2:45PM on 11-08-2007

This would be an incredibly useful feature. The current ctrl+tab implementation is just an annoyance. If I have ten tabs open, I want a way to flip back and forth quickly between any two tabs.

Rob Wilkerson said 3:41PM on 11-08-2007

Wonder if the Cmd+Tab shortcut, as stated, is correct for Mac. That's the equivalent of Alt+Tab on Windows and cycles through open applications.

michael said 7:34PM on 11-08-2007

IE7 already has had this feature since it was released.

It's called QuickTabs (Ctrl+Q)

Judging this screenshot, the FF version doesn't look any more significantly better. Just appears onscreen, where IE7 does it in a different tab-like thing showing the tab previews.

http://lifehacker.com/software/ie7/ie7-tip--quick-tabs-208906.php

hazard said 10:18PM on 11-08-2007

will be good if you can use the mouse to randomly select a tab-preview .. biggest annoyance with Ctrl+Tab is the serial nature of selection .. random selection is what makes switchers like Flip3D and Exposé a pleasure to use.

Mysterius said 12:14AM on 11-09-2007

@michael: ... and Firefox already had this feature as an extension before IE7. (Foxpose)

Rocketboy said 9:44AM on 11-09-2007

So, the upgrade is that they made it more Opera-like? That's rather exciting in a non exciting way.

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