Embracing Chaos

Sometimes when I’m using firefox and I open a link in a new window, somebody will ask me "why don’t you use tabs?"  I do use tabs, but I use windows as well.

I like to group sets of related browser tabs together into OS windows.  This organizational structure makes it easy to multi-task.  I might be researching something I want to buy, and I’ll have lots of tabs open in a single window with the various options I’m considering and the related research.  When I’ve made my choice and have purchased something, I can easily close all those tabs together with a single click, and not interrupt any of my other activities.  Or if I get interrupted before I can make a decision, I will minimize this window and the whole set of activities is put aside until I’m ready to work on it again. 

The same strategy works for research — if I’m trying to figure out a specific something, I will typically open a half dozen windows before finding what I want.  But once I have the answer, none of those windows are useful anymore.

Suggestions / Requests

Here are a couple of things I’d like to see change about tab management in firefox:

I want the ability to take an open tab and pull it into its own window frame.  Sometimes a new tab will open in the current FF window and I’ll realize it’s going to be the root of an exploration and should really have its own window.  Right now I have to copy the URL, close the tab, open a new window and paste the URL.  It would be great to have a context menu option to do this for me.

Now some might question why that tab opened in the wrong window in the first place.  Sometimes it’s because I don’t realize when I open something that it will blossom into a whole research task.  So I open it in the same window, but then later want it in its own window.  More often though it’s because I click on a hyperlink in another application.  I have firefox set to open new links in new tabs instead of new windows.  Normally this is the correct behavior when browsing — anything I click on that wants to open a new window is related to what I’m doing.  But when I click a new link in another application, it’s generally not related to whichever FF window I happened to be using last.  I want a firefox option which allows me to change the new tab/new window behavior for OS links from other applications because normally I want those to open in new windows.

Update: Ask and you shall receive

It turns out most of what I want is already available in the fabulous Tab Mix Plus plugin.  Thanks to Stuart for pointing this out.  It’s got a lot of options and I haven’t explored all of them.  But I think it still doesn’t give me the level of control I’d really like to move tabs between windows.  I think what I really want is to be able to drag & drop between browser windows.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 2:39 PM and is filed under Hacks, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.