Slideshow

In Pictures: 9 Chrome tab tricks

10 Photos Howard Wen (Network World)

The following extensions for Chrome provide certain, idiosyncratic functions you may find helpful when dealing with tabs.

  • EASY AUTO REFRESH: Set a tab to reload automatically A tab refresher can be set to reload a tab after a certain interval, such as for a page showing updated sports, stock or weather information that wasn’t designed to refresh itself automatically. With the Easy Auto Refresh extension, you can designate how much time will pass before a specified tab is to be reloaded. There are three other choices that will do the same thing: Auto-Reload, Page Refresh and Refresh Monkey.

  • SPLIT SCREEN: Open two URLs in one tab Split Screen will display two pages within a single tab, in a vertical or horizontal split-screen. It’s a neat trick, but the GUI of this extension wasn’t designed so you can click an already saved bookmark to load into one of the split-screen panels. You have to type in the URLs you want to be opened in the left and right panels.

  • TAB SCISSORS: Split a tab in two Not to be confused with the Split Screen extension, Tab Scissors will seemingly divide a tab into two. What it actually does, technically, is open a second browser window, and vertically aligns the two to share an equal area of space on your OS’ desktop. When the “cut” is applied to a tab, all tabs to its right will be moved to the second window.

  • TAB GLUE: Combine separate browser windows into one as tabs If you have multiple Chrome browser windows open, Tab Glue will turn them into tabs and put them into one browser window. Otherwise, you’d have to drag-and-drop a browser window onto another to combine them, and do so separately for each window. Through a single click, this extension will apply this action at once to all Chrome browser windows on your OS’ desktop. Another extension that does the same thing is Join Windows.

  • THE GREAT SUSPENDER: Automatically kill inactive tabs with the option to restore them The more tabs you have opened, the more system memory will be used, and, thus, your browser won’t function as speedily. So you can set a so-called tab killer to close an inactive tab if you haven’t looked at it after a set time period, to free up memory. Most such extensions, including The Great Suspender, will let you restore a tab that was closed.

  • ONETAB: Close all tabs and save them into a group or list The idea behind these extensions is to close all tabs, but have them be saved under a group or on a list which you can access later. OneTab, the most popularly used in this category, will place your closed tabs on a list, from which you can re-activate all or individual tabs. With Tab Bundler or Tag Team, you can group your closed tabs into name categories for later retrieval.

  • PROJECT TAB MANAGER: Save tabs as bookmarks Project Tab Manager works similarly to the previous category of extensions, but all active tabs will be saved as standard bookmarks grouped into a folder that you name. This could be more preferable, for example, if you’re doing research online with the intent to save links you come across to look up again later.

  • TAB LIST: Search your tabs Tab search tools are another popular tab-related extension category for Chrome. They let you search the titles and URLs of your tabs, to help you quickly find a specific one that’s buried among several you might have open at once. Tab List also indicates each tab with the time it was last opened, and you can close tabs from within the list of search results. Other similar extensions include Fruumo Tab Manager, Quick Tab and Tab Ahead.

  • TAB EXTRACT: Manage tabs using the keyboard Tab Extract is for those who prefer doing things in the browser with little use of a mouse or touchpad. By typing commands and keywords (found in the titles and URLs of your tabs) in the browser’s address bar, you can group together certain tabs into one browser window, or close several tabs at once, that fall under a shared keyword.

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