Firefox 4 tidies up tabs with Panorama

Barry Collins Read more August 25, 2010

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Mozilla has introduced a new feature with the latest beta of Firefox 4 that could bring an end to the chaos of juggling multiple browser tabs.

Panorama is Mozilla’s attempt to prevent tabs from running out of control at the top of the browser window, by grouping them into related topics. The Panorama windows allows users to drag and drop open tabs into groups and give them a name, allowing you to create a cluster of news sites, for example, or a specific group for web apps such as Gmail and Twitter.

When a user views a website, the only other tabs that appear in the browser window are the members of the same group. This helps avoid situations where you have a dozen or more open tabs and struggle to determine between them, because the tabs are getting skinnier and skinnier, or have run into an overflow list.

Firefox 4 users can dip in and out of Panorama view by clicking the icon in the top right-hand corner of the browser window, or by using the Ctrl + spacebar keyboard shortcut.

Panorama isn’t the only feature that attempts to tidy up tabs in Firefox 4. An earlier beta of the browser introduced App Tabs, which shrinks tabs for web apps such as Gmail into discrete favicons, which

are permanently docked on the far left-hand side of the browser window for easy access.

Firefox Sync

Another new feature that’s been integrated into beta 4 of Firefox 4 is Sync. Previously available as a browser add-on, Firefox Sync allows you to synchronise bookmarks, passwords and browser settings across multiple computers.

Sync has been integrated with Panorama, so that users can grab a group of open tabs from another computer.

Sync also works with Mozilla’s recently released iPhone app, Firefox Home, which provides access to your bookmarks and allows you to continue a browsing session from the smartphone.

Firefox 4 beta 4 is available for download here.