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I made a Firefox add-on!

Get 'New Tab On The Left', a Firefox add-on

If the above link doesn't work, you can also get it from my Google drive here. But you help me out by getting your download counted if you use the mozilla.org link, so I recommend using the first link if possible  :)

So I guess I made a Firefox add-on or something. I found that, really often, I would want to open a new tab all the way on the left of the tab bar. So what I would do is open a new tab, and then drag it all the way to the left. I often have large numbers of tabs open, in the triple digits, and you kind of have to jiggle the tab as you drag it to get it to keep going (I don't even know if that's a bug or not). So I figured, you know what would be cool? If I made a Firefox addon that opened tabs on the left.

Creatively, I call it 'New tab on the left'.

It adds an item to the context menu, 'Open Link in New Tab on the Left' for links, and an action button that opens a new tab all the way on the left. With Australis, you can put that button next to the normal 'new tab' button, or (if you don't have OS X  :( ) put it on the left side of the tab bar. Or whatever. Australis lets you put things in any ol' place.

It needs Australis (29 +), since it uses the new APIs for the tab elements.
 

Re: I made a Firefox add-on!

Reply #1 –
Hundreds of tabs?  Okay, tabbed browsing is nice and all, but I don't understand people that keep that many tabs open, as if they are a replacement for bookmarks.  How do you even manage them all?  I get overwhelmed if my tab count goes into the double digits, let alone triple!

Re: I made a Firefox add-on!

Reply #2 –
Almost always the way this happens, I see like three or four links that look interesting on a page. So I open them in new tabs. And then, I find more links in one or two of those pages, and so I open those in new tabs...

...using a breadth-first node population algorithm while traversing in a pseudo-random fashion...

And before I know it, between 50-150 tabs open. I keep my emails (private and work) on the far left. Usually, at some point, I hit 'close all tabs to the right' of about ten or so tabs.

Re: I made a Firefox add-on!

Reply #3 –
Flying Jester: Dude, like beer, surf the net with moderation! I only open tabs of things I intend to read, and then fully read them before moving on. Like I'll have double-digits of tabs if they are news articles, but if I skim them and don't like them the tabs get closed. I'm rarely above twenty at max.

I think it's cool though that you work at Mozilla and... here is your first plugin! Woohoo! I would use it, if I used FF more often, but I do not.
If you use code to help you code you can use less code to code. Also, I have approximate knowledge of many things.

Sphere-sfml here
Sphere Studio editor here

Re: I made a Firefox add-on!

Reply #4 –
Besides being leaner (I'm assuming), what's the advantage of using this over Tab Mix Plus's "Open new tab to the left" functionality, or do they use the same behind-the-scene technique(s) to make it happen?

Re: I made a Firefox add-on!

Reply #5 –
Well, to be honest, I didn't even look to see if there were any similar plugins.

But I really can't imagine any similar add-ons being simpler than this, it's about 100 lines of JS. Chances are, Tab Mix Plus uses the same gBrowser functonality. In fact, I'd imagine it's basically the same thing.

The only thing I can imagine I might've done better is, my add-on respects custom 'new tab' pages?