Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6 Review

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Control your tabs
  • (3 more, see all...)

Mozilla develops one of the best and most annoying browsers in the world. We’re talking of course about Firefox. Even if now it has reached version 6.0, it still lacks some basic features. Some browser purists will say that Mozilla has left all the customizing in the hands of the third-party developers, but I think is just laziness on their part.

This is where Tab Mix Plus, version 0.3.8.6 nonetheless, comes into play. It brings tons of features and functionalities into the Firefox browser, that should be there from the start and that are already present in most important web browsers available on the market.

I’m not going to bother anyone with instructions on how to install an add-on in the Firefox browser, as I’m quite sure there isn’t someone, somewhere, who needed a feature only an add-on would provide. We’ll skip right to the features of Tab Mix Plus, the add-on.

Usage

Tab Mix Plus is a very complex add-on that comes with a gazillion features and most users will be baffled by the sheer amount. Chances are, if you installed it, you already know what you need in order to make Firefox behave the way you want to.

The add-on has six different tabs and some of them have a few tabs of their own, so you can see why it’s quite tricky to explain and show them all.

First one is called Links. Here, users can specify how new links are handled by the browser and how links from other applications are handled. It also permits users to define how JavaScripts and Popups are opened.

In the Links menu there is also an option to disable empty tabs when downloading a file and it has a small editor which can be used to specify certain extensions that will not trigger an empty tab. The last important option is called “Enable Single Window Mode” which can prevent accidental tab drag and drop, resulting in a new opened Firefox window.

The second tab is called Events. As I was saying earlier, it has five tabs of features so I’ll just enumerate the most important ones. Here we find features like locking new tabs and app tabs, the option to open other tabs next to the current one (not sure why this is not default in Firefox), preferred actions when opening new tab from Bookmarks, History etc, and options for closing tabs, like a warning when closing multiple instances.

Google Chrome has managed to include this following feature without any need of extension: “do not close window when closing last tab” or even “prevent last tab from closing”. Either one is acceptable. There are also some options for tab merging and also some features in the last segment that I’m quite sure very few people know about, but a lot of users will find them useful.

The Display tab, the third one, is a little lighter on features, but still brings options that should already be implemented in the browser by Mozilla. Here we can find features that regulate how tabs are displayed, what can be displayed on them (like icons for locked, protected, and auto-reload), and even dimensions for tab, down to the pixels.

The forth tab deals with the Mouse and its various functions in Firefox, like mouse gestures, scrolling in tabs with the wheel. Users can define what every button of the mouse does, independently of the settings in the operating system.

Tab Mix Plus also comes with a Menu Editor, in the fifth tab, designed to simplify the right click entries. Users can choose what to see in the Tab Context Menu, The Main Context Menu and the Tools Menu.

The sixth and final tab from the Tab Mix Plus add-on provides access to another important extension that can work in tandem with this one, called Session Manager.

The Bad

It's impossible to find anything wrong with this add-on. It has all that a heavy Firefox user could wish for and it always worked as it should.

The Good

It provides functions and features I didn't even know existed before and now I can't work without them. It's one of the first add-ons to be installed when I'm doing a fresh install of the operating system and I find hard to imagine what would be Firefox without it.

Conclusion

Maybe your not a big fan of add-ons. It's a well known fact that most Firefox users never even install add-ons, not to mention they use really old versions, but Tab Mix Plus is a jewel and I can't wait to see what other options will the developers integrate in the future.

user interface 5
features 5
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 

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