Automatically opening selected Tabs when launching the Firefox browser

THE TIP:

When closing the Firefox browser, a dialogue box comes up asking you if you would like to Quit and Save, Quit, or Cancel.

Quit and Save: The browser will save your position in terms of which Tabs you have up. The next time you launch your Firefox browser, it will open with those same pages and Tabs already lined up.

Quit: The browser shuts down without saving any of that information and on next launch will simply bring up your chosen start page.

Cancel: Closing the browser is aborted and you’re back to where you were when you clicked on the Close button (X).

Lately I found myself exiting Firefox with four basic Tabs in place: Sympatico.ca (my start page); Facebook | Home (my Facebook home page); Surfacing (my blog page) and Twitter / Home (my Twitter page). And by the end of the next session, I usually have the same pages/Tabs up.

Eureka! 😯

Why not close all but the four basic pages before closing Firefox and then choose Quit and Save? That way they’re all there automatically when I next launch Firefox.

Eureka No. 2. 🙄

The closing dialogue box also has one of those “Never ask me again” boxes, so why not check that box and make it fully automated?

Ta-da! 🙂

I don’t know how this might work with other browser, Internet Explorer in particular. But I put it out there in case anyone might find it interesting and helpful. (And I’m sure the computer wizards amongst us probably have some super-gee-whizz process that makes all this look childishly rudimentary, but that’s OK.) 😉

For those who need to know more about Tabs and such

I assume just about every one knows that you can choose which Web page comes up when you launch your browser. Years ago I switched to Firefox for browsing and set it to open the Sympatico start page upon launch.

I no longer use any third-party toolbars from Google or Yahoo or anyone else. So, in descending order, this is what the top of my screen features:

• The name of the active site (white text on black).

• The standard horizontal list of menus (File, Edit, View, etc.).

• The address line with, from left to right: The usual buttons — Back, Forward, Revise, Stop, Home.
  The address (URL) field, complete with a few shortcut buttons at the right for editing the bookmark, getting sight information, posting to Twitter and searching the social web for the text I’ve just entered.
  Then there’s the field for conducting searches. (I have Google set as the default, with a drop-down menu if I want to choose another search engine. I can also reset my choice for the default search engine.)
  Finally there’s a button for launching Cooliris, a very cool program that displays pictures as an easily scrollable wall of pictures.

• Below that comes my Bookmarks Toolbar where I put the bookmarks — usually one’s most frequently used — that I want easy, one-click access to, without having to scroll the rather long drop-down Bookmarks menu. I really like this toolbar and have made great use of it. There’s even a drop down menu that lists the overflow — the bookmarks I place on the toolbar but get pushed off for lack of space.
  This toolbar is easily editable, including altering at will the order of items. Thus something like my Twitter /Home page may have pushed the online bookstore Chapters/Indigo off the visible list, but it comes up quickly on the overflow list.
  Again this saves me scrolling through the regular drop-down list of bookmarks, combing through folders and subfolders for the right shortcut.

• The last line below all of the above is perhaps my favourite, my horizontal list of Tabs. I LOVE it!
  

The beauty of Tabs

The addition of Tabs as a Firefox feature a few years back was a great step forward. In addition to opening new sites in a separate windows, one could now open these separate windows with a Tab attached, identifying the page and acting as a place mark.

So now when I want to open a new site without closing the current site, I open the new site as a new Tab. I can then quickly jump from page to page by merely clicking on the appropriate Tab. A Firefox add-on I recently downloaded makes it even better in that not only do the Tabs come up in different colours but I can choose (even create) colours and assign them to specific Tabs.

Thus at this moment, as I write this, my list of Tabs, from left to right, reads: Sympatico.ca (light blue), Facebook | Home (light purple), Add New Post Surfacing (dark green because it is the active Tab) and Twitter/Home (a softer shade of light and dark green). Not only does it help in quickly identifying each Tab, but it just looks nice as well. Or at least it would, if I were an old softy. 😉

As mentioned at the top of this article, I used to have my Firefox browser launch with just the Sympatico start page open. By the end of my sessions, I usually had three other tabs up, placeholding my Facebook Home page, my blog Surfacing and my Twitter Home page.

Now when I launch my browser, all four pages come up, attached to corresponding Tabs and I’m ready to check my usual online stomping grounds.