Disclaimer

The content of this blog is my personal opinion only. Although I am an employee - currently of Nvidia, in the past of other companies such as Iagination Technologies, MIPS, Intellectual Ventures, Intel, AMD, Motorola, and Gould - I reveal this only so that the reader may account for any possible bias I may have towards my employer's products. The statements I make here in no way represent my employer's position, nor am I authorized to speak on behalf of my employer. In fact, this posting may not even represent my personal opinion, since occasionally I play devil's advocate.

See http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcxddbtr_23cg5thdfj for photo credits.

Friday, March 02, 2012

"Panic Room" extension => better persistent tab manager

I used to use several tab extensions for FireFox: multiple lines of tabs, tree structured tabs, etc.  Like  Steve Gibson, of the Security Now podcast, I used these as my "get back to" or "to read later" list.   I gave up many of these when I started using Chrome.  I liked these extensions, but I always found their usage limited by lack of persistence.

Now, most browsers nowadays have the ability to restore the last set of tabs you had open. This helps... but then I'm back to needing a better tab manager.

Plus, I often use several browser windows, because I usually have 3 or 4 displays open.  I typically have 2-6 browser windows, each of which may have many tabs - often 6-12, sometimes many more.  (I'm limited here by Chrome's lousy tab management.)

Googling around, I found a reference on http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=4a2a2c76b096e33f&hl=en to the "Panic Button" extension.  For Chrome, but I have also seen similar for FreFix.  I always steered away because they seemed to be oriented towards people doing naughty stuff that they want to hide when the boss drops by.

Maybe so, but this Panic Button extension also provides useful tab management, in combination with its "Panic Room" sidekick.  It saves the current set of tabs into a folder (uniqified by time and date) in my bookmarks. Although I am somewhat embarassed by the names "Panic Button and "Panic Room", the folders can be renamed and moved around. I can save the current set of tabs in each of my windows separately, and easily switch between several contexts and modes. They are persistent and reusable, because I am using Google sync.

E.g. I currently have saved tab sets for manuals and wiki at work, new IBM mainframes, and personal stuff like my wiki and blog.

Wishlist:

  • Save/restore tab configurations for several windows with several tabs apiece.
  • Name other than "Panic Room"
I get worried using any extensions wrt security.