Firefox 4 Beta Debuts Panorama Tab Management

EricMack 0 360 Views

The good people at Mozilla have read our minds, again. The latest beta version of Firefox 4 , released on Tuesday, has a new tool to help you get out from under that unruly pile of browser tabs. It's called 'Panorama,' a shortcut-accessible drag-and-drop workspace that allows you to move and organize your browser tabs into named groups. The workspace is also scalable, so you can increase the size of the group of tabs that you're currently working on, or shrink those that are less important and don't require attention.

Not to underestimate our ability to overwhelm ourselves with multitasking, however, when a group of tabs becomes too large to manage even on Panorama's whiteboard, it collapses into a pile, which can be quickly browsed a la the Windows 'Aero' concept.

Tab candy designer Aza Raskin breaks down the design principles behind Panorama in a blog post , including the need to remove distractions from your work flow:
... out of sight, out of mind. This is the corollary to seeing is remembering. We, as humans, are bad at multitasking. As practitioners of GTD know, the secret to productivity is removing distractions and focusing. Piles let you visually hide the pages by which you don’t want to be visually distracted, which strategically requires recall-based memory. When you are in a group, you only see the tabs related to the task at hand, again allowing you to focus. Strategic hiding is key to a mind free of info-guilt.

This fourth beta version also makes Firefox Sync standard, a concept that's been around as an add-on for a few years now. Sync makes all your Firefox settings, passwords, bookmarks and other customizations line up across all your devices. It works with Mozilla's iPhone browser app, and Fennec for Android.

This latest Beta comes as Microsoft is rushing to get its beta for Internet Explorer 9 out next month. The IE 9 final isn't expected this year, whereas Mozilla is moving quickly to have Firefox 4 ready to ship in November.

Here's Mozilla's highlighted list of new additions to this beta:
Firefox 4 Beta 4 is available in 39 languages.
Firefox Sync is now included by default.
A new feature gives users a visual overview of all open tabs, allowing them to be sorted and grouped.
An experimental API is included to provide more efficient Javascript animations.
Firefox now supports the HTML5 video "buffered" property.

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A few practical, hands-on tips to make Panorama (Tab Groups) useful instead of just visual candy. To open the overview use the small Panorama icon at the right end of the tab strip or choose View → Tab Groups; keyboard shortcuts changed across builds (Ctrl+Space → Ctrl+E → Ctrl+Shift+E), so check the View menu or press F10 to reveal the menu bar if a shortcut doesn’t work. Create a new group by dragging a tab into empty space (a diagonal drag creates a group), drag tabs between groups, or use the tab context menu to move a tab into an existing group. (arstechnica.com)

If add-ons are disabled in the beta (as reported), there is a conservative troubleshooting path. Temporarily bypass the compatibility check by opening about:config, creating a Boolean named extensions.checkCompatibility.4.0 and setting it to false, then restart—this will re-enable extensions flagged as incompatible. Use this only to test; incompatible extensions can crash or corrupt a profile. A safer approach is to install the Add-on Compatibility Reporter or Nightly Tester Tools and report which add-ons work so developers can update them. (pcworld.com)

If performance is the worry (as mentioned), isolate the cause by restarting Firefox in Safe Mode (Help → Restart with Add‑ons Disabled or start with Shift/Option) to see whether add-ons or UI features are responsible. You can speed Panorama itself by disabling its zoom animation in about:config (browser.panorama.animate_zoom = false), and you can turn off UI animations (for example browser.tabs.animate) if they feel sluggish. Also check about:support for graphics info and update GPU drivers or toggle hardware acceleration while testing. (support.mozilla.org)

If the beta still causes trouble, use the stable release for daily work and file feedback/bug reports with your about:support snapshot so developers can reproduce issues. For saving groups for later rather than keeping Panorama active, experimental add-ons (Snaporama / TabGroups tools) let you snapshot or persist group sets while the feature matures. (developer.mozilla.org)

Member Avatar for david osborn
david osborn 0 Newbie Poster

i am using this beta version new addon functionality is great but in progress i'm waiting for it and also addons are not working on this version

Member Avatar for david osborn
david osborn 0 Newbie Poster

also the tab management is good looks like chrome :)

Member Avatar for BruceAnd851
BruceAnd851 0 Newbie Poster

The good people at Mozilla have read our minds, again. The latest beta version of Firefox 4 , released on Tuesday, has a new tool to help you get out from under that unruly pile of browser tabs. It's called 'Panorama,' a shortcut-accessible drag-and-drop workspace that allows you to move and organize your browser tabs into named groups. The workspace is also scalable, so you can increase the size of the group of tabs that you're currently working on, or shrink those that are less important and don't require attention.

Not to underestimate our ability to overwhelm ourselves with multitasking, however, when a group of tabs becomes too large to manage even on Panorama's whiteboard, it collapses into a pile, which can be quickly browsed a la the Windows 'Aero' concept.

Tab candy designer Aza Raskin breaks down the design principles behind Panorama in a blog post , including the need to remove distractions from your work flow:

This fourth beta version also makes Firefox Sync standard, a concept that's been around as an add-on for a few years now. Sync makes all your Firefox settings, passwords, bookmarks and other customizations line up across all your devices. It works with Mozilla's iPhone browser app, and Fennec for Android.

This latest Beta comes as Microsoft is rushing to get its beta for Internet Explorer 9 out next month. The IE 9 final isn't expected this year, whereas Mozilla is moving quickly to have Firefox 4 ready to ship in November.

Here's Mozilla's highlighted list of new additions to this beta:


I hope they can build a firefox with much feature but doesnt slow up the browsing.

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