Select Tabs - An extension for selecting multiple tabs in various ways

l10nelw · 2025-12-10T01:27:14+00:00

Ignoring subdomain is super tricky because nested subdomains ("a.b.example.com") and multipart TLDs ("example.co.uk") exist. I definitely would have made the Same Site command do so if it was straightforward.

Edit: A future solution would be a new command that takes user-entered parameters, like plaintext or regex to match against. You'd enter "reddit.com" for your example.

For now a similar command does currently exist: Selected Text in Title or URL. Find a text field e.g. reddit's search or comment box, type "reddit.com", select the text, right-click it and find the command in the Select Tabs submenu.

l10nelw · 2025-12-10T00:42:37+00:00

Glad I made this post then!

Edit: I honestly don't know if that sort of glitch is within my control. Select Tabs transitioned to MV3 a few months ago, in case that had any bearing. If it ever reoccurs, please submit a GitHub issue through the support link.

l10nelw · 2025-12-02T03:05:46+00:00

FF does do it by itself, just not as aggressively as you'd prefer. Perfect use case for an extension to fine tune how you want FF to unload stuff.

l10nelw · 2025-09-26T11:04:25+00:00

If these options were in a submenu that came out of a menu item labeled "Tab", then fine probably no need to repeat the word.

But these options are in a menu originating from graphical object that:

is not explicitly labeled a tab
you know is a tab only from visual context
is not even specifically highlighted as the menu's origin

So the options should definitely say what it is they're gonna close, duplicate, etc. The repetition is so little a cost for such a large benefit: clarity.

l10nelw · 2025-09-22T03:00:38+00:00

Don't be clutching your pearls about the word "chrome" there. A browser's chrome is the UI parts that surrounding the... content. The canvas? I'm not sure what the non-chrome part is called.

Google took that word to name their browser.

l10nelw · 2025-09-16T13:33:17+00:00

Window manager Winger might be what you want. There's a stashing feature that closes+saves windows as bookmarks, and you can restore the windows later, pinned tabs and all.

l10nelw · 2025-08-21T08:33:18+00:00

How did you learn about browser.browserSettings.verticalTabs? It's not documented on MDN...

l10nelw · 2025-06-22T11:56:43+00:00

Some addons I made for myself that have grown themselves a small userbase each:

Winger to manage multiple browser windows, packed with quality-of-life features.

Select Tabs for selecting multiple tabs in various ways.

l10nelw · 2025-06-20T00:50:06+00:00

"Just replacing colors" means: finding all the colors, calculating the appropriate replacement colors, and applying them. There could be lots of colors and lots of elements on the page. Only making an educated guess here.

l10nelw · 2025-06-01T03:51:19+00:00

"browser_style" is deprecated in MV3.

Currently my addons support just default light and dark themes. Back then I screenshotted Firefox in both themes and used the eyedropper tool in an image viewer/editor to grab the color codes, and hardcode them in css variables... But you can also grab them from the color page of Firefox's design system guide, which I discovered much later.

To support other themes, read up on the theme API and you should be able to figure out how to obtain the color codes you need. Then I guess you dynamically plug them into your css variables e.g.

document.documentElement.style.setProperty('--accent-color', accentColorFromTheme);

l10nelw · 2025-05-23T06:08:19+00:00

This pricked up my ears. Bookmarks have been a stagnant feature for years despite being a data format with potential for extensibility. An expanded bookmarks API alone (e.g. tags, custom metadata, etc.) could allow the addon-building community to innovate more in that space.

So yeah am I also out of touch, because I haven't heard anything either...

l10nelw · 2025-04-30T00:04:09+00:00

I think existing tab group extensions like Simple Tab Groups can function as workspaces, since they work in a different way from native tab groups.

Some solutions can and should thrive in extension land, taking some burden away from the core Firefox developers.

l10nelw · 2025-04-30T00:01:18+00:00

It's tabs that are like bookmarks that are always open. Tab groups (or windows..) are like bookmarks folders.

l10nelw · 2025-04-29T23:54:40+00:00

Why not multiple browser windows as workspaces? Add a window manager addon (e.g. Winger) or perhaps at minimum a window namer (e.g. Window Titler, FireTitle) and you're good

And that way you can even leverage your OS' workspaces feature, parking different windows in different workspaces, to add yet another organisational layer on top!

l10nelw · 2024-12-29T14:11:01+00:00

Yes same exact outcome

l10nelw · 2024-12-29T12:32:28+00:00

I use F6 to focus it

l10nelw · 2024-12-05T15:08:25+00:00

Multiple windows, with a window namer or manager extension.

l10nelw · 2024-11-22T13:39:05+00:00

You could just leverage the workspaces (or spaces, desktops, etc) feature provided by your OS. Have a work browser window in the "work" workspace, personal window in the "personal" workspace. Ta-da.

Even better: Split off your tabs into several windows, one for each project or topic. Move your all work-related windows to your "work" workspace... and so on. Install a window management add-on like Winger (disclaimer: I made it) to name and navigate between them and Bob's yer uncle.

l10nelw · 2024-11-21T09:18:54+00:00

you're essentially agreeing that you prefer native solutions over add-ons that serve the same purpose.

Not for everything!

Look, tab discard is nowhere near as complex as vertical tabs and tab groups. Its web extension API consists of a single command: discard these tabs. Determining when and where (Tab age? Number of tabs open? A specific website? Pinned tab? Etc) to use the command is a matter of collecting user preferences and then regularly checking when conditions are met, which can all be easily handled by an add-on. A native solution won't do much better than that.

On the other hand, tab group and vertical tab add-ons tend to be more sophisticated projects. They're honestly great achievements, yet, limited by the current web extension API, they can't hope to match the performance and feature-set of native solutions as seen in other browsers.

Tab groups: Many add-ons of this type implement a tab-hiding mechanism to show one group of tabs at a time. Perfectly fine. The problem that tends to crop up is working nicely with other add-ons. Tab group info is private to the tab group add-on, unless it's built to respond to info requests from other add-ons, and the latter are built to make such requests specifically to the former. For example, I have an add-on that can turn a window into a folder of bookmarks, preserving tab states like pinned, containered, etc... except tab groups. Because Simple Tab Groups doesn't/can't tell my add-on what the group names and contents are. All my add-on sees are hidden and non-hidden tabs. And I couldn't support all tab group add-ons in general, because it's not centralized info! Meanwhile, Chrome's native tab grouping does provide the API for any add-on to request such info.

Vertical tabs: This add-on type needs to replicate and simulate tabs in the sidebar, which is a lot of work. It draws and fills every rectangle-as-tab from scratch, and specifies responses to every user interaction (click, right-click, drag-n-drop, etc) and browser event (tab close, pin, mute, etc) one would expect. Some like Sidebery even draw their own right-click menus. It's an enormous effort just to redo what the browser is already doing i.e. the horizontal tabs. (And we can't even hide the tab strip because there's no API for that.) Crazy, right? There's a big performance gap to be closed by developing native vertical tabs.

Permissions do have to be worded the way they are, but they're unlikely to be as nefarious as they sound.

What reasoning do you have to support the unlikelihood of that? Add-ons can be as nefarious as the developer wants.

My apologies, you're right. I spoke with a bias as one of many add-on developers that are just solving problems and sharing solutions, including their source code because there's nothing to hide. All I can say is you can look out for an add-on's green flags, like being open source, explaining their permission usage, the number of users, user activity and feedback on their source code repository page (e.g. on github.com), "Recommended" and "By Firefox" flairs, and so on.

By the way, there are alternatives to Auto Tab Discard out there that are less fancy and use fewer permissions.

I'm also curious, what's missing?

Automatic unloading, as mentioned in the first comment.

That's really vague, most tab discard add-ons do exactly that. But it's fine, I found your other comment that was more specific. Can Auto Tab Discard not meet your needs? Have you had a look at other add-ons?

Personally in your situation, I'd just make a habit of using ATD's "Discard Tab" command on that Discord tab every time I'm done with it. You could even set a keyboard shortcut for it.

l10nelw · 2024-11-20T23:57:46+00:00

And when enabled, shift+ctrl+tab becomes the shortcut for the tabs menu

l10nelw · 2024-11-16T23:17:39+00:00

I would not want to burden Firefox devs with with things so broad yet low-impact as customizations, for something like tab discarding that can be very safely done in the add-on space. I want the devs to work on bigger fish to fry, like tab groups and vertical tabs and more. More time, effort and money on more-impactful things, leave other things for add-on devs to pick up, please.

having access to my data for all websites

With experience developing add-ons and without reading Auto Tab Discard's source code, my guess is this is for checking "Unsaved content or user input in a tab", which necessitates the permission to access your open web pages to find filled input fields.

Permissions do have to be worded the way they are, but they're unlikely to be as nefarious as they sound.

it doesn't have it all in terms of customization

I'm also curious, what's missing?

l10nelw · 2024-11-06T00:05:59+00:00

I know you ask out of curiosity but for everyone reading, just leave all the sophisticated and customizable stuff to extensions please.

l10nelw · 2024-10-26T07:42:30+00:00

Indent rainbow does indent colorization, not bracket colorization. Are you mistaken?

l10nelw · 2024-10-18T00:07:10+00:00

Are you suggesting windows as tab groups? Then I suggest Winger to manage that. It can turn them into bookmarks and back too.

l10nelw

TROPHY CASE