Firefox is a great alternative to Internet Explorer, but I have yet to fully switch to Firefox for a few reasons. My main complaint with Firefox was that it doesn't support saving your session, including all your opened tabs and windows. Ok, neither does Internet Explorer you are probably thinking - it doesn't have tabbed browsing (though IE 7 will). Well, that would be true except I use the free Avant Browser which uses the Internet Explorer 6.0 engine but adds tabbed browsing as well as session saving and it leverages IE's History and Favorites. So when I have to reboot my PC or Avante Browser crashes (which it does & usually when I Ctrl-F to search for something on the page) when I reload Avante Browser, all of my browser tabs I had open before will open automatically. The tabs are automatically saved when I exit or when Avante Browser crashes.
I use tabbed browsing quite extensively. It is not unusual for me to have 12 tabs open in Avante browser and another 12 tabs open in Firefox. The reason why I have 24 tabs is each one of these tabs is a "to do" item that only gets closed when I've completed the "to do". For instance, I may have web page open explaining how to solve a technical issue with MovableType I need to resolve, another web page open with contact information for a VoIP product I want to review, yet another web page open for a blog I want to read on my lunch break, etc.
I yearned to consolidate my browsing to just a single browser, but alas, Firefox just didn't have all the features I needed, and in particular saving my tabs when exiting Firefox. I usually have Firefox and Avante Browser open simultaneously throughout the day. I've wanted to switch entirely to Firefox, but like I said, it doesn't save your session. So if I want to reboot my PC for any reason, I have to either bookmark the 12 Firefox windows into a temporary bookmark folder and re-open them (tedious) or copy/paste the URLs into Avante Browser and let Avante remember where I was.
But I underestimated the loyal Firefox following! I found a few session saving plugins for Firefox and I settled on SessionSaver 0.2.1.025. I think when I last looked for a plugin like this several months ago, I couldn't find one, so I gave up. If you like, you can view the description of SessionSaver on Mozilla's site and download SessionSaver as well.
Might be time to make the full cut-over to Firefox. Now I just need to consolidate my IE/Avante favorites into Firefox and de-dupe. Although, I still have other Firefox complaints and I plan on writing a Firefox rant hopefully today or on the weekend.
Firefox Tabbed Browsing
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Firefox Tabbed Browsing TrackBack URL : http://blog.tmcnet.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2784
Tom Keating got me hooked on Avant Broswer over a year ago so when he writes about his thoughts on Firefox vs. Avant Browser in a post titled FireFox Tabbed Browsing, I had to read his thoughts on the topic.... Read More
I have decided I am better off staying with IE and not switching to Firefox (news) for good. I was thinking of switching for security reasons. .I already have tabbed browser access with Avant Browser so security seems the real... Read More
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And if you combine it with the extension called Scrapbook, you have an unbeatable combo!
Sessionsaver not only is great for saving the tabs you have open, but Scrapbook let's you save all the pages in the tabs locally for commentary.
Sessionsave has saved my butt more than once already!
Ultimately, the reason why power users like you switch to Firefox is that it creates an ecosystem where somebody, somewhere, has taken the trouble of solving a problem you have.
IE, on the other side, depends on the engineers who created it and maintain it alone.
Try Bookmarks->Bookmark this Page->Bookmark all tabs in a Folder. Probably not as clean as Avante, but it might a reasonable workaround for you.
>>Try Bookmarks->Bookmark this Page->Bookmark all tabs in a Folder
Thanks, I was trying to avoid having to do that since I would first have to save all my open tabs, close my Firefox browser, reboot, load Firefox, then the Bookmarks. Finally, after loading the Bookmarks I'd then have to go and delete the Bookmark folder.
Fortunately, the SessionSaver plugin is what I needed. It remembers all open tabs even when you exit Firefox -so when you reload Firefox, all the previous tabs are opened.
Firefox is looking better each day. Doing about 75% of my surfing with it now.
I am in total agreement with you.
I have been getting increasingly frustrated with Firefox and its extensions that don't live up to their claims.
You can clutter your hard drive with a slew of redundant Firefox extensions.
While trying to find an extension that would save all my opened tabs in a folder on my hard drive,and on the advice of others on the net, I downloaded Sessionsaver, then Magpie, then Scrapbook, only to find that they only saved my last browsing session. Basically these extensions were useless for what I wanted to do.
Firefox would benefit greatly if it streamlined its browser by clearing away redundancy and incorporating only unique features into its browser. Right now there are just too many cooks in the kitchen.
Time to try the Avant Browser. I don't think it can be any worse than what I'm getting with Firefox now.