One of my favorite features in Opera is having the ability to cascade or tile your tabs, which is something that many browsers don’t support. That’s because Opera is built using a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) that allows for these operations to take place. Having this feature always allowed me to view to different websites side-by-side which I find to be extremely useful.
Now there is a new extension for Firefox that almost simulates being able to tile your tabs. It is called Split Browser and allows you to continuously split an open window into multiple frames until your heart is content. It’s kinda hard to explain but take a look at this screenshot (click on it to get the fullsize version that I took):
Hopefully that picture explains a lot. I started with the window in the bottom-right corner (it still uses the primary address bar and back/forward buttons at the top of the screen) and started to divide that up into different sections. You can manually resize each frame by dragging the divider in between the different sites. If you want access to the address bar or any of the forward/back buttons for the new frames just click on the bar above that website and it will switch from just having the title to offering you a little more control. This is what the red arrow is pointing to in the screenshot above.
To actually split a window you can do one of two things. The first option is to right-click in the window and select where you want the new frame to appear:
If that seems like too much of a hassle you can always hover your mouse near one of the sides of the window and a button will magically appear:
It’s really that easy. You can even go as far as to drag links toward one of the sides and drop it on one of the buttons that appears. Then the link will open in a new split frame.
This is still not as good as what Opera has to offer with the MDI functionality, but at least it is something. It is a brand new extension so don’t go expecting it to be all perfect quite yet. I didn’t experience any bugs in the few hours that I have been using it but I have a strong feeling that some extensions will conflict with this.
now this is something that should be in firefox 3.
i think that since firefox appeals to the more advanced user (but not just), it should help us see content side by side, and not just jump like idiots from one tab to another or open few browser windows and arrange them in tiles.
but i don’t recall seeing anything like that in the plans they have for 3. a damn shame.
Thank you very much. This is the icing on the cake and I’ve decided to definitely get another monitor.
finally! that´s one of opera´s features i´ve been absolutely missing in firefox. and i agree with jack: this should be in firefox 3.
While I agree with you guys that this should be in Firefox 3, it is really only a hack job so I don’t think it is something Mozilla would do. I would love to be able to cascade my tabs and tile them but that would really take a lot of effort on Mozilla’s behalf to code Firefox to work that way.
This frame implementation that the extension offers is nice but many users wouldn’t find it intuitive, and would probably complain about it more than they would be thankful for it.
i agree. after trying to use it, it was kind of hard to rearrange the tabs i opened, and it took me time to figure out how it works.
but regardless of that, i believe mozilla guys should check this option out, if they haven’t already, and see if and how they can implement it in the future. also because we will see more office 2.0 services popping up, and then the users will except to have some options to see documents side by side. either through the service, or through the browser.
kudos to Opera to already offering this.