Start Using Panorama

First you’ll need to open Firefox. What we’ve done is opened 12 websites all in different tabs. If you’re following along with this instruction, here are the 12 websites we chose for this how to:

GeekITDown, GeekITDown Blog, Twitter, Facebook, NHL, MLB, NFL, ESPN, Target, Newegg, Frys, Amazon

Once you have some of your favorite websites open or the twelve listed above you’re ready to get started. Keep in mind we chose twelve websites to provide clear understanding. You can choose as many or as few tabs as you like to use Panorama.

How to Group Tabs

Note: Since Firefox can be so readily customized, you may notice the browser colors, buttons or overall appearance is different than your typical Windows environment. The difference in appearance does not change the instructions for this How To.

1. Click the Panorama arrow icon in the upper right hand corner of the Firefox window, then click Tab Groups. You should now see a mostly blank window with all your tabs grouped into a smaller box.
2. Click the NHL.com tab and drag it into the open/blank area of the window. You should now see the NHL.com tab alone in the open area while the remaining 11 tabs are still grouped together.
3. Click the Panorama icon  in the upper right hand corner. Your NHL.com tab is now the focused tab and is the only tab listed on your Firefox tab bar.
4. Click the Panorama arrow icon again and you are returned to the previous screen.
5. Now, in the open area, click and drag your mouse to create another box.
6. Click the NHL.com tab and drag and drop it to the new box you just created.  Now click the MLB.com, NFL.com and ESPN.com tabs from the original box and drag them to the box you created with the NHL.com tab.
7. Now again, click the NHL.com tab or the Panorama icon and you will notice that all your sports tabs, which you just organized, are now open along the Firefox tab bar while the 8 remaining original tabs are still hidden. You have essentially organized your sport tabs into one group.
   
8. Now click the Panorama icon again to return to the grouping window.
9. You’ll notice at the top of each grouping box is a small pencil icon. If you click in that area, you can name each of your tab groups. So for our example, we name it Sports. Now when you focus on a tab in that grouping it will display the word Sports in the title bar before the name of the website you are viewing.

We repeat the process for our 4 retail websites to group them together.  We name our remaining group of 4 tabs to GeekITDown and after a little resizing and moving around we get 3 groups of 4 tabs, each organized by a genre or theme.  Anytime you want to focus on a particular grouping of tabs, simply click on a tab in that group box. If you need to return to the tab grouping window, simply click the Panorama icon.

Video for this How To: Watch on YouTube

We’ve put together a video of this How To for you to follow along with on our YouTube channel. Please be kind, it’s our first one!

Saving Tab Groups

Many of you are probably asking how to save the tab groups. Well, after a bit of testing it appears that the tab groups will save under the following condition, your Startup preferences must be set to ‘Show my windows and tabs from last time’.  If you are using Tab Mix Plus you’ll use Firefox’s built-in Session Restore feature. In terms of privacy, those tabs will always open for anyone who opens Firefox so if you don’t intend for everyone to see your tab groups than don’t save them in a Panorama.

Editorial Note on Privacy:  An ideal solution may be to have Firefox add a password or security feature to Profile Manager so that each user of Firefox can not only have their own Profile but can keep others out and their data private, thus eliminating a lot of the overwhelming concern for privacy with Panorama and previously posted App Tabs.

Your Thoughts

Are you using the Panorama feature to group tabs?  Is this Firefox feature more function or fun?  Let us know in the comments!

The post How to: Firefox Panorama / Group Tabs first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.

As a step towards a rapid-release process, where Mozilla introduces an update to Firefox roughly every three months, Firefox 5 was released today. While Mozilla’s rapid-release scheduling looks like a direct response to Google’s frequent updates to its Chrome browser, Mozilla’s efforts to maintain a steady pace of updates and releases is a positive step that all browser makers should contemplate.

So What’s New in Firefox 5?

As is typical with software updates, browsers in particular, several security fixes were applied as well as browser stability fixes.

Cosmetically, Firefox 5 looks nearly identical to version 4. We would expect any major appearance changes to be less frequent than say feature or security changes, so it’s no surprise the interface remains the same.

Features

Of the new features, we particularly like the App Tabs feature. In Firefox 5, you can pin favorite webapps that are some of your more regular destinations such as Facebook and Twitter. Mozilla App Tabs are remembered each time you start Firefox and are a great way to trim down the size of tabs and unclutter the tab bar.

Note: If your App Tabs aren’t saving, read the fix to Save Your Firefox App Tabs.

Another promising feature is Panorama. Panorama is the grouping of tabs in order to organize open tabs. For example, if you traditionally have a lot of tabs open at once but aren’t necessarily all on the same topic, you may wish to organize your tech tabs in a group and have them easily referenced from the ‘Tab Group’ you created. It takes a bit of getting used to but the feature shows promise.  You can get started with Panorama now by following our How To: Firefox Panorama / Group Tabs guide, with video.

Other features like increased support for HTML5 standards, the ‘switch to’ tab and the ‘Do Not Track’ option round out the features we feel are worth mentioning. The Do Not Track option is something that all Firefox users should seriously consider using and a feature that likely other browsers will need to mimic as users continue to demand better online privacy. The Do Not Track option allows users to opt out of online tracking from websites, but in Firefox 5 it is easier to locate and set.  The Switch to tab feature will appear under the awesome bar (address bar) when you begin to type out a web address that is already open in another tab.  By clicking the Switch to tab option, Firefox puts focus on that tab instead of opening a new one.

Parting Words

Last week we discussed the importance of Browser Safety through updates to ensure online security. At that time Google had just released its most recent stable version of Chrome. We stressed that all browsers should be kept up to date, including Internet Explorer which is now on version 9 (IE9). Now that Firefox has again updated, it’s the perfect time to make sure your browser is up to date or try a new one that is actively improving security.

Current Firefox users can update to version 5 by selecting Help → About Firefox. Full versions can be downloaded from the Mozilla website.

Your Thoughts

Which browser are you using?  Does the latest Firefox update make you more or less inclined to use it for your web browsing?  Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments section!

The post Firefox 5 Release and Features Overview first appeared on GeekITDown Computer Services & Technology Solutions.