Episode: 2559
Title: HPR2559: My Favourite Browser extension
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2559/hpr2559.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:34:48

---

This is HPR Episode 2559 entitled My Favorite Router Extension.
It is hosted by MrX and in about 19 minutes long, and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is in this episode I cover my favorite router add-on.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Thank you very much for watching this episode of HPR15.com.
Hello and welcome Hacker Public Radio audience.
My name is MrX and welcome to this podcast.
I'd like to start by thanking the people at HPR for making this service available to us all.
They've really gone to a great deal of effort to streamline the service and make it very
easy to use.
HPR has a community led podcast provided by the community for the community.
That means you can contribute to any interesting hobby or any interesting topic you want
to cover with.
I'm sure we'd like to hear it.
Pick up a microphone and hit record and off you go.
Simple as that.
This episode came about because I was preparing some more another show in fact.
I was trying to work out how to submit pictures with my show.
I'm still not 100% sure how you do it but I've got an idea.
I've found information in the more information I think is a section of the giving shows.
But then at the bottom of that page there was a section called something like List of
Requested Shows and one of the shows I just glanced through last time I wasn't really looking
every single entry was your favourite browser extension.
This is my extension.
This is my show about my favourite browser extension because I've only got one.
It's just something I came across recently.
On Android I'm a bit lazy and I just seem to have fallen into using the Chrome browser.
And as this has done isn't Tim and the add-on I'm going to talk about isn't actually available
for Android which is a pity so that's just the way it is I guess.
However on Linux I use Firefox and in the past I've dabbled with various browser add-ons
but until very recently I've been using no browser add-ons on the desktop at all.
One of the browser add-ons I use in the past is called Tab Groups.
I eventually ended up being a main feature of the Mozilla.
I'm not sure which came first but I think it would perhaps it was originally a core feature of the
Mozilla Firefox browser but it was removed and I think the code was used to create the add-on
called Tab Groups.
As I'm concerned it was at the time it was a killer feature.
It allowed you to group whole pile of tabs together and then give it a name.
It was very useful because I tended to research things or whatever and have lots of tabs open
and get quite messy and it was just a handy way of grouping things together.
But the feature was removed from...
Originally the feature was removed from Firefox and eventually the add-on which kept
the thing working broke when Firefox of 57 changed something.
So that was the end of Tab Groups and that was it.
I just accepted this and it was probably a bit of a time that I didn't have as much time in my hands
to go looking and I didn't use the internet so much and I didn't tend to have as many tabs open
so it wasn't really a problem.
But a colleague at work, I know he also very much like Tab Groups and it's sort of bugged him
and he said here if you heard about this you've seen this add-on and it's called one tab.
There's probably I think there are a number of ways to do this.
There's different ways to scan a cab as people say.
And this is the one that he chose and I think I quite like it actually.
He wasn't so sure to start with but he suggested I give it a try.
So it's called one tab and you can find out about it at www.1-tab.com.
Obviously it's available from the Mozilla add-ons page as well.
It's available for both the Chrome browser and Firefox and there's no sign-up registration required.
If I just already look here I'll read some of the stuff from the web page.
So this is actually from the one tab web page.
Too many tabs can fit your tabs to a list and speed up Firefox.
So how it works.
Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs, click the one tab icon to convert all your tabs into a list.
When you need to access the tabs again you can either restore them individually or all at once.
Privacy.
We take your privacy seriously.
Your tab URLs are never transmitted or disclosed to either the one tab developers or any other party.
And icons for the tab your URL domains are generated by Google.
The only exception to this is if you intentionally click on our share as web page feature
that allows you to upload your list of tabs into a web page in order to share them with others.
Tabs are never shared unless you specifically use this share as a web page button.
How do you make money?
One tab is free of charge and is not designed to make money.
It was created because we badly needed it for our own use and we wanted to share it with the world.
So there's obviously more things here about it which I probably won't go into.
But yeah, so that's the loading of it basically.
So when you install it, how it actually works, the philosophy behind it is a wee bit different from tab groups.
I take my wee bit to get my head around it.
The thing about tab groups was that you invariably end up spending quite a bit of time laying out groups of tabs,
lining them all up, giving them names, then moving them a bit please.
I think the reason for this and it's just from memory is that tab groups had to keep all your groups and your tabs all in one screen.
So of course as your groups, the number of groups extended and expanded and the tabs and the groups extended and expanded,
you were forever making the groups smaller and smaller and they all scaled in it.
It got to the stage where it was just a big mess and you were continually trying to tidy the thing up.
But I mean, tab groups actually worked well enough but one tab is a bit different from that.
It's a philosophy suite bit different.
And it wasn't immediately obvious how you use a thing.
I thought anyway, maybe I'll just bring a wee bit of tech, I don't know.
Totally intuitive.
So when you install one tab, you're presented with a small blue icon button next to the options button.
At least that's what happens in Firefox.
And it's a bit like a funnel I would say, actually, it's like a mini-blue funnel.
And I think also a tab appears in your Firefox window titled one tab.
And that's really all you see that you've got one tab installed.
And the first thing that kind of struck me or wondered or worried about was,
what would tab if I closed the one tab tab?
Well, it doesn't really matter because you can get it back again.
Just by right-clicking on the one tab button, I was telling about selecting the one tab option.
And then another menu, sub menu appears, and it says display one tab.
And that brings a tab back again.
So if you close the tab, it doesn't matter.
I tend to leave the one tab tab open all the time.
So it's not in a way or anything like that.
So the basic, if you're using it basically in a basic way then,
let's say I give an example.
If you were planning a holiday and you might get to 20 tabs or something open,
you might be discovering for hotel accommodation and flights and hiring cars
and excursions you're going to do and whatnot.
So you end up with 20 or 30 tabs open and you think, ah, it's a bit messy.
And then of course, you can keep these, you can normally keep these tabs open.
And then you, next day, you're going to do something else and you've got all these 20 tabs open,
but you can't close them because you want to get back to them at a later date
to finish your booking your holiday.
So we get it really messy.
So basically, you've got these 20 tabs and what you do is, if you push,
if you just push the one tab button, then all these 20 tabs could disappear
and appear as individual itemized items.
Of course, we would be itemized items that itemize.
In the one tab tab, you've got a page in the one tab and each tab is represented by a small icon
and then the title of the tab sort of thing.
And then it'll say, it'll tell you the top of that group of tabs.
It'll tell you how many tabs is in that group.
So I would say 20 tabs.
And it's, you've got a created date and you can, there's links, say,
restore all, delete all.
Share as a web page and there's more features as well.
There's more link as well.
So that's the basic philosophy.
So then next day, you come to start your holidays and you restore all those important tabs.
Do your work and then at the end of it, you push the one tab button
and it drops them back into the one tab again, gets them out the way again.
And as you create more groups of things you're doing,
that group gradually drops down the list.
And it's just using a basic way like that.
You don't tend to do much moving about and to resize anything or this is nonsense.
It just keeps some more useful things at the top and things don't look from a while or lower down.
So it's quite neat from that respect.
You can also, you can either click on the left hand side.
There's a title which says the number of tabs.
You click next to that, a cursor appears and you can name that group.
You can also do it by clicking on the more link and that says,
what, name this tab group.
So you can name your groups.
So it makes it handy to see at glance what the group is about.
So I've got an HPR tab off and off.
And an HPR group I should say.
And it's got nine tabs on it.
And that's all very good and well.
What happens?
We'd be handy if there's one, say you've got one group that you want to keep at the top all the time,
because you're constantly referring to them.
It would be good if you could sort of lock them at the top.
I thought that locking it would do that.
But I'm not necessarily convinced it does.
So if you click the more link, there's an option that says,
lock this tab group.
And then if you click it, if you do that, then a padlock appears.
And if you click it again, it says unlock this tab group.
But it didn't seem to ask my tries.
I don't think that's actually worked.
Strangely what seemed to work is, let me just do this.
Oh, yes.
Starless tab group.
It seems if you use Starless tab group, it moves to the top.
I'm sure there's documentation on this.
So it's either Star or Lock.
One of these options allows you to keep it at the top, basically.
You can experiment with it and find out yourself.
And you can drag tabs from one group to the other.
Though I don't know if you can grab your tabs in Firefox itself and drop it into a group.
Maybe it can't do that.
I don't know if you can experiment with it.
But one thing I thought was, well, I don't necessarily want to restore all these tabs.
I've gotten a particular group.
And obviously you can click on one item and it boots up into the tabs on your browser.
That's all very good and well.
But then that means when you're finished, you've got to push the one tab button.
It drops into a brand new group.
And you've got to remove it from the brand new group into the group it was originally in.
So that's a bit of a faff.
But of course you don't actually need to do that.
What you can do is you can just kind of treat it when you think about it.
But I don't.
It's a cartoonist immediately.
You right click on it and you say, open link and you tab.
It's a standard Firefox option.
And you do that.
It's a brand new tab.
But it doesn't remove it from the group.
So that's quite handy for opening it up.
I'd hock tab and keeping your group intact.
There's lots of other things you can do.
If you go, I hope other tabs open.
You can send all tabs to one tab.
That's just like clicking a button basically.
And you get these from by right clicking on the one tab button on the toolbar.
And so send all tabs to one tab.
You've got send only this tab to one tab.
So that just picks one out.
Send all tabs except this tab to one tab.
That sends all the tabs except it was offices.
Send tabs on the left to one tab.
Send tabs on the right to one tab.
Send all tabs from all windows to one tab.
It's glued this website from one tab.
So there's a whole host of options just to fine tune it, you know.
But I don't know.
I just find it really.
It gets out the way.
I don't even relate to anything to think about it very much.
It doesn't seem to move about.
You don't need to constantly have to rejig it.
It just sits here just doing its thing.
It gets out the way.
And allows you to cope with large numbers of tabs.
It does exactly what it says in the tin.
It's not as an advert in the UK used to say.
So yeah, it's really excellent.
I would highly recommend it.
If you've got a lot of tabs, if you deal with a lot of tabs,
and find it a bit of a nuisance,
dealing with them, then I would do highly recommend one tab.
I'm sure there's other options out there,
but certainly I recommend this one.
Why don't you give it a go if you've got that seems a problem.
I don't want to think that's about it for this episode.
I have yak 21 far too much.
If you would contact me, you can contact me at MrX,
at hpratgooglemail.com.
That's MRX, AT,
HPR, the At symbol, googlemail.com.
So till next time,
thank you and goodbye.
.
