Browsing through several tabs within a browser can get tedious and confusing at times, especially when you’re skimming through tons of information from different web pages. If you use Firefox, the Tab History Menu add-on can help you see tab history with barely a click of the mouse.
After installing the add-on, when hovering the mouse pointer over a tab, you’ll immediately notice a drop-down list of recently visited sites. The list is in descending order, with the most recently visited page on top.
Although Firefox has its own way of showing you the browser’s history details, this add-on makes the task a lot more simpler and accessible. This eliminates the need for going to the browser’s “History” page in the menu bar.
To view a tab’s history, simply point the mouse on the tab. The drop-down list should appear and disappear when you move the mouse away from the tab. If a tab doesn’t have history yet, the list displays the title of the current tab’s web page.
This can be disabled from the add-on’s “Options” page. To go there, click on the Firefox bar on the browser’s top-left corner and click on “Add-ons.”
Find “Tab History Menu” on the list and click on it. Go to “Options” and uncheck the box beside “Display current page title in history menu”.
To open a previously visited website, simply hover the mouse over the tab and click the link from the list. You should be able to view the page on the current tab.
Note that the contextual menu (right-clicking the mouse) does not work when clicking on links from the tab history’s drop down list. The only way the links open is by using the current tab.
You can navigate between previously visited pages from the tab list. The current page is indicated by the dot on the left side of the page’s title. A left and right arrow serves as the usual “back” and “forward” controls that is seen in most browsers.
The add-on also saves visited links within a page. For instance, if a page has a table of contents to jump to certain parts within the same page, then the add-on remembers this as a separate history item despite the fact that the links are on the same page.
In the example below, the Wikipedia page for Dreamsong has several jump links, and these are all listed on the tab history drop down. However, this might be confusing because only the page’s title appears on the list. In the example below, the list shows the same title page several times, but does not indicate what part of the page it leads to.
Tab History Menu is great for lengthy and detailed browsing sessions, most of which apply to research and document-writing tasks. While bookmarking tools can assure that a user won’t ever lose a webpage, this add-on takes that guarantee even further by providing a more accessible way of coming back (or forward) to previously visited sites.
How do you keep track of a tab’s history? Do you know of any other tools to accomplish this? Let us know in the comments below.
Kim is a freelance tech writer who loves to explore mobile and web applications.Visit her blog, Kim The Writer, where she gives freelance writing advice.
Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox
