Vertical Tabs in Firefox with Tree Style Tab

By Josh | April 21, 2008

Recently I wrote a post on how to make Firefox display the tab bar vertically so that it would benefit users with wide screens. However, since I started using Firefox 3 Beta 5 today I have noticed that the same method does not work. Luckily I have found an addon that does it for me, and gives a better look to it.

Tree Style Tab will create a sidebar on the left side of your browser. You could change this to be the right side, top, or bottom in the options. Now, it won’t install in Firefox 3 Beta 5 normally, but you can use the Nightly Tester Tools to force it to work. I tried it and so far it works perfectly.

One of the nice features about this addon is that it creates a tree-like structure for your tabs. That way you can tell which tabs are related to each other. Another very nice feature is that it gives you a way to hide your tab bar. If you would like more screen space, just click on the border and it will hide the tab bar. You can also hide a tree of tabs by clicking the arrow next to the top tab in that tree.

Many other features include closing a tree, collapsing or expanding all trees, and auto-hiding the tab bar. I really like the auto-hide feature. When you roll your mouse over the edge of the screen, the tab bar will pop up. The tab bar will then be semi-transparent so that it won’t push everything over. Now, of course you might have some trouble with it since it hasn’t really been made for Firefox 3 Beta 5 yet, but it is such a great addon that I recommend you give it a try.