Keeping TABS on Everything

When Internet Explorer dominated the browser wars, the user had to open a new window to see multiple websites in the same session. However, with the popularity of Mozilla Firefox and similar implementation of their concepts in Opera, Safari, and even IE7 onwards, tabs are here to stay. For those unfamiliar with the concept of tabs (I know of a few in the generation before me), each browser window can have multiple sites loaded and easily navigated between either on the tab menu bar on top of the website or by simply pressing and holding "ctrl" and "tab" (and "ctrl", "shift", and "tab" to navigate between tabs in the opposite order).

However, developers of Firefox add-ons (also known as extensions, plug-ins, etc.) have taken tabs another step further. With the tools I have found, I am able to monitor my Gmail, Google Voice, Google Calendar, and Google Reader while I browse the Internet and do my other activities on the computer. When a new email, text message, voicemail, or RSS article comes in, the tab's icon updates itself to reflect the number of unread items.

An example of my current set up in Firefox:

 As you can see in this screenshot, my Gmail tab is focused on.  If you're familiar with Firefox, you may notice that only my blog's tab is the normal size and the other four tabs are much smaller and have an orange tint to their background.  That is because there are add-ons installed that allows the tabs to become permanent tabs (as distinguished from regular tabs by the orange tint), so that they're always there even when I close my windows and restart Firefox and it doesn't close when I try to X out of them, and "faviconized" to shorten their tab size.  You might be able to notice a green numerical zero under the first tab, the Gmail tab.  That signifies that there are zero unread messages in my gmail account.  The following tab is for Google Voice, then Google Calendar, and finally Google Reader. Google Reader has this unread count functionality as well, as well as Google Voice.

If you're interested in setting this up, simply install all the extensions found here, compiled and partially written by Lifehacker's founding editor Gina Trapani:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/iconpermatabs

Install them in any order and ignore Firefox when it asks you to restart until you have installed all the add-ons.  Then go ahead and restart Firefox.  When you restart Firefox, you may notice some icons to be already tinted in orange.  To get rid of this, right click on the tab and go to "PermaTabs" -> "Permanent Tab".  That will let you close that tab.  Go to the websites that you want to keep an eye on, such as Gmail.  Once Gmail is fully loaded, repeat the same steps as you did to get rid of the orange tint. Then right click on the tab again and choose "Faviconize Tab" to make the tab as small as possible to clear up space on the tab menu bar.

Let me know if you have some issues or want the same functionality for Google Voice. I do not have an Apple computer to try this on, but this should also work on Mac OSX.  Don't take my word for it, so your mileage may vary.  Comment if it works in Mac OSX.

#tech