superT - my tabbed browsing extension

superT. tab browsing reloaded.

a tabbed browsing extension for Firefox and Flock!

It's a good replacement for many of the features of Tab Mix Plus, which doesn't work with Flock or the latest Firefox dev builds yet.

get it here: superT 0.7.8

See superT @ UMO/AMO for screenshots.
Also, if you want superT in more languages, please ask!

 

go here for the latest superT info: superT on mozillaZine forums

Main Features:
- Tab Clicking Options, Tab Bar Options
- Undo Close Tab, Duplicate Tab
- Tab Picker, New Tab Button
- Tab Overflow Menus, Multi-Row Tab Bar
- and more!

if you have superT 0.3.12.1 or higher installed, click 'find updates'.
hopefully it will say 'update now'. click it to automatically update to the latest version.

for the complete version history, see the detailed changelog.

To enable the 'No close buttons on each tab' hidden feature:
Add the following code either to userChrome.css, or, if you have Stylish, as a style:

Code:

@import "chrome://supert/content/noclosebuttons.css";

before installing superT, you should disable or uninstall the following extensions if you have them installed:
superT covers almost all of the features found in the following extensions and more!
- Tab Clicking Options, undoclosetab, FLST, Tabs Open Relative, minit, No Tab Close, Tab No X, and Too Many Tabs!

as of March 19, on AMO, my extension is the 91st most downloaded firefox extension out of the 1138 total!
not bad for starters

A Early Look at Cardinal

I’m posting this with the spiffy new Flock 0.7 browser, codenamed Cardinal. What a sweet name and what a sweet browser! Stay tuned for more on this social browsing revolution.

The Story of superT

If you want to skip to the actual creation of superT, jump to "The Creation of superT".

The Origins of superT

To make a long story short (well, shorter), once upon a time, there was me - high school student, tech enthusiast, and freelance web developer (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) - and my browser - IE6. But one day, I learned that there was this cool new browser called Firefox, so I decided to check it out. I installed Fx 1.0.4 and it was pretty cool in and of itself, but then I found out about this extension thing. So I went on an extension find-and-install frenzy and found Tab Mix. I thought Tab Mix was good, but then CPU came out with Tab Mix Plus (TMP), which was even better! And so, in my tabbed browsing world, all was well. That is, until the spiffy Flock browser came out with their much improved version 0.5.12…

The Creation of superT

Once I installed Flock 0.5.12, I set out to install TMP on it, but there was one hitch: TMP (0.3.0.4) didn’t actually work in this new version of Flock. Not even hacking install.rdf got it to work. So I had to recreate my tabbed browsing experience the hard way: one little extension at a time. Then I got an idea! Since I know JavaScript, CSS, and some XUL, why not create my own extension? And that’s exactly what I did! Thus, superT was born.

Thanks to CPU, I got the motivation to create superT. Thanks to all the people who made those little tabbed browsing extensions, bigger ones like TMP and superT exist. And thanks to Recall, development of superT hasn’t stopped, and it’s getting better every day.

I originally had planned to add a simple Session Restore feature to superT if I ever had time, but then I came across zeniko’s super awesome Session Manager extension, so I decided to leave that feature to the experts and installed Session Manager myself.

And that’s the story of superT. So far, anyway.

superT Changelog, etc.

Changelog:

To be updated when I have time…

0.3.5

• confirmed code for removal of close tab button on right of tab bar (no pref)
• temporarily removed useless close tab button pref
• changed ‘remove close tab buttons on each tab’ to optional hidden feature

To activate this hidden feature, add the following code either to userChrome.css, or, if you have Stylish, as a style:

@import “chrome://tabclicking/content/noclosebuttons.css”;

0.3.3

• added ‘remove close tab buttons on each tab’ feature
• added experimental close tab button code

0.3.2 - Feature Set 1 Complete

• bug fix for tab flip conflict
• added Drag and Drop Background Tabs to Feature List

0.3.1

• change pref names to be consistent
• make more strings localizable
• major code cleanup
• give credit to contributors in code where applicable
• add license

0.3

• major bug fix for tab bar clicking shortcuts
• - tab bar shortcuts should now work completely
• added some code from Too Many Tabs!
• - updated contributors list
• - added tab overflow menus feature
• - added tab picker feature
• - added set minimum tab width feature
• some more code cleanup
• added Features list to about window

0.2

• improved prefs window
• bug fixes for prefs window
• added pref to choose which undoclosetab function to use

(if it’s set to true, superT will use its built-in undoclosetab function; if it’s set to false, superT will use whatever undoclosetab function it finds, if there is one; for example, Session Manager has its own undoclosetab function)

0.1.1

• completed prefs window (prefs window now covers all features)
• fixed homepage link
• some code cleanup

0.1

• initial release

Known Issues

• Do NOT install both Tab Clicking Options and superT on the same profile! Uninstall Tab Clicking Options (if you have it) before installing superT. Their chrome addresses overlap with each other. This is because I used Tab Clicking Options as the codebase for superT. I’ll fix this when I have time. This is not really a major issue because superT includes all the features of Tab Clicking Options and more, so why would you need Tab Clicking Options when you have superT?

The overflow menu code that I borrowed from Too Many Tabs, written by Jomel, is very good but has this one little bug (I noticed the following minor issue a while ago back when I first added in superT 0.3 but didn’t found the cause of it until now):

When you have a lot of tabs open, everytime you open or close tabs or select different tabs, the overflow menu code recalculates which tabs should be visible and which tabs should be collapsed and put in the overflow menu.

There is a slight chance that the calculation is incorrect for some reason, and the wrong tab ends up collapsed, making it “disappear” from the tab bar. But it’s actually still there: you can still select the tab by scrolling the tab bar with the mouse wheel or using the Tab Picker to find it.

However, this can be quite an annoyance at times.

A temporary workaround to use if this ever happens is to disable Overflow Menus by clicking the drop-down menu of the Tab Picker and selecting “Disable” and then re-enabling it by selecting “Overflow Menus”.

Meanwhile, I assure you that I will be working on fixing this issue ASAP.

Future Features

• An icon for the extension - anybody want to make one?
• A feed to update superT - so ‘Update Now’ will appear when there’s a new release
• Localizations - not completely localizable yet, working on it,
• Session Restore - far in the future if at all
• What do you want to see in future versions?

Studio17’s Tech Blogcast, Vol. 1, No. 1

Flock releases version 0.5.12 of its next-generation “social” web browser.
It’s based on Firefox’s rendering engine and underlying code, but looks much cooler and has cool features, like the Flick topbar (you can view, add, and edit your pics), del.licio.us bookmark sharing support, Flickr pic uploading, built-in instant blogger, the “Shelf” that you can drag random interesting stuff to, and much more!

Songbird 0.1.1, a next-generation media player, has been released.
At first glance, it looks like a black iTunes, but it is so much more. It contains a built-in web browser (based on Firefox technology), it can play wma, mp3, ogg, m4a, wav files and more, even iTunes format media files! This development review is just a “proof-of-concept” and Songbird still has a long way to go, but it’s already looking and working great for a next-generation media player!

Camino 1.0 has been released!
A browser with “Mozilla power, Mac style.” Made by Mac users and for Mac users. Mac only. Have fun, Caleb

Mozilla releases Firefox 1.5.0.1, its next-generation web browser.
‘Nuff said.

And Google… is still being Google.
Click “And Google…” to see the cool logo doodles Google made for the 2006 Torino Olympics.

Stay tuned for the next edition of Studio17’s Tech Blogcast!

cheers/dfox