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How to hide multiple rows of tabs in Tab Mix Plus

One interesting feature of the excellent Firefox add-on Tab Mix Plus is the ability to display tabs in multiple rows on the screen. The benefit of doing so is that tabs remain visible on the screen making it easier to keep an overview and select the ones you want to activate.

With the advantage comes the disadvantage that additional tab rows take up vertical space in the browser. This may be a trade-off that you are willed to make, but sometimes, you may prefer to hide all tab rows instead to increase vertical space available in the web browser for the active website or application.

While you can configure Tab Mix Plus to always hide the Tab Bar in Firefox, there does not seem to be an option to display it again when needed.

The solutions that you find in the Firefox add-on store work only for single tab rows and not multiple rows. Hide Tabbar for instance is an excellent add-on that adds options to Firefox to hide the tabbar manually or even automatically.

toggle tabbar

tabbar hidden

Tab Mix Plus users who want to hide all open tab bars in the Firefox web browser can use one of two custom buttons created for this.

These buttons were created on the Tab Mix Plus forum on user request. Before you head over to the page they have been posted on, you need to be aware that you need to install the Firefox add-on Custom Buttons to add support for these type of buttons to the web browser.

Once installed you can head over to the Custom Buttons website to click on one of the two custom button links to add either one or even both to Firefox.

Both buttons are displayed as links using the custom button protocol which Firefox supports after the installation of the Custom Buttons extension.

They differ in the following way:

  1. Toggle Taskbar (will show tabbar when a new tab opens)
  2. Toggle Taskbar (will stay hidden even when a new tab opens).

The first shows the tabbar when a new tab gets opened, the second only when you activate the button. It should be clear that you should not place the second button on the tabbar itself.

A click displays a prompt to add the button to Firefox. It is not displayed in the UI by default. Click on the menu icon and then customize to drag and drop it to a location on a visible toolbar. 

 

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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