Get a Firefox 3.7 feature early with Tab Progress Bar
If you're gung-ho about upcoming versions of Firefox, you can start testing some of their features via add-ons. Firefox 3.7 is slated to introduce a new look for the progress bar, relocating it to the top of each individual tab but you can enable the feature in current versions of the browser right now, with Tab Progress Bar. This neat little add-on won't cost you much disk space, weighing in at a miniscule 6kb.
A new-look progress bar sounds like frivolous decoration, but it serves a practical purpose, too. If you often load bunches of tabs at once, It's helpful to be able to see the progress of each page you're loading at a glance. With this new design, you won't even have to change tabs to know whether those huge videos are almost done loading. One minor quibble: I've found that Tab Progress Bar best used with a theme that doesn't highlight your current tab in blue, as the progress bar tends to blend in with blue tabs.
Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 will certainly have bigger and better things to offer, but Tab Progress Bar is one small slice of the future that you don't have to wait for.
[via Lifehacker]
A new-look progress bar sounds like frivolous decoration, but it serves a practical purpose, too. If you often load bunches of tabs at once, It's helpful to be able to see the progress of each page you're loading at a glance. With this new design, you won't even have to change tabs to know whether those huge videos are almost done loading. One minor quibble: I've found that Tab Progress Bar best used with a theme that doesn't highlight your current tab in blue, as the progress bar tends to blend in with blue tabs.
Firefox 3.7 and 4.0 will certainly have bigger and better things to offer, but Tab Progress Bar is one small slice of the future that you don't have to wait for.
[via Lifehacker]













Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsStormtrooprDaveNov 5th 2009 2:36PM
Had it for years in Tab Mix Plus
delphinus87Nov 5th 2009 2:42PM
really? I had loading bars in my browsers since the 90's, this should hardly be a new feature. I thought the reason browsers did away with them was because high speed connections made them sort of obsolete.
"you won't even have to change tabs to know whether those huge videos are almost done loading"
If most online videos are loading, the bar usually doesn't load with the video buffer anyways. Thats what the loading wheel is for I guess
I'm just not sure what the fuss about this feature is. If you still use Dial-up I suppose.
JaymoonNov 5th 2009 4:52PM
It makes sense for me to have it in the progress bar. I can't remember a time that I've had a tab loading in the background that I've needed to check the progress of. Dial up days are long gone.
If you want the progress in your address bar, try Fission:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1951
And here's the image I use that compliments any skin nicely:
http://i38.tinypic.com/10ef254.jpg
der_tuxmanNov 5th 2009 5:25PM
Another feature I don't actually want to be a part of the core..
BenjieNov 6th 2009 8:44AM
StormtrooprDave is right... Tab Mix Plus have already this one. Its got a lot of options too. You can change the color of the progress bar. I usually do red for the current tab... color yellow for the progress bar...
Saint SeminoleNov 6th 2009 11:44AM
"unless you're on dial-up"
What? I'm on hi-speed cable connection, and some pages still take a while to load. You know, those websites that have too much crap on their pages and not enough content? I try to not visit those pages, but sometimes it's necessary.
Fortunately, I use the add-on Fission, which puts the progress bar in the address (URL) field. Much better than a tiny strip on the tabs, at least for me.