Reviews for All Tabs Helper
All Tabs Helper by Kevin Jones
Review by Netcomm
Rated 2 out of 5
by Netcomm, 7 years agoIt doesn't work AT ALL as it claims, which is ironic given that it makes very few actual claims to what it's supposed to do. The author repeatedly refers people to his website from the add-on page, the welcome/updates window, the add-on options page, yet NO webpage exists! 404 Error with every single link, and the homepage is no help, and neither is the "/alltabshelper/" directory root!
This thing claims to move tabs, it technically CAN do this, but you need to do a weird clunky ctrl+click to select the rows, and then right click and select "Move Here" to move the tabs, there is no drag & drop. You might as well just grab and slide the tabs at that point (TIP: Other browsers let you ctrl+click the tabs directly for moves like this)!
[EDIT: You CAN Drag & Drop if you do the clunky ctrl+click first on the row, as if you're about to select multiple rows even if you only plan to move a single tab.]
Contrary to what you might expect you CANNOT move tabs between windows, which is where the majority of tab moving usefulness would have been for me. There also doesn't seem to be any way to handle "loading" of new tabs, which is the main reason I installed this. I wanted to be able to take my exported tab URLs and load them back up when desired. Along these lines, where it says this add-on handles "unloading" of tabs, what it actually seems to mean is it offers the ability to suspend tabs, which is a fair bit more tricky to manage than simply saving the tab info and actually unloading/closing the tabs. Also the Search function seems to be sort of messed up in a strange way. It works if you have the "all" view selected, but if you click the "search" view it gets really weird. I have a tab open in the same window in which I'm attempting to search, the tab is titled "Dynamic Periodic Table" yet when I go to type my search criteria (which incidentally says beneath the textbox "Please enter 3 or more characters"), I type the first TWO (2) characters "Dy" and I can see the tab I'm looking for pop up into the search results, yet when I keep typing to reach the 3 character minimum ("Dyn") ALL search results disappear completely. Finishing off the first word, or the entire title doesn't help. There also doesn't seem to be any way to pull the tabs history. Also since i'm mid-review, it dawned on me I hadn't recalled seeing any duplicates listed, even when there should have been, so I went back and tested. Apparently there's a strange bug with updated the list of tabs in the sidebar. I had created a New Tab, then copy/pasted the same URL of another tab, the page loaded, yet it wasn't listed in the "dups" tab of the Sidebar, perhaps it needs to be reloaded to pick up new tabs? That's not good design at all (Note: It DOES show up in the Button -> pop-up "All Tabs Helper" window). In the sidebar it seems to sit there thinking it's still just a "New Tab", which accidentally caused another issue, prior to realizing this I closed (from the sidebar) what I perceived to be an unused "New Tab" tab, yet in actuality it was a fully loaded & rendered webpage. Misreporting tab names can lead to SERIOUS issues!
So of the short list of SEVEN features it lists: Moving, Loading, Unloading, Search, View Tab History, Find Duplicates, & Closing Tabs; All SEVEN either don't work at all, or have some serious implementation issues that need to be worked out before people should feel comfortable installing this add-on (OK, only SIX if "Suspending" is equivalent to "Unloading" for your Use Case(s)).
The Good News is this add-on can easily redeem itself. It just needs to first fix the website so the documentation can be accessed again, and it should further define exactly what it does on the actual Add-On page. I assume I would have been better prepared for the current state of the add-on had the site been up. Also, it REALLY should have the ability to move tabs between windows, as well as check for duplicates & be able to search through ALL TABS in ALL WINDOWS... If it's still possible to do so, I know they've been cutting off Extension and Add-On dev's abilities to access certain APIs for security and privacy reasons. However, one thing that CAN be fixed still is implementing better click to drag & drop support, you should be able to go in, click and hold an item, and drag it down/up. Also, if the Sidebar is causing so many issues, you may be better off sticking with just the pop-up for newer browsers, at least then you'll know the tabs will always be up to date, which fixes the dups/close issues.
I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any fixes & updates posted for this add-on, or feel free to author respond to this review, and I will make sure to upgrade the review rating to what I know this add-on will eventually deserve.
// Running Win 7 Ultimate, with Firefox Quantum v.61.0.2 (64-bit)
PS- Since the website isn't available for suggestions, I'll mention here. I arrived at this add-on while looking for a single add-on solution that could *BOTH* [1] Export a list of URLs (optionally with Titles) for ALL tabs in either the current Window or ALL Windows (Export could just mean listing in a TextArea box), and ALSO [2] Take a List of URLs and Open all the URLs in various tabs (optionally with Lazy Load to only ACTUALLY load the site once the tab has focus). There are separate add-ons that do one or the other, but have not been able to find one that does both strangely. I think this feature would fit in well with All Tabs Helper.
This thing claims to move tabs, it technically CAN do this, but you need to do a weird clunky ctrl+click to select the rows, and then right click and select "Move Here" to move the tabs, there is no drag & drop. You might as well just grab and slide the tabs at that point (TIP: Other browsers let you ctrl+click the tabs directly for moves like this)!
[EDIT: You CAN Drag & Drop if you do the clunky ctrl+click first on the row, as if you're about to select multiple rows even if you only plan to move a single tab.]
Contrary to what you might expect you CANNOT move tabs between windows, which is where the majority of tab moving usefulness would have been for me. There also doesn't seem to be any way to handle "loading" of new tabs, which is the main reason I installed this. I wanted to be able to take my exported tab URLs and load them back up when desired. Along these lines, where it says this add-on handles "unloading" of tabs, what it actually seems to mean is it offers the ability to suspend tabs, which is a fair bit more tricky to manage than simply saving the tab info and actually unloading/closing the tabs. Also the Search function seems to be sort of messed up in a strange way. It works if you have the "all" view selected, but if you click the "search" view it gets really weird. I have a tab open in the same window in which I'm attempting to search, the tab is titled "Dynamic Periodic Table" yet when I go to type my search criteria (which incidentally says beneath the textbox "Please enter 3 or more characters"), I type the first TWO (2) characters "Dy" and I can see the tab I'm looking for pop up into the search results, yet when I keep typing to reach the 3 character minimum ("Dyn") ALL search results disappear completely. Finishing off the first word, or the entire title doesn't help. There also doesn't seem to be any way to pull the tabs history. Also since i'm mid-review, it dawned on me I hadn't recalled seeing any duplicates listed, even when there should have been, so I went back and tested. Apparently there's a strange bug with updated the list of tabs in the sidebar. I had created a New Tab, then copy/pasted the same URL of another tab, the page loaded, yet it wasn't listed in the "dups" tab of the Sidebar, perhaps it needs to be reloaded to pick up new tabs? That's not good design at all (Note: It DOES show up in the Button -> pop-up "All Tabs Helper" window). In the sidebar it seems to sit there thinking it's still just a "New Tab", which accidentally caused another issue, prior to realizing this I closed (from the sidebar) what I perceived to be an unused "New Tab" tab, yet in actuality it was a fully loaded & rendered webpage. Misreporting tab names can lead to SERIOUS issues!
So of the short list of SEVEN features it lists: Moving, Loading, Unloading, Search, View Tab History, Find Duplicates, & Closing Tabs; All SEVEN either don't work at all, or have some serious implementation issues that need to be worked out before people should feel comfortable installing this add-on (OK, only SIX if "Suspending" is equivalent to "Unloading" for your Use Case(s)).
The Good News is this add-on can easily redeem itself. It just needs to first fix the website so the documentation can be accessed again, and it should further define exactly what it does on the actual Add-On page. I assume I would have been better prepared for the current state of the add-on had the site been up. Also, it REALLY should have the ability to move tabs between windows, as well as check for duplicates & be able to search through ALL TABS in ALL WINDOWS... If it's still possible to do so, I know they've been cutting off Extension and Add-On dev's abilities to access certain APIs for security and privacy reasons. However, one thing that CAN be fixed still is implementing better click to drag & drop support, you should be able to go in, click and hold an item, and drag it down/up. Also, if the Sidebar is causing so many issues, you may be better off sticking with just the pop-up for newer browsers, at least then you'll know the tabs will always be up to date, which fixes the dups/close issues.
I'll be sure to keep an eye out for any fixes & updates posted for this add-on, or feel free to author respond to this review, and I will make sure to upgrade the review rating to what I know this add-on will eventually deserve.
// Running Win 7 Ultimate, with Firefox Quantum v.61.0.2 (64-bit)
PS- Since the website isn't available for suggestions, I'll mention here. I arrived at this add-on while looking for a single add-on solution that could *BOTH* [1] Export a list of URLs (optionally with Titles) for ALL tabs in either the current Window or ALL Windows (Export could just mean listing in a TextArea box), and ALSO [2] Take a List of URLs and Open all the URLs in various tabs (optionally with Lazy Load to only ACTUALLY load the site once the tab has focus). There are separate add-ons that do one or the other, but have not been able to find one that does both strangely. I think this feature would fit in well with All Tabs Helper.
Developer response
posted 7 years agoThe information on the website was dated, so it has been removed. I have removed all references to the website. Sorry for the confusion. I have updated with more screenshots and descriptions which in themselves give a pretty good introduction on how to use ATH. I have also updated the addon information with a support email link.
I'm sorry your experience with ATH has been unpleasant for you. It does seem like some of your problem with ATH however is that you are looking for something other than what is offered. I am sorry if ATH does not offer the features you were looking for, but I have no intention on offering those things as that is not the scope intended.
The search feature seems to work fine and I have had no other complaints. The __awful__ experience you have moving tabs seems a bit overstated. ATH does move tabs between windows btw, and the instructions for that are now in the screen shots. But I have no intention of cross-window support any more than that.
Yes, "suspending" == "unloading", and more actually. While Chrome "unloading" unloads the web content of a tab, Firefox's implementation not only does that, but reduces the tab to a very basic state requiring about 1/10th the resources. This is why the term "suspending" is a bit more descriptive in Firefox's implementation, however you'll find both terms used interchangeably even in Firefox parlance.
There is a caveat regarding dup (duplicate) tabs: dup tabs are determined when both the title and url are the same. Due to some pages rendering different content based on either internal frequent updates or post data sent by the user, it is possible two tabs listed as dups may have different content. I have also updated the screen shots with this caveat. Although this seems to be the opposite of the issue you are describing.
I have gone over your objections and as far as I can see, ATH does do all that it claims, and without "serious implementation issues". I wonder if this is a case of a user eager to pop off a review rather than giving it time to get familiar with the territory and understand the customs. ATH is after all, a fairly comprehensive tool. I am probably partly to blame in this for not providing a better primer to help the user get acquainted. Hopefully the updated slide show and descriptions will better prepare users in the future.
Thanks for your input and for prompting me to address some of the issues on my end.
I'm sorry your experience with ATH has been unpleasant for you. It does seem like some of your problem with ATH however is that you are looking for something other than what is offered. I am sorry if ATH does not offer the features you were looking for, but I have no intention on offering those things as that is not the scope intended.
The search feature seems to work fine and I have had no other complaints. The __awful__ experience you have moving tabs seems a bit overstated. ATH does move tabs between windows btw, and the instructions for that are now in the screen shots. But I have no intention of cross-window support any more than that.
Yes, "suspending" == "unloading", and more actually. While Chrome "unloading" unloads the web content of a tab, Firefox's implementation not only does that, but reduces the tab to a very basic state requiring about 1/10th the resources. This is why the term "suspending" is a bit more descriptive in Firefox's implementation, however you'll find both terms used interchangeably even in Firefox parlance.
There is a caveat regarding dup (duplicate) tabs: dup tabs are determined when both the title and url are the same. Due to some pages rendering different content based on either internal frequent updates or post data sent by the user, it is possible two tabs listed as dups may have different content. I have also updated the screen shots with this caveat. Although this seems to be the opposite of the issue you are describing.
I have gone over your objections and as far as I can see, ATH does do all that it claims, and without "serious implementation issues". I wonder if this is a case of a user eager to pop off a review rather than giving it time to get familiar with the territory and understand the customs. ATH is after all, a fairly comprehensive tool. I am probably partly to blame in this for not providing a better primer to help the user get acquainted. Hopefully the updated slide show and descriptions will better prepare users in the future.
Thanks for your input and for prompting me to address some of the issues on my end.
163 reviews
- Rated 4 out of 5by Ah3man, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Bogdan, 4 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 12489259, 8 months agoExcellent!
Not perfect but very powerful.
Having now 1300+ tabs, and trying to clean up,
I could close dups much easily than before.
Some caveats thought:
1) compatibility with Sidebery (groups are seen as duplicates)
2) containers handling (because of Sidebery ?) are not recognized
3) it took me a while to understand that the numbers in brackets where refeering to a window id. I am using Window Tiler to given them a name.
A documentation would help. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18159242, 10 months agoThis was my go to tab manager since I have hundreds of tabs open and I'm afraid to simply close all of them, but also lazy to review them one by one.
- Rated 5 out of 5by shrrrk, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by vboerchers, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by rasul, 2 years agoPlease add menu or button to close all tabs with the same domain or the same filter string. Really cicking "x" one by one is boring and takes long when I have >2k tabs open
- Rated 5 out of 5by JohnBJ, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Ahmed, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Victor, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Geralt, 3 years agoI use this addons lot of time and it is very usefully when someone like to have open lot of tabs.
But discover bug. When try use "Full View window" then have a new window on windows bar but this option dont show to me window.
Few weeks ago this work ok. - Rated 5 out of 5by Grant, 3 years ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 13468441, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by SpankyPants, 3 years agoWhen scrolling through tabs, it scrolls more than one page at a time. How can I change this to only scroll one or three lines at a time? Thanks.
- Rated 5 out of 5by hacKim, 3 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Brundibar, 3 years agoOnce you try this tool you think OMG how could I live without it ?!
I appreciate mainly saving my time and preventing from opening duplicate tabs. Thank you Kevin ! - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 17221071, 4 years ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by I_I, 4 years agoSO it places All tabs to a Side Window List. Too Bad doesn't Separate which tabs are in different window. IT SHOWS ALL TABS IN THE SIDE BAR.
Can't see the list of Closed Tabs & can't Remove the Close TAB button from accidental select. - Rated 5 out of 5by JustforComment, 4 years agoI made an account just to review this and say thank you. I saw you got a lot of negative bustle from some people. Just wanted to let you know I love this and use it often.
If I had one request, if you are still active with this project, is to allow the Full View to drop back like any other window. Small thing and personal to me I am sure lol.
Again thank you this is amazing. - Rated 4 out of 5by Firefox user 16979356, 4 years agoIt works more stable than tree tab viewers.
But for several thousand tabs there is a few seconds delay even for several recent tabs.
Also, for sidebar mouse wheel minimum move scrolls several pages instead of only one page. - Rated 5 out of 5by circcc, 4 years agoThe faster it boils, the faster it cools. There were too many useless features, and it seems like burnout came in the end. I've seen many cases like this.
- Rated 5 out of 5by bLoodyBios, 4 years agoMust have! Really helpfull!
idea: when you open helper in separated window, it will be perfect, if focus will be in search input, so you can start typing immideately - Rated 5 out of 5by admin-cwp-md, 4 years agoThis extension is indispensable. I use it everyday all day long and require it to keep my work organized. There is no other extension that works this well, is this reliable and provides this exceptional capability. Use it and you will see the same.
- Rated 5 out of 5by teasu, 4 years agoI have been using this addon for quite sometime now, and love it so so much. I would be totally lost in all the sea of tabs I keep opening without this.
It has almost everything needed to manage hundreds and even thousands of tabs. The one other thing I would love to see is an indicator showing which tabs are currently playing audio, kinda like with the native firefox drop down list of tabs. Still, an amazingly feature rich and useful addon. Thank you so much.