Preview And Navigate Tabs in Firefox With Tab Scope Add On

Some Firefox add-ons provide cool or much needed functionality, while others just are addictive. One add-on in particular is Tab Scope.

Tab Scope enables real time preview of tabs as you mouse over each tab. Not only can you preview, you can also navigate (forward, backwards, reload and stop), scroll up and down or click on links directly in the preview pop up window.

Once you have installed Tab Scope and restarted Firefox, just mouse over on any tab and the preview pop up window will appear.

At first, the preview pop up may seem small. To make the window larger click on the magnifying glass in the little toolbar area (red arrow in above screen shot).

Just like a web page in the browser main window, you can navigate around, click on links and buttons, go back and forward, etc. To scroll up and down, you need to have a mouse with a wheel. So far this is the only drawback I have found with Tab Scope.

Now that you have become addicted with viewing web pages in the preview windows. You can also make configuration changes to set the delay for when the preview pop up window appears and the size of the preview window.

Just go to Tools \ Add-ons from the menu, and on the Tab Scope add-on, click the Options button.

And the Tab Scope Options window will display.

For my settings, setting the "Wait time to show popup" at 650 milliseconds works best if you mouse over a tab by accident, with out the preview window always appearing. It also make sense to check the box "Disable for current tab". No need to have preview enable for the current tab you are viewing.

For the Preview Size settings, you will need to test different values to see what works best for you. When finished with the configuration, just click OK and enjoy!