ChromaTabs Plus

ChromaTabs Plus 2.2 screenshot

 
What Is It?

ChromaTabs Plus makes tabs more readily identifiable by tinting each tab a different color depending on the website loaded.   Colors can be chosen at random or marched to the site’s favicon.

 Please see the Mozilla Labs blog post for a more thorough discussion on the merits of colored tabs.

ChromaTabs Plus is an updated version of ChromaTabs 2.0 by Justin Dolske.

Install

• Addons.Mozilla.Org.  ChromaTabs Plus is currently pending review for “public” status.  Until then, it is currently in the “sandbox,”   where you can still download the extension. 

A Brief History
After the release of Firefox 3.0 in 2008, I had hoped that ChromaTabs would be brought over.  It wasn’t.  The original author had dropped support “due to differences in the way tabs are rendered.”  Fortunately, I was able t use code from Colorful Tabs which did work in Firefox 3 to bring ChromaTabs back from the brink of extinction.

Release Notes

• 2.2.0 – Released June 29, 2009
  • Works with Firefox 3.5
  • Option to use most frequent color in the tab icon to color a tab.  This typically leads to richer, bolder, less washed-out tab colors than taking the avarege.
  • Transparent Close Tab button
  • Colors the vertical splitter for users of Tree Style Tab
  

  Version 2.2 adds a transparent Close Tab button

• 2.1.0 – Initial Release.  Release July 4, 2008
  • Works with Firefox 3!
  • New feature: colors the bottom border of the tab bar to match the selected tab’s color.  Credit goes to ColorfulTabs extension for the original implementation of the aforementioned features.

Thank You

Credit where credit is due:

• Justin Dolske for creating the original ChromaTabs extension.  Colorizing is useful, but the favicon-matching feature is the real icing on the cake.
• This revision wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t stumbled upon the Colorful Tabs extension for Firefox 3.
• This guide on Lifehacker helped streamline my development process.

If You Like ChromaTabs Plus

You may also like the following Firefox-3-compatible tab extensions.

• HashColouredTabs.  For any site that’s missing a favicon, it generates a simple colored square with a different color for each site.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
• Tab Mix PlusGreat feature set for customizing tab appearance and behavior 
• Tab Preview. View a thumbnail of the page under a tab when you mouse over it.
• Tree Style Tab. Tabs group together like a tree.  Although it works best when the tab bar is moved to the side of the window, it is still usable with the tab bar in its normal location at the top.  Side note:This is a newer extension from the author of the now-abandoned Tab Browser Extensions (TBE).  I still miss the ability to color tabs as a group.  For example: If I was browsing Reddit, then clicked a link to open a tab, Reddit’s tab and the new tab would both change to the same color.  Subsequent tabs opened via Reddit or this new tab would take on the same color.