I've been using Windows 7 full-time since around December, and I particularly adore the new taskbar - turning the basic concept of it into a much more functional, easy to use, and aesthetically pleasing interface tool. See, I would always have tons and tons of programs open, and hardly make head or tail of what they were, so relying on established icons and sensible grouping of windows instead of long text strings for each program with a tiny icon is a GREAT idea, I think.

(I'm not going to get into whether it's a ripoff of the OSX dock. They are more similar than ever, but still different. I prefer 7's taskbar.)

Anyway, ever since I began using Firefox (back then, Firebird! Remember that?) I've had a problem with having waaay too many tabs in my internet browser for my own good. I still do. It gets really bad when I'm doing a report for school; I would easily have 40, 50, or more tabs open. It just gets out of control.

So after I had been using the Win7 taskbar for, gosh, maybe a week, I got an idea: why not make Firefox group tabs together JUST like that? Tons of sites already have memorable, recognizable favicons, so why not just use them?

I blogged about this (twice, actually) on a site that nobody ever read, and I would have just given up, but in case anybody is still reading, I've managed to use Stylish and an add-on called FaviconizeTab to create something similar to what I proposed nine months ago.



That's actually how many tabs I had open before I fairly innocently decided to take a screenshot and bring this up again. You know what? That's a real pain in the ass to manage when you have to scroll through like three lines to see them all. I know. Granted, right then I was searching for drivers for my new eeePC, but this is the kinda shit I do! I use a lot of tabs at once!

The FaviconizeTab add-on for Firefox will actually do pretty much just what that screenshot shows, especially if you set its filter to a * wildcard to make all tabs do that. You can specify specific sites, or just right-click a tab and faviconize it. Perhaps you consistently have the same six sites open - just faviconize 'em and make sure Firefox reloads your sessions!

If you want to "Windows-7-ize" them a bit (*cough* really just enlarge them *cough*), you can use Stylish with this code. I think I had to tweak the parameters slightly.

Granted, it doesn't really behave like a Windows 7 taskbar; it certainly doesn't group sites or tier them in any similar way, and it actually can be annoying when you have like four Destructoids open. But hey! It's helping me cope.

One step at a time...