ChromaTabs for colored Firefox tabs

December 12, 2007 / Filed under: Extension, Firefox

I've never been a huge fan of colored labels - it seems in most applications they add an obnoxious amount of color with a childish appearance (I'm thinking of the Finder in Mac OS X "Tiger"). Gmail did do it right, though.

ChromaTabs, a Firefox add-on, allows you to customize your Firefox tabs with random colors, or colors taken from hues in the sites' favicon.

Screenshot of ChromaTabs Firefox add-on

Since my favicon is primarily gray, an open tab (with ChromaTabs installed) would appear like this:

Screenshot of Firefox tabs

If the sites' favicon has too few, or too many colors, the distinction may not be as clear. (After all, how many colors can you fit into a 16x16 pixel image?)

I have to admit, I'm liking this idea despite my pessimism towards colored labels. Anything that aids in visually finding the tab you need, I'm all for. Since I always leave certain important tabs open at all times, the color stands out more than the <title> text, especially when the tab width becomes narrow.

Screenshot of Firefox tabs

Originally discovered at Lifehacker.

Comments/Mentions

# Warren at 1/30/2008 10:47 am cst

Tints browser tabs with a color specific to the website loaded. It can pick a random color automatically (based on the site's hostname), or it can pick a color based on the site's tab icon.

OK how do i choose between random color and color based on sites hostname ??