Showcase for Firefox (similar to Quick Tabs in Internet Explorer 7)

The Quick Tabs function in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 for short) is really useful and innovative. If you are the kind of person like me who uses tabs a lot, you will find the Quick Tabs function will save you a lot of time. Instead of checking which page has finished loading, you can see all of them at the same time But what if you mainly use Firefox as your web browser, does this means you have to go back to the old way of checking which tab has finished loading? Well, showcase for Firefox solves the problem! Showcase is like the Quick Tabs function in IE7, but even better (hope the IE team can improve Quick Tabs) It can dynamically change the size of the thumbnails (the small windows showing each of your web page) according to your screen size. It even have buttons on the thumbnails like Forwards, Backwards, Refresh and Stop! If you like the idea of Quick Tabs in IE7, and Firefox is your primary web browser, then you should give Showcase a try

P.S. Showcase didn’t pay me to write this, but I wouldn’t mind if they do I really liked the showcase extension, and I always recommend it to my friends.

Step 1. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/, type in showcase in the text box and press the Search button.

Step 2. Firefox Showcase should come up as the first result, just click on the link provided.

Step 3. Scroll down the page and click on the Install Now (green) button.

Step 4. After downloading the extension, Firefox will ask you whether you want to install it or not, just click on the Install Now button.

Step 5. When the installation has finished, click on the Restart Firefox button for the extension to take effect.

Step 6. After the Firefox restarts itself, you will be able to use the Showcase extension. But where is it? Right click on the Navigation Toolbar and click on Customise.

Step 7. The Customise Toolbar dialog box should come up shortly. Just scroll down the page until you found the showcase buttons.

Step 8. After you have found the Showcase button, drag and drop the Showcase Tab button (you can use others if you want) onto the Navigation Toolbar.

Drag and Drop: move your mouse pointer on top of the item (you want to move), hold down the left mouse button (and don’t let go), then move your mouse to the location where you want to put the item and release the button.

Step 9. You can drag the button to anywhere you want, here is where I like to put mine

Step 10. Click on the Done button to close the Customise Toolbar dialog box.

Step 11. Now if you open many tabs to load different web pages and wants to see all of them at the same time, just click on the Showcase Tab button at the Navigation Toolbar, this will let you see all of them at the same time (just like the Quick Tabs function in Internet Explorer 7).

Step 12. If you want to know more about Showcase, you can click on View -> Showcase. This will allow you to see all the keyboard shortcut keys for this extension; you can even click on the Showcase Options to customise Showcase to suite you better.