// Internet Duct Tape

The World’s Stupidest Productivity Tip: Open All in Tabs

Posted in Firefox and Greasemonkey, Increasing Productivity and Simplifying Your Life, Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, Technology by engtech on August 29th, 2008

Lifehacks and Productivity

Here’s a stupidly easy tip for web browsing that can be a real time saver. It works in Firefox or Internet Explorer (and maybe even Safari). The trick is to bookmark all of the websites you commonly visit as one group so that you can open them all at once when it comes time for your daily maintenance.

For me, the list is:

Step 1: Open your favorite sites in tabs

Keep using Ctrl-T or middle-click to open sites in a new tab until you have a list of all the sites you normally visit at the start of a day.

Step 2: Bookmark the open tabs as a group.

This is where the magic happens. Instead of individually saving the bookmarks, you save them as a group/folder so that you can open them all at once.

In Firefox, use Bookmarks >> Bookmark All Tabs (Ctrl-Shift-D)

Hot Tip: Save to group under Bookmarks Toolbar so that they’ll be accessible from your Firefox toolbar.

In Internet Explorer, use Favorites >> Add Tab Group to Favorites

Step 3: Organize your bookmarks

If you want to remove a link from your group (because Facebook is a timesink) then you can use the organize feature of your web browser to add or delete bookmarks, or to reorder them.

In Firefox, use Bookmarks >> Organize Boomarks (Ctrl-Shift-B)

In Internet Explorer, use Favorites >> Organize Favorites

Step 4: Opening the group all at once

In Firefox, you can navigate to your bookmarks using the toolbar or the Bookmarks drop-down menu (depending on where you saved them in step 2) and choose Open All in Tabs.

In Internet Explorer, it’s a bit more complicated.

  • Click on the Star (for favorites)
  • Click on the arrow beside the tab group you just created

After that’s all done, you’ve probably saved yourself a few minutes a day of having to switch between sites you check out very often. Because they all start loading at the same time, it’s pretty quick to jump between them and grab the information you need.

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14 Responses to 'The World’s Stupidest Productivity Tip: Open All in Tabs'

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  1. Eadwacer said, on August 30th, 2008 at

    At the risk of starting a religious war, Opera lets you bookmark into folders, and when you click on the folder one of the options is “open all”. Much faster, and it’s built-in. I have a “Morning Papers” folder, and a “Daily” folder (inside that are subfolders “Monday”, etc., ). one click and I’m on my way.

  2. myideasblog said, on August 30th, 2008 at

    i used to do that, but it made me to angry, it kept freezing up

  3. Jupiter said, on August 30th, 2008 at

    I think my computer would have a heart attack if they were all opened at once.

  4. Guy Rosen said, on August 31st, 2008 at

    This is a long-time favorite, although as many readers highlighted, Firefox will often decide to kill your computer if you open too many tabs at once.
    I combine this activity with the Tab Mix Plus add-on, which has a feature that highlights “unread” tabs that have finished loading. So you sit back, watch the tabs go nuts and then go visit them one by one when they’re done.

  5. Alice Teh said, on September 1st, 2008 at

    Ooooh! Thanks very much for the tips! I grouped four of my favourite websites (including my blog) and this tip is very handy. I do quite a bit of book reviews and by grouping Alibris.com, Amazon.com, and Facebook (I update my Visual Bookshelf on FB at the same time) together, I produce my post more efficiently. Thanks again! :)

  6. StijnDhaese said, on September 10th, 2008 at

    @Eadwacer and rest
    You forget that you can use Sessions in Opera.
    File -> Sessions -> Save Session en voila, all your tabes (and windows) are saved. Nice thing about it is that you chose to start with them. This is really handy for people who use allot of web based applications.

  7. David Ahlport said, on September 13th, 2008 at

    Or you could try out the FireFox2 Plugin called Linkwad.
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3263

  8. DaniGirl said, on September 16th, 2008 at

    You had me at Ctrl-T. I heart this shortcut alone. Many thanks!

  9. Albert said, on September 22nd, 2008 at

    Seriously, I feel 10% more productive now!

  10. Rav Casley Gera said, on September 22nd, 2008 at

    Don’t forget if it’s sites you look at really regularly, you can have multiple sites as your home page too. I just press home to open facebook, todoist and email all at once.

  11. Rav Casley Gera said, on September 22nd, 2008 at

    that’s in firefox, by the way.

  12. Allen97 said, on September 28th, 2008 at

    OMG I totally do this! I figured it out on my own when I foolishly thought I’d try to do one hour of internet a day. I had to do everything at once, right?

    I have a folder named “morning” that I open with my coffee. It’s got my bank, my library, my reader, my email, my news paper, and sundry other little things I have to keep track of.

  13. Domek said, on October 12th, 2008 at

    Jesus… If I have known this before, I’d totally have used it !
    What I do right now though, is Session Manager for Firefox. With that extension I can simply close Firefox and the tool will save all open tabs for me and reopen them upon next session. Very reliable even when something goes wrong.

    http://theanimeblizzard.com/

  14. mstrismusic said, on November 5th, 2008 at

    Very nice info..and even in the comments more ideas on how to personalize this method..great post and wonderful site!~

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