The World’s Stupidest Productivity Tip: Open All in Tabs
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:
- Local weather
- Gmail
- Remember the Milk
- Remember the Milk weekly planner
- My internet usage quota from my ISP
- Google Reader
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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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.
i used to do that, but it made me to angry, it kept freezing up
I think my computer would have a heart attack if they were all opened at once.
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.
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! :)
@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.
Or you could try out the FireFox2 Plugin called Linkwad.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3263
You had me at Ctrl-T. I heart this shortcut alone. Many thanks!
Seriously, I feel 10% more productive now!
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.
that’s in firefox, by the way.
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.
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/
Very nice info..and even in the comments more ideas on how to personalize this method..great post and wonderful site!~
You could always install the firefox plugin Morning Coffee which will let you setup different tabs to open with one click or setup different tabs for each day of the week to open.
There us a firefox plugin called morning coffee that does this perfectly.
thanks
tnx a lot
I do the same thing in my FF :)
great sharing
I didn’t know that it’s possible to bookmark all tabs. Now I can easily organized all sites that I usually visit. Also, I need to avoid long list of bookmarks saved on my FF.