14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most appreciated new features in Firefox 4, or at least the most eye-catching, is Panorama, formerly known as Tab Candy. Besides looking rather snazzy, it is also a great way of managing a big number of tabs. And it's about to get even better with search.
"There are two modes people use for finding information: browsing and searching. Browsing is for when you don’t know exactly what you want to find, and search is for when you know exactly for what you are looking," Mozilla UI designer Aza Raskin wrote.
"Firefox Panorama (née Tab Candy) gives the best way to browse through your tabs and groups, but is lacking in search. We are working on fixing that," he said.
"Search is a feature where speed is the number one priority, so we’ve worked to have the visual aspects of search be lightening fast (almost no animation) and the entry method be instant (just start typing)," he added.
Firefox Panorama enables users to manage a huge number of tabs with ease by allowing them to group the tabs that are related.
This better organization means that you can focus on the tabs related to something you're researching at one point and then switch to your email client and some related online documents without closing any of the tabs and without being overwhelmed by their number.
But if you're looking for one particular tab, even if you known in which group it is, you're still going to need to move through each of them to get to it.
With a search feature integrated into Firefox Panorama, all you need to do is start typing and the tabs which contain your query are highlighted. You can then switch to the tab you're looking for.
This is similar to the "Switch to Tab" functionality introduced in Firefox 4. The search feature is not part of Panorama just yet, it's more a proof-of-concept for now. [via DownloadSquad]