Aug 23, 2018 This is something I’ve really wanted for a long time, and finally I’ve decided to ask and see if anyone’s up to the task of making it reality. I want to have a “workspaces” feature in Firefox. That is, I want to be able to create named sets of windows and tabs and switch quickly between them. I work on a number of projects both personal and for work that involve a large number of. Workona is a better way to work in Chrome. We all work in the browser, but it was never built for work. We’re proud to be taking Workona out of beta this week to address the problem and we hope you enjoy the product!

When TechCrunch revealed a new Firefox feature back in 2010, Twitter erupted with thousands of tweets. What was so exciting?

It was called Firefox Panorama: a simple way to group tabs, so people didn’t have to deal with unrelated tabs in the same window. But despite the buzz, Firefox stopped supporting Panorama in 2016. Ever since then, Firefox users have been looking for another way to manage their tabs.

In this article we’ll break down what happened to Firefox Panorama and what can take its place (hint: Workona is an excellent choice).

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What was Firefox Panorama?

Firefox Panorama was a tab manager that provided a panoramic visual overview of your tabs and let you group your tabs by project. Let’s say you worked with multiple clients, and you wanted to separate and organize your work accordingly. You’d create a new tab group for each client, and all of your tabs related to that client would be organized there.

Panorama allowed Firefox users to easily move between different projects. And unlike typical project management tools, it impacted their workday in a huge way.

As Mozilla’s Asa Raskin wrote,

'When you are in a group, you only see the tabs related to the task at hand…allowing you to focus. Strategic hiding is key to a mind free of info-guilt.'

So what happened to Firefox Panorama?

Despite the increasing demand for better tab management, Firefox decided that Panorama wasn't widely used enough to warrant continued investment in the feature. By 2016, it was no longer supported. This left many Firefox users looking for an alternative solution to tame their tabs.

The best Firefox Panorama alternative: Workona

Luckily, Workona exists to fill the gap left by Panorama. It offers tab management that’s similar to Panorama, plus some new productivity features to squeeze more efficiency from your workday.

What former Panorama users like about Workona:

• Built for work
• Easy & intuitive
• Automatic backups & syncing
• Sharing & real-time collaboration
• Responsive support team

Workspaces are the most well-known Workona feature. These are folders that let you organize your work by project—similar to the Tab Group feature found in Panorama.

As Asa Rankin pointed out, strategically hiding the tabs and projects you don’t need right now is key to staying focused. That’s why by default, Workona displays only the contents of your current workspace. Don’t worry—you can still see your workspaces at a glance and easily switch between workspaces.

Within workspaces are your open tabs and saved resources. Think of resources as bookmarks: they help you save and organize docs and websites that are important to your project. If you don’t want to keep a certain tab open, just save it as a resource so you can come back to it later.

Workona Firefox Free

Panorama vs. Workona

When comparing Workona and Panorama, you’ll notice that Workona’s scope is much larger than Panorama’s. Panorama was a feature, while Workona is a full-featured app. So it includes:

• Better memory usage with built-in tab suspension. This helps your computer run smoothly as the tabs start stacking up.
• Shared workspaces. These come in handy if you work on a team or collaborate with other people, like clients or freelancers, on certain projects.
• The option to connect your work apps like Google Drive, Asana, and others.

Why Panorama is still relevant

While it seems like a simple feature from years past, Panorama did something big:

It showed that browsers weren’t built for work.

A decade later, that's still true. So if you need a better way to work in the browser, try Workona. It’s designed to transform your browser into a professional work tool, so you can finally feel organized.

Did your Firefox tabs disappear? Good news: we can most likely get them back. We tested these recovery methods recently, so you can rest assured they’re up to date. Once your heart rate is back to normal, we’ll also show you the easiest and most secure way to save your Firefox tabs so this doesn’t happen again — add Workona to Firefox and let it automatically save your tabs.

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The simplest way to restore tabs in Firefox (what to do if your Firefox tabs disappeared)

Click the Library menu in the top-right of Firefox > History > Recently Closed Tabs or Recently Closed Windows.

If that doesn't work, try this instead:

Click Open menu in Firefox (top-right menu) and select Library > History > Recently Closed Tabs or Recently Closed Windows.

If neither of those options work and you still need to restore your Firefox tabs:

Workona Firefox

Use this volunteer-created session history recovery tool at your own risk. You’ll grab your session history files from your Firefox profile, input them into the recovery tool, and export the URLs. Here’s how:

1. Click Open menu in Firefox (top-right menu) and select ? > Troubleshooting Information.
2. Type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter.
3. In your profile folder, double-click into the sessionstore-backups folder. Save all files here to a safe location, such as Documents or Desktop (you can go back and delete these once you’ve recovered your tabs).
4. Look for files with a .jsonlz4 or .baklz4 file extension. Upload those files to Session History Scrounger and follow the directions.

Use Workona to save and manage Firefox tabs

If you’ve lost your tabs, we suggest using Workona for one simple reason: it saves your tabs automatically. Other methods require you to click a button to save your tabs. Yes, it’s just one button—but if you forget, you could lose days or weeks of work, depending on how long you’ve had your tabs open.

Workona also allows you to organize your tabs into separate groups, called workspaces. This means you can stay organized while you work on all sorts of different projects.

Other methods for saving tabs in Firefox

You can use Firefox bookmarks to save tabs. Warning — this method is pretty clunky and requires you to manually save your tabs anytime you make a change. Here’s how:

Select Bookmark all tabs from the Bookmarks menu at the top of your browser. To bookmark tabs individually, use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + D (Mac) or Ctrl + D (Windows), or you can click the star icon in the Firefox address bar.

If you’re constantly closing your tabs by accident, be sure you keep this dialog checked (you’ll see it when you try to close Firefox with tabs open).

Workona Firefox Extension

If you don’t see this warning when you close Firefox, here’s how you can turn it on:

Workona Firefox Web

1. Click Open menu in Firefox (top-right menu).
2. Click Preferences.
3. Under General > Startup, check the box labeled Warn you when quitting the browser. You may also want to check Restore previous session.