A web browser plays a key role in our day-to-day work. Using your browser smartly and efficiently will go a long way to keep you productive. My earlier post talked about using bookmarks bar space efficiently to have the most frequently used Apps just a click away.

Let’s talk about (Chrome) browser tabs in this post. We often need to keep an eye on some dynamic phenomenon, online. This works perfectly fine as modern browsers allow opening several links into as many tabs. You could keep working in other tabs and occasionally peep into the one that you need to watch. But the problem is that we may accidentally close that tab or close the browser itself and realize it after it’s too late.

So if you want to let Chrome know that you are keeping an eye on a certain tab or want to not close a certain tab accidentally, you should “pin” that tab. You need to right-click on that tab and select “pin”. The tab then moves to the left side and loses the cross button and so no accidental closing. And if you close the browser and start again, along with a blank tab, you get all of your pinned tabs back. A tab remains pinned till you unpin it or close it with right-click menu.

You could keep certain tabs pinned perpetually if you require them always. Your favourite music site, radio site, email site, etc. could be good candidates to pin.

OK, that’s about pinning the tab, but let’s say if you close an unpinned tab accidentally and want to get it back, you could always go to Chrome’s history menu and select your last closed tab, or any of the recently closed ones. Well if you are asking me why should you go through all that pain and why not just start a tab by typing the link again, the answer is that Chrome gives you back exactly the same tab that you had lost. You will find the tab in the same state where it was and you could continue using the back and forward menu button to go across the entire history of that tab.

Aren’t the tabs in the browser quite powerful?

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