Hi, I'm Seth Rosenblatt for CNET and in this How-To, I'm going to show you how to enable the core function of the BarTab add-on in Firefox 4 Beta 7 and beyond.
What is BarTab and why should you care?
BarTab is an add-on that prioritizes how the browser manages tabs in active memory.
If a tab hasn't been used in a long time, Firefox will dump it from the RAM while keeping the tab open.
It's kind of like turning off your car's engine without removing the key from the ignition.
When you click on the tab again, the page will refresh and become active.
To enable the BarTab tweak, go to your "about:config" in Firefox 4 and type in "browser.sessionstore.max_concurrent_tabs."
Double click on it and change the number to "0" then close "about:config" and restart your browser.
If you're only running a couple of tabs, you're not likely to see much difference, but if you run 20 or 30 at a time, the browser ought to feel much snappier and much more responsive.
You can still install the BarTab add-on to get more options, but now that the core action is built into the browser, you don't have to install an add-on to get this useful fix for the tab-addicted.
I wonder if that has a 12-step program, or maybe that's a 12-tab program.
Either way, for CNET, I'm Seth Rosenblatt.
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