Comments on: HideTab lets you cloak embarrassing tabs quickly

The latest version of Firefox has many useful privacy features, but none of them gives you a "panic button" for when someone sees you looking at something you shouldn't be looking at. This extension fixes that.

[Mergatroid Mania]

This is pretty dumb on the part of the Mozilla people. If I were an employer, I would have to forbid Fire Fox from being installed on any of the computers in my business because I know they can be used to lie to your boss about what you have been doing on company time.

Cleaning up after you leave is one thing, hiding what you're doing if your boss comes by (or if your parents come by) is not acceptable.

Are they trying to lose market share?

[Josh.Lowensohn]

This is a third party developer add-on. It's not an official Firefox feature.

[diegoratt]

That is the magic of Firefox. There are tool for everything you can imagine. I developed this tool to hide whatever you have to hide no matter how compromising is. I hope you all enjoy it.

[unknown unknown]

Oh please, any IT person worth his pay check is going to have much better ways of keeping track of employee surfing than visual inspection of browser tabs. For example, even routers for home use have built in logging functionality that will show where people have been. Even a small mom and pop business can come up with something robust enough that this add on isn't an issue. I doubt they're going to loose anything significant over this of all things. As for forbidding Firefox, private browsing mode aka "porn mode" has been added to the major browsers now in some form. Jst adding a hot key to the show desktop feature in windows or hitting alt + f4 will accomplish the same thing.

[10092]

You clearly don't know what your talking about. such people shouldn't be in charge of anything. specially software.

[cabrillo24]

The law basically allows for companies to monitor workers computer usage via a technical solution. If you were an employer and solely utilizing an employee doing some "shoulder surfing" to enforce company policy, then you'd in big trouble. All an employee would have to do pre-Hide Tab is just click the x-button and the page would be gone, so they wouldn't be caught. I guess your ultimate solution would be to just ban internet surfing period.

[kevinmmm]

HideTab? Really? What about Ctrl-W and then 'Undo Close Tab'?

[Josh.Lowensohn]

That works too. This keeps it from having to load again, which may be useful if you were watching a video and don't want to have to wait for it to reload.

[Proud_Geek]

Yeah, cuz lord knows we don't want to have to re-watch that scene of a Girls Gone Wild, Oklahoma edition.

[redmatrix06]

there is already another one of these its not the first one. TabRenamizer is out and hit control+Shift+Z whoalla

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Ah yes, I should have mentioned that one. Tabs still stay there though, this one hides them from plain sight.

[KevinK]

Mergatroid, any employer with a decent IT department can just log usage data on your IP address/login ID, that is what one of my old employers did routinely. They don't need to look at your browser directly or anything else for that matter.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Sounds like HR departments will be adding this to the list of software apps that if they find on your system will be cause for termination.

There is no need for this utility.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

I think it's aimed less at workers as much as spouses/significant others.

Oh plz! The ability to hide a tab is no different than having to ability to close the tab or even the entire browser for that matter. No matter what steps you take to remove it from your screen to keep someone from viewing it... the fact is that your history of use has already been recorded by the server. Any company, big or small, has the ability to track and or limit what sites and/or information is accessed. There may not be any real need for this addon for YOU. But for others there may be a reason that they feel the need to utilize this and it being there and able to be used by them is great. Wouldn't it be great if a customer care representative working for your bank was able to hide your tab of personal information when the mail or floor runner came around? How about your doctor being able to hide the tab when he is interupted by someone while entering his latest notes on your ailment? So, yes... depending on who you are... you may have need or want of such an addon. I think people should stop putting thinks down because it doesn't pertain to them. If you don't like it, DON'T USE IT. Not everything invented is for your use, but ya don't have to knock it or put it down. Some issues I can see having a negative reaction to because of certain problems or things that it may cause. But this? Is not a nuclear bomb in N. Korea!

[Hunnter2k3]

"One thing to keep in mind is that hidden tabs still continue to run in the background, which means if you're watching a video or listening to music it's going to keep playing"

It is already useless for millions. ;)

But really, nice idea.

[Shanghai Kid]

I for one, will find this useful. Quite frequently.

[exactlyy]

nice addon but i'd rather use Minimize to Tray and hide the whole browser to show my boss that i am working hard and have no time for browsing .

[gggg sssss]

just dont surf porn at work

[jeffro632002]

Panic Button 1.1.2 works great with firefov 3.5

[DR.Bod]

The first thing I did was hide the instruction tab, and then, because I prefer a minimalist setup, I don't have the bottom bar so I could not restore anything, so I went to the instruction page and mistakenly "tested out" the panic button, I finally figured out the keyboard shortcut

[DR.Bod]

Now that I think about it, this is a useless plugin, all I need to do is close the tab and then go to history, recently closed tabs, i guess it would be useful for videos though

[Wannabe Actuary]

I have to agree that this is more geared towards home users and privacy from spouses/significant others (i.e. hiding their pr0n). Any respectable company restricts their computer setup so much that you can only install things when you have administrator rights. Heck, at the company I work for, not only can I not install anything, I can't even access data on a USB thumb drive or run programs (i.e. U3) off a thumb drive.