The first thing most of you do every morning is to open the Clipperz password manager and start your daily routine by quickly accessing your online services. Just one click on a “direct login” link and you are logged in and, depending on your browser settings, each click will open a new window or a new tab. Unless you are using Safari …

In that case there is no way to tell Safari to open a “direct login” in a new tab, it will always open a new browser window. I find it quite annoying, I personally can’t stand having too many browser windows open.

Direct login links have a target = "_blank" attribute and Safari has no (evident) option to decide if the new page should be opened in a new window or a new tab (like Firefox has). But luckily Apple has added a hidden preference, since Safari 3.1, that allows you to tell Safari to stick to one window. Just paste into Terminal the following command and and you’re sorted!

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

This works great, unless you are like me: I usually launch tens of “direct logins” and I end up scrolling tabs back and forth within a single Safari window. Not very convenient. But with Safari I can solve this problem by easily detaching and grouping together tabs (all email accounts in one window, all bank accounts in another, …).

Unfortunately Firefox does not allow me to detach tabs the way Safari can, but I’ve found a very good solution: Duplicate Tab 1.0.2. A nifty Firefox add-on that allows you to detach tabs and merge windows.

So if you use Safari, I would suggest to set the above hidden preference, while if you prefer Firefox, choose the option to open new pages in a new tab and install the Duplicate Tab add-on. In any case, don’t let your browser degrade your Clipperz experience!

Thanks to Dennis and John for the tips!

picture from inju Flickr photostream