Sequential Tab Loader EN

Sequential Tab Loader attempts to solve a particular problem - when opening many new tabs quickly, Firefox handles that... very poorly. It attempts to load them all at once, slowing down the browser and extending the time until any tabs load at all. Especially bad on a slow internet connection. Nowadays, this can also trigger rate-limiting / captcha prompts, preventing some links from loading at all.

This addon does the following:

• Makes new tabs load in unloaded (discarded) state first, to minimise resource usage
• Adds the newly opened unloaded tabs to a queue
• Loads tabs from the queue one by one by default, or in batches if you specify that in Options
• Allows you to set a max limit on the loading queue - when new tabs are opened exceeding said limit, they will remain in a discarded state until you click them.
• Allows you to (re)load existing selected tabs sequentially using the same queue system

This way you get the first tabs loaded very quickly, their load time won't be extended by all the other tabs that you opened.

Additional features:

Tab Creation Queue - an alternative to the regular loading queue. Rather than loading tabs sequentially, this queue creates them sequentially - next tab is only opened after the previous tab finished loading.

Link Selector - allows you to select links on the page with a selection rectangle by dragging the mouse. Selected links are then added to the tab creation queue.

Usage instructions:

• the addon is active by default and can be used as is, with its default settings.
• It is highly recommended to pin the addon icon to the toolbar, this way you will be able to see how many tabs are in the queue waiting to be loaded.
• clicking the addon icon pauses/unpauses addon operation. Pausing it will not clear the queue, after unpausing it will continue loading from where it left off. However, new items aren't added to the queue when the addon is paused.
• If you want to load / reload already opened tabs - select them, right click on any of the selected tabs -> "Reload Tabs (Queued)". This command will add the selected tabs to the addon's queue to be loaded sequentially, as opposed to using Firefox's regular "Reload Tabs" option, which will reload everything at once.

=== Config options ===

Options menu

• Maximum concurrent tabs to load - how many tabs are being loaded at once. One by default. Increase if you want to load them in batches instead.
• Queue limit - max number of tabs that can be added to the loading queue. When this limit is exceeded, further opened new tabs will just remain unloaded after being opened. If you need to open many links, but not necessarily need all of them to be loaded, limiting the queue to a smaller number can achieve that.
• Tab loading behaviour - "Load tabs" is the default mode of loading tabs from a queue. If you choose "Don't load tabs" - it will disable the loading queue, and all newly opened tabs will remain in an unloaded (discarded) state until clicked. Can be used if you want to open many links, but don't want them to be loaded automatically.
• Tab discarding delay - delay after the tab is created and before its unloaded. Normally not needed.
• Tab loading delay - delay after the previous tab finishes loading and before the next one starts loading. Setting this delay will disable "Maximum concurrent tabs to load" option and tabs will be loading one by one.
  Some sites can stop pages from loading until you complete a captcha if you attempt to open too many links in a short time. If you encounter that, increasing this setting to like 500ms or more can prevent that from happening.
• Link click behaviour - Default: Alt+click is ignored, Ctrl+click and MMB click add link to the tab loading queue.
• Link click behaviour - Add to the tab loading queue: open links immediately as unloaded tabs, then sequentially load them via a queue. This queue is indicated by the green badge on the addon's toolbar icon.
• Link click behaviour - Add to the tab creation queue: links are opened sequentially - a new tab is only created when a previous one finished loading. This queue is indicated by the blue badge on the addon's toolbar icon.
• Link click behaviour - Bypass: links are opened immediately, bypassing any queues, the same way as if the addon was paused or disabled.
• Drop duplicate URLs from tab creation queue - if the URL being added is already in the queue, it won't be added again, to prevent opening duplicate tabs.

Link Selector

An optional feature that needs to be enabled first in the Options menu.
It allows you to select links on the page with a selection rectangle by dragging the mouse.
Any selected links will then be added to the tab creation queue.
This also works while the addon is paused, in case you want to gather links from multiple selections first.

Instead of opening selected links, it's also possible to just copy them.
To do so, do the following:

• Pause the addon, by left clicking on its icon
• Select your links
• Right click on the addon icon -> 'List pending creation queue URLs' - this opens a new page which lists all your selected links
• After you copied the links, right click on the addon icon -> 'Empty the queue' - this empties the tab creation queue, so that when you unpause the addon, it wouldn't start loading the selected links
• Unpause the addon, by left clicking on its icon

Icon context menu options (right click on the addon icon)

• "Resume loading" - resumes tab loading / enables the queue. Can also be used in case the queue got stuck and stopped loading tabs.
• "Load next tab" - this option will skip the current tab and start loading from th…