If you are a Firefox user who likes to have dozens of tabs open in the Firefox tabbar then you may sometimes have a hard time finding a specific tab that is open in the browser.
While you can go through all open tabs manually, it is not the best of options depending on how many tabs you have open as it may involve lots of scrolling.
Preferable options include using an add-on to search all tabs or use a tab preview feature like the one implemented in the Firefox 3.6 edition.
Sort Tabs offers another option. The Firefox add-on adds the option to sort all open tabs in the Firefox web browser.
The tab sorting option is added to the right-click menu when you are right-clicking the tabbar.
You find the “sort tabs by url” option near the end of the context menu and there is unfortunately no option to sort by page title, age or other criteria instead.
When you select the option it will sort all tabs based on the url. Please note that it moves locked tabs (locked with App Tabs) to their appropriate place based on the address as well. Since it did that, it is likely that it will affect other tab locking or modifying add-ons as well.
The only other options that are provided by the Sort Tabs add-on are to close blank tabs and duplicate tabs when tabs are sorted by the add-on. It is also possible to reverse the sort order in the options.
Sort Tabs is available for download at the Mozilla Firefox website. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.x versions.
Update: Sort Tabs has been discontinued. An alternative is the Group / Sort Tabs add-on which offers a similar functionality.
Update 2: Group / Sort Tabs is not available anymore. Use the Sort Tabs extension (not the same one as the one reviewed initially here in the article) instead. Since the add-on has last been updated in 2011 as well, it is probably better to switch to Tab Mix Plus right away. It is a long standing add-on that offers tab sorting and many, many other tab-related features.