It is quite surprising to see that in today’s intense browser wars, there are so many techniques browser developers overlook which would greatly facilitate the users. To fill the inconvenient gap left by the creators of a browser, developers from all over the world contribute to make life easier for us everyday internet users. They do this in the form of extensions and addons. They can be downloaded and used for free; the functionality they add ranges from amazingly creative to sometimes extremely simple.

Today we go over a browser extension which is more of the extremely simple functionality type. The feature it adds is so obvious that it should be innate in every browser; however, it is not. That makes the addon all the more great to use.

Today we discuss the tiny yet useful Chrome extension, WindowsToTabs.

Browser tabs, as we all know, have been a wonderful step in improving internet browsers. By giving us the option to view all our internet windows in a single one, tabs eliminate the excess entries into our taskbar. This not only gives us more easily usable taskbar space, but we also do not have fumble from window to window trying to find the right one.

Some programs however force new browser windows being opened. Suppose your default browser is Chrome and you click on a link in your instant messaging client, a new Chrome window will open instead of the link being opened in a new tab in an existing Chrome window. And as the number of windows increases, so does the inconvenience they cause.

But with WindowsToTabs, that inconvenience can become nonexistent regardless of how many Chrome Windows are open. After installing the extension, you will see its icon next to the address bar which will indicate how many Chrome windows are open (the number in red).

This icon will be present in all open Chrome windows. Clicking on any one of them will close the other windows and transfer their tabs into the current window. For example, in the image below I have opened 3 Chrome windows and it notifies me by displaying the number on the right top hand side of the browser. As soon as I click it all the Chrome windows will be converted into tabs.

And that is it!

It is extensions like that remind browser developers that the browsers wars still have a long way to go because there is still a giant room for improvement in all browsers.