On Sunday I wrote a Firefox plugin: DetachTab. It’s very simple: when you’ve got a tab open press the F4 key and the page will reload in a new window free of any chrome.

I find this useful when copying information from one page to another. Since I have my calendar in one tab, a schedule spreadsheet in another and mail in a third it’s difficult when I want to write a mail that incorporates information from the other two tabs. I want to see all the information in a single glance. With this plugin I can tear off the tabs and arrange them like tiles.

There are some weird issues, to do with pauses in rendering, and interaction with my Delicous plugin, but I can’t even begin to think where those come from. Anyway, see what you think.

You can download DetachTab.xpi from here.

Oh yes, and it needs a more accurate name. It’s more CopyTabIntoSimpleWindow, but that’s a bit clunky. Maybe TearOffTab.