Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearing
Posted by Percy Cabello on November 17th, 2008 • Tags:
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The latest Firefox 3.1 development release features the announced option for tab tearing: drag a tab out of its current window, and it is removed and opened on a new one, providing a more intuitive way to organize your web browsing.

Alternatively, you can right-click on a tab and select Open in New Window.

The feature, that mimics Google Chrome’s behavior, had been requested and planned several times in the past.

Tab tearing is the latest in a long list of tabbed browsing improvements that already included a new tab button, a tab preview panel, tab reparenting for true tab moving across windows, tab cloning, and visual tab switching. Some of the changes follow a design shift to make the tab bar visible at all times, which has also got the throbber out of the menu bar, as it is now redundant with each tab’s activity indicator.

Animations for moving, opening and closing tabs was also mentioned for Firefox 3.1 but it’s still unclear if will make it.

As usual with new features, tab tearing has introduced a few new bugs, but, hopefully, they will all be ironed for Firefox 3.1′s next development release, Beta 2, due within the next couple of weeks.

Comments
Abel said on November 17, 2008, 3:20 am:

Noooooo!!! When I drag a tab out of the window all I want is to create a link in my desktop. Who wants two instances of Firefox runing at the same time?

Wikzo said on November 17, 2008, 6:29 am:

Cool. But I think that Chrome’s way looks a little bit better and more intuitive because you instantly get a full new window to drag around and not a small preview like showed in the video.

orlando_ombzzz said on November 17, 2008, 7:49 am:

“The feature, that mimics Google Chrome’s behavior”

not really, IMHO

the “spirit” of this Chrome feature is that you get a kind-of-application window, so your page actually looks like an *application* window and not a *browser* window. For example, you can use it to give gmail.com an application-look.

Firefox keeps the tab and menu bar in the new window, so Firefox don’t share nor achieves Chrome’s goal at this time.

Percy Cabello said on November 17, 2008, 9:11 am:

You can still do that by dragging the site button icon (next to the location bar) instead of the tab.

Percy Cabello said on November 17, 2008, 9:15 am:

orlando_ombzzz, they are two different features. This is just about tab tearing.

What you’re describing is stand alone web apps, which is provided by Prism, currently available as an stand alone app (like AIR) and a Firefox extension ((https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6665).

Damian said on November 17, 2008, 9:22 am:

Abel: I’ve been dying for this feature for years, I didn’t even know people made internet shortcuts on their desktop still :/

Everyone else: There’s loads and loads of spin-off bugs from this, it’s going to get ‘more intuitive’ but I think it won’t be as flashy as Chrome does it haha.

szh said on November 17, 2008, 9:42 am:

> tab cloning

Where is tab cloning ? I can not find it anywhere!

Percy Cabello said on November 17, 2008, 9:48 am:

A limited implementation is already available in Firefox 3: press Ctrl key while dragging a tab.

In Firefox 3.1 you will be able to do this without triggering an automatic reload. Also, you can clone a tab pressing Ctrl and the reload button.

Damian said on November 17, 2008, 10:51 am:

You can ‘tab clone’ as long as your willing to lose back/forward history by middle clicking on the refresh icon.

Percy Cabello said on November 17, 2008, 12:00 pm:

Damiant, you’re right: Ctrl + Refresh doesn’t really clone, as the new tab loses the original’s history. Ctrl + drag seems to be the only way then.

Kinexy » Firefox 3.1 incorporará ‘tab tearing’ said on November 17, 2008, 1:16 pm:

[...] gente de Mozilla sigue trabajando de cara a la versión final de Firefox 3.1 que incorporará una nueva función llamada tab tearing que nos permite separar alguna de las pestañas que tenemos en una ventana de Firefox para abrirla [...]

Firefox 3.1 extrae pestañas | Incubaweb said on November 17, 2008, 1:22 pm:

[...] Sitio oficial | Mozilla [...]

Firefox 3.1 Adds Tab Tearing [Firefox] | My Blog Channel said on November 17, 2008, 1:51 pm:

[...] Chrome users, but when Firefox 3.1 drops, Firefox users will be enjoying the same handy feature. Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearing [Mozilla [...]

MacTech said on November 17, 2008, 2:11 pm:

I hate to point this out but Safari does this and has been doing it for a while now. Certainly since Safari v3 was released which precedes Chrome by many months.

MR Lizard said on November 17, 2008, 2:30 pm:

You’re right – and it does it with a cool little animation too!

I agree with Wikzo – users should see a ‘mini’ browser window appear when they drag the tab off the parent window. The video above makes it look like the user has dragged an image off the page.

I look forward to seeing what this will look like on OS X :-)

Firefox 3.1 Brings Safari Like Tab-Tearing to the Party said on November 17, 2008, 2:43 pm:

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PsiGuy said on November 17, 2008, 2:54 pm:

So did Safari beat Opera to this, or did Safari get it from Opera? Because Opera has had it for a LONG time

Jonathan Hensley | The Blog » TiVo Pizza, Slydial, FireFox 3.1 Tearing said on November 17, 2008, 3:38 pm:

[...] Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearingThe latest Firefox 3.1 development release features the announced option for tab tearing: drag a tab out of its current window, and it is removed and opened on a new one, providing a more intuitive way to organize your web browsing. [...]

Dr. Steve said on November 17, 2008, 4:22 pm:

Who cares who did it first? What is this a race where whoever doesn’t come up with a feature first can’t use it at all? I don’t even USE tabs, but this would be a nice feature if I ever click a tab by accident.

But seriously, grow up people. Firefox doesn’t always come up with an idea first, and it still have lots of features I’d like to see implemented, but this is what they do do.

1. Allow Add-Ons
2. Come out of beta

And thats good enough for me.

Eric said on November 17, 2008, 4:44 pm:

Sweet, this is the feature I’ve been wanting ever since Firefox was released.

Firefox 3.1 permitirá arrastrar pestañas a ventanas independientes - Â¿Que miras? said on November 17, 2008, 5:22 pm:

[...] Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearing (Visto en IncubaWeb) [...]

JimP said on November 17, 2008, 5:51 pm:

I use the session saving capability of FF3, but it fails to work with more than one window of tabs. Unless this fixes that problem, it is just plain useless for me, as is the current facility to use multiple windows. Fingers crossed…

Nox said on November 17, 2008, 5:57 pm:

How about alt+drag? Isn’t that a de-facto standard for creating links?

dt said on November 17, 2008, 7:22 pm:

Seems like I’ll be using cookiepie addon for a long time until mozilla team incorporate it in the main branch.

Emil Ivanov said on November 17, 2008, 7:33 pm:

Well I prefer developers to innovate and make the browser better instead to wait for competition and then start implementing forgotten features like Private Browsing.

Post you favourite or new and useful Firefox add ons here ! – Page 5 – TeakDoor.com – The Thailand Forum said on November 17, 2008, 10:08 pm:

[...] This is old hat if you use Safari or Google Chrome but the 3.1 Firefox will have tear away tabs, pull a tab from the bar and drop it outside for a new window. Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearing – Mozilla Links [...]

Robert MacEwan said on November 17, 2008, 10:25 pm:

I just wish they’d allow us to place the damn new tab button somewhere other than next to the tabs. It’s why I went back to using Flock 2.

Firefox 3.1 permitirá arrastrar pestañas entre ventanas said on November 17, 2008, 11:51 pm:

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Firefox 3.1 permitirá arrastrar pestañas entre ventanas | Planeta Tecnologia said on November 18, 2008, 12:10 am:

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Firefox 3.1 presenta una nuova feature: Tab Tearing – Crismon’s Blog said on November 18, 2008, 5:40 am:

[...] Notizia Ufficiale da Mozilla Link. [...]

Sudhakar said on November 18, 2008, 6:00 am:

Opera has this feature already…is that a big thing ?

Tab tearing feature in Firefox 3.1 Beta said on November 18, 2008, 6:50 am:

[...] November 18, 20082:50 am Tab tearing feature in Firefox 3.1 Beta Mozilla added a option for tab tearing in Firefox 3.1 beta: “drag a tab out of its current window, and [...]

Pull A Tab From Browser Interface – Live In Latest Firefox « Tech Idea said on November 18, 2008, 10:10 am:

[...] mozillalinks & Tab tearing live in latest Firefox test build – [...]

PsiGuy said on November 18, 2008, 4:57 pm:

I’m glad other browsers get ideas from one another, but i hate that every time Firefox adds a feature, the web blows up about it like it’s brand new.

links for 2008-11-18 | Company K Media said on November 18, 2008, 9:30 pm:

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Speedy B News » Blog Archive » Firefox 3.1 Brings Safari Like Tab-Tearing to the Party said on November 19, 2008, 8:35 am:

[...] via Mozilla links. [...]

Firefox 3.1 beta 2, con pestañas drag and drop | Incubaweb said on November 20, 2008, 12:39 pm:

[...] Mozilla ha añadido características significantes en su versión de firefox 3.1 beta 2, permitiendo que las pestañas cambien de una ventana a otra de firefox y también si solamente tienes una ventana, pues soltar una pestaña fuera de la ventana y se crea otra nueva. [...]

Chris said on November 21, 2008, 12:33 am:

Something I really like about Google Chrome is that when you close a tab, it also closes the in-page search box. Same with clicking on a link. Is there an extension that adds this to Firefox, and/or is it planned for Firefox anytime?

Rioting_pacifist said on November 22, 2008, 5:20 pm:

Not under linux, alt+drag will move the window about.

Nox said on November 22, 2008, 9:59 pm:

Oh, right. I always forget about the alt+mouse button shortcuts for some reason -_-

Firefox 3.1 gets tabs tearing « Decoding the Web said on November 23, 2008, 4:17 am:

[...] Source [...]

toby said on November 27, 2008, 9:55 am:

This is a great feature and will prove really useful. Firefox is getting better all the time.

Pepsi said on November 29, 2008, 5:05 pm:

I really feel confused about this new feature. It is really annoying when I just want to switch between tabs but if just a little “drag”, a new window pops up, that is not what I want. So I would like to have an option to choose to enable or disable this feature in the Tools->Options->tabs.
Thanks.

El Guru said on November 30, 2008, 4:16 pm:

I agree, it is way too sensitive and I need to find a way to disable this IMO useless feature.

Give me FREEDOM or give me TABS | Go Complain on the Internet said on December 1, 2008, 12:42 am:

[...] Firefox 3.1 gets tab tearing – Mozilla Links [...]

eXtreme said on December 1, 2008, 9:44 am:

I dont need this feature, how can I disable it?

Damian said on December 2, 2008, 7:43 am:

It’s an integrated part of the Firefox code without a toggle built in. Your sort of like asking “I don’t need bookmarks, how do I disable them?”

Dwight Stegall said on December 10, 2008, 10:49 am:

An ideal browser to me would be one that allows you to open several tabs at once and have all of them visible at the same time. I mean you could resize each tab so that they all would be visible like you can with your Windows Desktop.

This type of setup would useful when you have content in a tab that is constantly updated by the server and other tabs for surfing and searching etc.

David said on December 10, 2008, 3:05 pm:

This “feature” is driving me crazy. A disable option would be greatly appreciated. Or at least reduce the sensitivity. It opens new windows when all I wanted to do is select the tab, if my mouse slipped a pixel or two while clicking on it. It’s happened like 10 times in 3 days.

Brad said on December 15, 2008, 7:39 pm:

Please! I need a disable feature before I go MAD!

Damian said on December 16, 2008, 12:31 am:

Easy, stop BETA testing.

Brian said on December 19, 2008, 12:50 pm:

Isn’t the idea of beta testing to get us to test features and refine them. Would you rather have this feature go out live, as is, and drive people away from FF?

Damian said on December 19, 2008, 8:57 pm:

No, that’s why I helped triage this bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465184

And reopened it when the developer working on tab tearing had closed it as fixed. Actually get involved in the testing community if you want to refine features, bugzilla, newsgroups, irc, forums etc.. If your just beta testing to see what’s new then go back to the stable release if a bug is driving you nuts.

To start off with you could vote for that bug and bug:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465346

Those please no “me too” comments, they already spam mine and many other e-mails boxes enough :/. If you should think there should be an actual disable option then write a bug :) (though do a search beforehand).

Sorin said on January 10, 2009, 2:13 pm:

I’ve added my vote to these two bugs and added them to my own bugs-wishlist on http://nusunt.eu/software/bugs-to-vote-for/

It’s clearly a feature transformed in a bug :|

jt said on January 28, 2009, 6:31 pm:

Who cares? Safari isn’t available for Mac or Linux.

Damian said on January 29, 2009, 3:48 am:

I’m going to take a wild guess here and say your thinking of Chrome. I think you will find that the majority of the Mac browser market is Safari :P

sw developer said on February 19, 2009, 6:39 am:

Very nice idea but absolutely untested by developers and with no option to disable it — I just hope that this is not caused by bad application/architecture design…

Alex said on March 17, 2009, 8:17 pm:

Yeah I googled to see if I could disable this and it took me to this page. I couldn’t find anything.

Kirk said on July 3, 2009, 11:22 am:

Aargh! While it’s an old post, this is a “today” issue for me. I found this post after upgrading to FF 3.5 from 3.0.10 and noticing that now “drag to desktop” is “drag to window.” I use D2D all the time (actually D2folder) and always hated the fact that IE required one to find a context menu (sometimes inadvertently disabled by lazy programmers) in order to create a shortcut on the desktop.

I’ve been scanning the comment stream to try to figure out how to either put this back or find a workaround, and it took this 25-year IT guy a bit too long to effectively “guess” how to do it…that “location” icon next to the address bar (referred to above, it’s helpful to think it’s actually *part* of the location bar)..is on the left of the address, for those of you who have never thought anything of it, as I was wont to do.

For what it’s worth, developers (and I’m one, too) it can be helpful when changing subtle features to detect a person’s first use of the changed feature and then overlay the interface with “here’s what’s up, and oh–and here’s a checkbox to turn off these helpful hints.” A company that does this quite well is Cooliris…anytime there’s an update, the first time you launch Cooliris, large, colorful block arrows show you what’s changed. It’s boorish if there are a lot of successive updates, but I’d rather turn them off than struggle to find them. While it might be obtuse to do this in Firefox, the first time I use something that’s silently changed (should ALL of my users read your change logs too?) and I get a little helpful fade-in tip…that would be fantastically nice.

Jon Baker said on August 19, 2009, 10:54 am:

Disable tearoff tabs plugin:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12276

This really should be in the preferences to turn it off. Even with the latest build, going from another app to Firefox using my Wacom tablet _always_ tears off the tab. I’ve been a strong supporter of Firefox but this “feature” nearly made me go to another browser. Fortunately this plug-in saved the day.