Loading ...Prevent Firefox from overwriting your tabs
Published: March 26th, 2007
By default when you click the Open All in Tabs option in a bookmarks folder or a live bookmark, the bookmarks are opened in different tabs replacing the current tab set you have at that time. According to what I’ve read, this was done for consistency as back, forward, search, link clicking and any other action that loads a new web page overwrites the current content by default, and getting it in a new tab requires a link modifier like Ctrl + clicking the back button, a bookmark or a link, or Alt + Enter-ing in the location or search bar.
While this is true, I don’t find it intuitive. To change this behavior and make Firefox append (add) the bookmarks to the current.
- Enter about:config in the location bar
- Look for browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace
- Double click it to set the value to false or right click and select Toggle
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March 26th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
I agree. I never understood the default behaviour here. I always have my Firefox set up this way.
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March 27th, 2007 at 8:55 am
It’s absolutely not intuitive. It’s a flaw that’s cost me tons of time and saved pages. And I knew there was a setting for it in about:config, but I couldn’t find it. Thanks!
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June 11th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Definitely, Open All in Tabs is broken by design without this feature set. I use an ActiveX control in conjuction with IETab to make a VPN connection to my corporate network, so the default behaviour actually brings my network connection down. Deeply horrible default behaviour.
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September 30th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
I agree somewhat but I can not seem to follow your logic.
It can not be done for consistency as this would mean that Ctrl + clicking, Alt + clicking or my favourite middle clicking would make “Open All in Tabs” open in new tabs.
I can middle click bookmarks to make them open in new tabs, so why is it not consistent and a middle click mean that “Open All in Tabs” opens in new tabs?
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June 5th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Thank you for this help. I use tabmixplus and I remember there being an option to append or replace tabs from bookmarks , etc. Oh well this worked and was easier to implement. cheers
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June 22nd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
This fix no longer works in Firefox 3.
Beware of upgrading to Firefox 3 if you want tabs to overwrite existing tabs as there is currently no fox for this.
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