Firefox 3 gets smooth tab scrolling
Posted by Percy Cabello on August 15th, 2007 • Tags:
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A quick note to share a nice little improvement that just landed to Firefox 3 development code (a.k.a the trunk): Tab scrolling has got smoother.

Instead of the rough tab by tab stepping, tabs now slide in a continuous soft movement whenever you scroll them with the mouse wheel, add a new one or change to a different tab beyond the current visible section.

Click the small Flash animation below for a quick look.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.mozillalinks.org/swf/firefox-smoothscroll.swf" height="109" width="473" /]

Comments
Adam Dempsey said on August 15, 2007, 6:17 pm:

Looks very nice! Going to try the latest trunk out soon, not looked at it for a while.

Reply

Mike said on August 15, 2007, 6:30 pm:

I use the trunk, and just so you know its a lot smoother than the video seems to make it. :)

If anyone wants to turn it off, set toolkit.scrollbox.smoothScroll to false in about:config and restart Firefox.

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Firefox 3 tem tabs suavizadas said on August 15, 2007, 6:34 pm:

[...] Podem ver um exemplo aqui [...]

[...] Vía: Mozilla Links [...]

Sinklar said on August 16, 2007, 8:51 am:

If anyone wants to turn it off, set toolkit.scrollbox.smoothScroll to false in about:config and restart Firefox.

Thank’s for the trick !

Reply

Patrick Burt said on August 16, 2007, 12:58 pm:

Looks good, but I can’t help but think that I like how it is in Firefox 2. It seems to me that takes up processor power for something really…. unneeded.

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Percy Cabello said on August 16, 2007, 1:03 pm:

Mike, thanks for the tip! I guess some people may want to turn it off like Patrick mentioned.

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Firefox 3 Smooth Tab Scrolling - CyberNet News said on August 16, 2007, 4:22 pm:

[...] Sources: Asa Dotzler & Mozilla Links [...]

Firefox 3 Gets Smooth Tab Animation said on August 17, 2007, 11:34 am:

[...] CyberNet, Mozilla Links] [...]

Cameron said on August 20, 2007, 9:08 am:

Dead cool, thanks for the update. This is why I

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Un vistazo al próximo Firefox 3 said on August 22, 2007, 3:01 am:

[...] En las pestañas, han cuidado un poco más el “scroll” lateral. Cuando tenemos muchas páginas abiertas en distintas pestañas (es decir, como sub-ventanas dentro de una misma ventana del navegador), podemos movernos por ellas con la rueda del ratón, como en las versiones anteriores. La diferencia es que el desplazamiento es más gradual y elegante, como puedes ver en el vídeo demostrativo de este enlace. [...]

[...] [via: CyberNet, Mozilla Links] [...]

Firefox 3 Beta 2 review : Mozilla Links said on December 19, 2007, 10:03 am:

[...] minor tweaks: Firefox will always prompt if you want to save the currently open tab set, tabs scroll smoothly, better styling for local file, FTP and gopher listings and a warning when accessing advanced [...]

Avant Rules said on January 24, 2008, 4:35 pm:

YAWN…..

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wooptoo said on January 30, 2008, 9:20 am:

Cut the crap Mozilla. Make the scroll wheel switch to the next/previous tab, like most Operating Systems today do, NOT scrolling the whole tab bar. I’m sure a lot of people would love this and would better integrate into any OS.

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A deep look to Firefox 3 Beta 3 : Mozilla Links said on February 11, 2008, 3:18 pm:

[...] Tabs now scroll smoothly, and, new in Beta 3, you can sort of duplicate tabs when you press Ctrl while dragging a tab. A similar feature allows to drag a tab to another window. It’s not actual duplication or moving though, since in both cases a new navigation occurs and the original tab history is not preserved, but still a helpful addition I hope to see perfected in the next version. [...]

Mathew Hartnell said on April 24, 2008, 12:07 pm:

Excellent! Thank for the trick

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Michael said on May 4, 2008, 5:25 am:

How could anyone possibly consider this a desirable feature? It’s bloody awful and annoying.

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Francois Botha replied on June 5th, 2008, 4:28 am:

I hate this too. But I would love to see the bugzilla issue to get some idea what they were thinking.

Firefox 3 RC 1 full review - Mozilla Links said on May 17, 2008, 10:50 am:

[...] Tabs now scroll smoothly. [...]

Firefox 3 RC 1 full review - Mozilla Links said on May 17, 2008, 10:50 am:

[...] Tabs now scroll smoothly. [...]

Simon said on June 20, 2008, 4:30 am:

Perrcy, please fix this .SWF Object…
http://www.mozillalinks.org/swf/firefox-smoothscroll.swf

Thanks!

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grant said on June 20, 2008, 4:15 pm:

Ack! I hate this. How do get the three rows of tabes back. I hate this side-to-side scrolling, it slows me down.

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Mik replied on August 26th, 2008, 8:36 pm:

Anyone know how to disable this smooth tab scroll in Firefox3?

Francois Botha replied on August 27th, 2008, 12:30 pm:

Mik, look at comments #2 on this post.