Firefox new tab behavior to be updated
Firefox development lead, Mike Beltzner, has announced a slight change to the way Firefox opens new tabs, that will be featured in future releases.
Currently, when you open a link in a new tab it is added to the end of the tab bar, and the relationship with its parent tab exists only in the user’s head. I usually have to move it closer to the original tab to avoid tab scrolling.
With the new behavior, new tabs opened from a tab will be added to the right of the parent tab, unless there is already a child tab. In this case it is added to the right of the last child tab.
New tabs opened via the new tab button, File/New Tab… menu, Ctrl + T, etc. will still be opened to the end of the tab bar, as it is not possible to know if it’s contents will be related to the current tab or not.
Users of Internet Explorer 8 beta are already familiar with this behavior which also assigns a specific color to related tabs making it easier to identify them. The result, however, is a too colorful tab bar. Other approaches could be adding a small separator between tab groups, or a halo around or just below tab groups.
If you want to try this behavior, you can install Tabs Open Relative, a extension by John Mellor that does just this on Firefox 3. You will have to set extensions.tabsopenrelative.includenewtabs to false via about:config to have new tabs
I would also like to be able to press Shift while opening a new tab (via the main menu, a button, a keyboard shortcut or modifier), to force it open right to the current tab, so I can keep tabs together.
According to Mike, the new behavior will be added to trunk builds soon, but its inclusion in Firefox 3.1 is yet to be decided.
Comments
nitwit88
Tab Mix Plus has this a feature too. I’ve been using it since 2.0. It’s good to see it finally making it into the included features. It means one less thing to frustrate me while at a friend’s house.
Samuel
No, this is wrong, well, I think mainly that it is wrong to change the behaviour of something that far on the road and making it default without the ability to make this optional, even as an about:config option (you didn’t say if it was going to be one).
I’m used to the old method and I don’t like the idea of a new tab directly right of the current tab especially because it breaks the chronology of the currently opened tabs. When I will close the current tab to check out the newly opened tab, it will go to the last link I opened in a tab and not the first.
DavidJanuary 13th, 2009 at 4:14 am
Not a problem. “With the new behavior, new tabs opened from a tab will be added to the right of the parent tab, unless there is already a child tab. In this case it is added to the right of the last child tab.”
Asgaro
Haha, Google Chrome has this as well. Coincidence? :P
DinoJanuary 17th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Probably, but considering a Firefox add-on has had this before Google Chrome, id say its Google copying here.
New Tab Behavior Coming in Fx 3.1 « Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog
[...] New Source: Mozilla Links [...]
KX
As one who often has many tabs open during heavy research (albeit on Wikipedia), I know the annoyance of having new tabs appended to a long list of tabs. I look forward to seeing this becoming a standard feature!
Mohan
Cool, I could really use that implemented in 3.0. Hopefully it will be in 3.1
Ryan Scott Scheel
This is a feature I’ve always wanted in Firefox. I keep Tabs Open Relative with me every profile I create. I actually forgot I installed it the first time I did so, and over time, thought it was default functionality, and managed to get annoyed when I created my second profile. It would be excellent to see this in it, as it means I won’t need one more extension.
Ba Assumpcao
Hi there! I am a mac user (Leopard) and a bug appeared yesterday: when I click a e-mail link at a website, hundreds of tabs are generated and Firefox crashes. I’ve searched Support and didn’t find any help. I’ve downloaded Firefox again, uninstalled the previous one and intalled again. The bug is still there. Does anyone know what is going on?
Tks!
Ba
costinel
i really hope this will be entirely optional and not hardcoded, it would be a shame for the mozilla team to do this…. i LIKE tab behaviour as it is NOW.
Follow Up: New Tab Behavior Coming in Fx 3.1 « Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog
[...] had to look back at the original article from Mozilla Links. According to the article, the new behaviour would be “will be featured in [...]
David Naylor
Great! Hoping to see it in 3.1!
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