Comments on: Disable tab tearing and six other Firefox 3.5 tab tweaks

By: TimP

TimP — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:11:03 +0000

Thanks …A LOT!
I really missed being able to select tabs with a simple click, now I realize, and I’m surprised cause I use to do it in other programs but didn’t remembered, that is possible toggling from other menus.
In order to avoid the lack, now I do the following:

[Ctrl+L]
[Tab]
[Tab]
[Ctrl+Home]

…or [End], depending where I need the focused tab, at the top or bottom.

By: TimP

TimP — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:38:26 +0000

Maybe You already knew, but, if I understood well, so my first language is not English, your need of focusing the first and last tab could be resolved pressing Ctrl+1 to 9, 1 will focus the first, 2 the second, and so on, and the 9 always the last.

By: TimP

TimP — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:19:17 +0000

I agree with Valdimarian. I used to reorder my tabs, frequently sending to the top or bottom, I miss it.
Thanks for the tips, I didn´t know that now I could drag the favicon for creating a shortcut instead of dragging the tab.

By: Valdimarian

Valdimarian — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:57:53 +0000

I really liked being able to select a tab in the tab bar. I could get into the tab bar and move tabs left, right, ‘home’ or ‘end’ and I can’t any more!

The other thing they took out / changed was what counts as an actionable item, at least for the OS 10.6 version. I can no longer tab through a form and select dropdown menus or buttons, only text boxes.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 08:16:30 +0000

thanks for the tab tearing tip. I hate it when new “features” are added and you’re wondering what the heck you just did. On my desktop it’s not an issue, but on my laptop I constantly found myself tearing tabs because my mouse movements are more sloppy on a touchpad.

By: Halodude

Halodude — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:09:12 +0000

OK, for me the problem is that despite checking the ‘Always show tab bar’, the bar wont show even when One tabbed window is open! Any solutions?

By: Drummond Blakely

Drummond Blakely — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 09:56:47 +0000

Thanks for the tips but here’s the one thing that NEVER is addressed (unless I’ve missed it): what if you DO NOT WANT tabbed browsing? People seem to find this inconceivable but I know I’m not alone in this. You can disable tabbed browsing in Opera (which invented it, I think). And I think you can with Internet Explorer, too. It’s easily done with K-Meleon – which I would use for that reason, and for its simplicity, if only it allowed mouseless browsing. It’s the Mouseless Browsing extension that makes it hard to do without Firefox. But here we go with new, improved, upgraded versions which spoil everything and leave one pining for the old ‘retro’ versions. I like the old Internet Explorer much better than the flashy new IE7 and I remember Firefox as a beautifully simple thing. Now I find the tabs to be invasive and interfering, and the bookmark management has been ruined. It used to be so easy. Can one get earlier versions of Firefox and block any upgrade attempts? Thanks.

By: Nadav

Nadav — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:40:03 +0000

Hi. Recently I upgraded from firefox 3.0.15 to firefox 3.5 (win), after making sure all my add-ons are compatible. Since I installed 3.5, firefox doesn’t save my tabs on close, even after I played a bit with the options. I really couldn’t find a solution to this annoying problem, but I discovered one thing: If I close firefox with the “close windows” button (The upper-right X button) my tabs are not saved, but if I close with “Exit” in “File” menu, my tabs are saved on the next start. Strange. If you can find a solution to this problem, I will be grateful.

By: t3h fake

t3h fake — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:32:28 +0000

Dubious statement Elric. People who don’t like change of any kind won’t be upgrading firefox so they won’t be complaining about the changes. As far as the IQ comment, I could very well say people who unquestioningly believe every change to a program improves it lack the critical reasoning skills necessary to score well on an IQ test.

By: SpiffyNova

SpiffyNova — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:03:12 +0000

Thanks a bunch! It seems odd, but having that little x on the only tab is something I got used to and had considered downgrading back to 3.0 to get it back.
Thanks again!

By: JoeG

JoeG — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:48:09 +0000

I have found that tabs can still be dragged on the tab bar, although I believe more careful cursor movement is necessary when dragging to the bottom row of the tab bar. Also, the faint (almost invisible) text still appears when dragging a tab.

By: JoeG

JoeG — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:06:31 +0000

I just upgraded to FF 3.5, and I am no longer able to drag a tab to a new location on the tab bar. When I try to do this, I find that I’m dragging some faint text that I can’t read, but the tab itself doesn’t move. I have read all the posts here, but I didn’t recognize this problem as being discussed. However, I didn’t understand some of the discussion about tab tearing, so maybe it’s there.

By: David

David — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 08:13:20 +0000

For those who want to highlight tabs and navigate them using arrow keys and Home/End, this feature is still in Firefox 3.5, but it looks like some GUI elements might have been removed.

What you can do is place the mouse cursor in the Address Bar. Hit the Tab key twice and the Tab should be highlighted and from there you can navigate as usual. I too found it to be helpful when doing research or when I have an insane amount of tabs open, as the more tabs that are open, the slower the pop-down menu on the upper right corner is if you want to move to different tabs.

Enjoy!

By: ER

ER — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:12:00 +0000

I’ve looked around and haven’t found, and no one in this forum has volunteered any advice. The only progress I’ve made is instead of clicking the reload button, I press ctrl + r…If you find any solution, please post it here.

By: Pat Mc Connell

Pat Mc Connell — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:54:20 +0000

Help I am having the same problem, any solution?

By: Billie

Billie — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:27:14 +0000

I have the same problem, and it’s annoying as hell. I even downgraded back to 3.0.13 to get it back… and now it seems it won’t work there anymore, either. Running FF 3.0.13 on Mac OS X V10.4.11, and NOTHING I do to the close tab options in about:config works. It’s a close-button on the far right, and one on the active tab. I want my close buttons on every tab back, damnit.

By: Micky Jay

Micky Jay — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:42:01 +0000

Guys, I found the solution.

Number 6’s directions are incomplete. After you’ve added the script to your userChrome.css, do the follow:

type about:config into the address bar and find the browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab entry in the list. Using the filter makes it easy. Once you’ve found that key, double-click on it to change the value from true to false, and Firefox should no longer close when you close the last tab.

By: Micky Jay

Micky Jay — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:54:18 +0000

6. Show the close button in the last tab

Now when I have this, when I click close, the whole Firefox will close >=( It used to be that clicking close will just land you on a blank tab window.

By: GreyKnife

GreyKnife — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:44:12 +0000

Is there any way to have only the first window or instance of Firefox open up multiple homepage tabs and subsequent instances (that I initiate at later times) load a single, different page? I have 4 tabs set up as my homepage, but it is annoying to me to open new tabs within the homepage window for additional browsing (I like to keep different web surfing activities and subjects segregated by windows), and equally annoying to open a new window and have to close all of the duplicate homepage tabs. Maybe a little OCD, I know, but if anyone has an solution, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.

By: ER

ER — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:27:06 +0000

Help! I’m with 3.5.2 and have encountered these problems:
1. I open a website, then another (sometimes in another tab, sometimes in a new window). When I return to the first site, it’s blank and I have to press “reload” to see it
2. There are sites I open (e.g. in the Washington Post site), the page begins to load, but then the page goes blank, without me having done anything except gaze at the screen.
What to do?

By: son1tus

son1tus — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:10:17 +0000

in FF 3.0, if you clicked on your current tab, or double-clicked on any tab, it would highlight it, which would then give you the ability to scroll left and right through your tabs using the arrow keys. This feature seemed to go bye-bye in FF 3.5.
Halp plz?

By: Joel

Joel — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:29:08 +0000

Fixed it, I went into about:config. Then browser.tabs.loadInBackground (it was on the default, true) so I changed it to false and then back to true. This has now sorted it out. Weird. Oh well.

By: Joel

Joel — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:26:36 +0000

Sorry if someone has already asked this:
Im using firefox 3.5 on my mac. When I click a link to open in a new tab I dont want to switch to it immediately. I have un-ticked the “When I open a new tab, switch to it immediately” option but this still doesnt help.
This worked fine in firefox 3.0.
Any suggestions why this could be? Its really bugging me!

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:25:52 +0000

Another thing I’ve seen with Firefox that bugs me (not just 3.5; I believe in earlier versions too) is that on certain sites, using the ‘find’ feature (using Ctrl-F and the find bar at the bottom), the search is occasionally VERY slow, pausing for 1-2 seconds for every character I type as it searches the page with every character I type.

By: Magnifico!

Magnifico! — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 09:58:48 +0000

Elric, You appear to be the only one whining. Got an issue, get a tissue.