Firefox 3.6 tips and tweak
Here are five quick tips to enhance your Firefox 3.6 experience.
1. Open links in the tab bar far right
In Firefox 3.6, links opened from a web page (middle-clicking on them or from the context menu) open to the right of the current page to keep related content closer by default. To restore the previous behavior, access the advanced preferences by visiting about:config, then look for preference browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent and set it to false.
2. Enable tab previews
If you prefer to see tabs thumbnails when switching tabs with Ctrl + Tab, set browser.ctrlTab.previews to true via about:config.
3. Enable tab previews menu button
Convert the list all tabs button (far right in the tab bar), set browser.allTabs.previews to true via about:config.
4. Tab previews hotkey
To quickly access the all tabs preview panel (once enabled) and search press Shift + Ctrl + Tab.
5. Hide the menu bar
On Windows, you can now hide the menu bar to gain a few thousand pixels for the actual content. Right-click on the menu bar and uncheck Menu Bar. To show it temporarily, press the Alt key.
Comments
Olh
Percy, I think you should mention that these preferences are accessible via about:config, otherwise newbies won’t know what to do.
Percy CabelloJanuary 24th, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Definitely! Thanks very much for the heads up. Updated.
Kamahl
Personally, I’ve been using the ‘new’ method since 2.0 (Tab mix plus, and then above preference).
I find the scrolling to the end of my tab bar and back for one tab (On average that’s past about 90 tabs each way) is way too much effort, even with Chrome’s tab shrinking.
jimmy
Nice tips! But after I restart the Firefox,the setting is fine,but the function doesn’t work,so I need to go to the “about:config” page to switch again,and the function will back.
Are there any method to keep these settings even I close the Firefox?
ffextensionguru
Percy, thanks for the great tips. Adding them to my blog and Wiki.
vinitneo
Nice tips. Thank you very much. The features like Tab preview are working very well then why haven’t Mozilla enabled it by default?
RichH
Thanks for the tip on the tabs behaviour — this was driving me nuts! I do a lot of research and find the IE mode of the tabs opening adjacent to be extremely frustrating for keeping track of flow of how I got from point A to B as they get all out of order. This should be a checkbox option in the Tools-Options-Tabs area instead of needing to use the “about” method.
Thanks.
Firefox new tab behavior to be updated - Mozilla Links
[...] For people looking for a way to disable this behavior, check this post. Posted on January 11, 2009 – 11:58 pm || More on Firefox, Firefox 3.5, [...]
Alfa
Thanks, thnks for the tip #1. I desided to install Google Gambie browser, because of this RARE behavoiur of Firefox, wich you can not disable in Options.
Marcel
Just wondering, do you also know a way to get automatically back to the previous selected tab when closing another tab (or just to the tab to the left)? For instance, when insertRelatedAfterCurrent is set, middle-clicking on a link opens a new tab directly to the right of the current tab. After viewing this tab, I close it, but then I am dropped at the tab to the right of the previously open tab, not at its ‘parent’ one to the left.
Denis
Many of this behaviour was implemented on Ctrl-Tab addon:
Dan
+1 to tip #1… opening new tabs directly to the right of the ‘parent’ tab was a horrible idea. pro tip: just because Microsoft does something doesn’t mean it is a Good Thing.
Robert
Thank you so much for #1. I was actually considering downgrading to 3.5 and disable updates for the sole purpose of not having tabs open right next to current tab.
Kudos!
Mohan
Cool tips, I like #5 as it really molds into Vista/7 UI. Looks like all of them except #5 work on my Ubuntu systems. Thanks. :D
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Dwight StegallJanuary 26th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Read it again. I does say that.
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