You know, I’ve loved Firefox for a long, long time. I can’t live without my tabbed browsing, I’m literally lost without it, but with Firefox 2.0 someone at Mozilla has totally dropped the ball when it comes to the most compelling feature I use Firefox for, and that’s the tabs feature. You see, I like the way tabs work in Firefox 1.5. I like the fact I can have 30 of them open and see them all on the Tab Bar. I like that I don’t have to go to each tab to close it, that I can just click on the top right hand corner to close the tab (indeed, it’s this very reason I won’t use Opera because I love my close box there). Firefox 2.0 does away with both features in a standard install, and the new version plays like the latest version of Opera…and even worse is a new feature called Scrolling Tabs. IT’S AWFUL. Instead of seeing all your tabs you now only see about 8 of them, to go to a tab outside of this you need to scroll like you would with an opened Window where the picture was too big…scroll to the right to see the rest of the pic, but you’ve then got to scoll back to see the left hand side. Awful. Indeed, I’d suggest there are going to be a lot of very pissed off Firefox users when they discover how much the Mozilla team has totally mucked up a tab system that worked brilliantly.
But there is hope. After far too long trawling Google and the Firefox/ MozDev forums, you can fix both problems. To remove the X from each tab and to put it back on the right hand side like it should be, and was in earlier versions, do as follows in Firefox:
– In the Address Bar type “about:config”?Ǭù and hit Enter.
– Right-Click and select New then Integer.
– A box pops up requesting the Preference Name, enter browser.tabs.closeButtons then press OK to go on.
-Then type 3 to set the X back where it belongs.
To remove Scrolling Tabs (info from Cybertechnews via the Moz forums)
1. Start Firefox.
2. In the Address Bar type “about:config” and press Enter.
3. Right-Click and select New Integer.
4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter “browser.tabs.tabMinWidth”?Ǭù (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
5. Select a the minimum value that you want for the width of the tabs (I set mine to 0 and the default value is 125). Then press OK again.
6. Right-Click and select New->Integer.
7. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter “browser.tabs.tabClipWidth”?Ǭù (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
8. I also set this value to 0 but you may choose whatever minimum you would like. The default value is 115. Then press OK again.
I’ve done both and now I’m a lot happier…having said this though the Mozilla team should build in the ability to tweak this stuff from the Options menu…if only because I’ve donated to them before and I say so! 🙂
Tags: Firefox
