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
Thanks for the tips, I kept instinctively going to the right hand side to click the X and wondering why it wasn’t there…now everything is back as it should be.
I middle click on tabs to close them. As long as that still works with whatever magic plugin is making that happen, I don’t care where they put the X.
Only allowing 8 tabs on the screen is pretty stupid. If that’s still there when the beta period is done, I’ll be changing it the way you described.
No probs Karura, I had the exact same problem.
Mike, I didn’t know that about firefox, although I did know middle clicking on a link opens the link in a new tab..which reminds me, one thing I do love about the new Firefox is the feature that forces links to open in a new tab as opposed to a new window: it’s brilliant!
Firefox is the best browser I ever used! I.E. was always closeing and/or was a pain to find anything.
Do you happen to know if Vista will be Firefox useable? 🙂
BTW…where can I find a music player for Firefox?
Quicktime will not work.
couldn’t agree more, the first thing I thought after opening FF2 was, Who Broke My Tabs? I was truly annoyed and googled until I found your page with what looks like a fix. ridiculous anti-user engineering from the firefox team.
if they want better tab visibility (not that you need it with favicons and personal memory) why not 2 or more tab bars, stacked? a limit of 8 is insane and the scrolling “feature” is a bad joke. kind of, er defeats the whole purpose of having tabs in the first place. what were they smoking?
hooray it worked! next question, how to get rid of that stupid “list all tabs” button which is wasting space on the RHS of the tab bar? don’t need it now that I can see all my tabs again.
I love DeAnander’s question but I have another one to add to that. How do you move the left scroll arrow over to the right like it was in Firefox 1.5? I REALLY want to know this one!
Phoenix
ght ok
To hide the “list all tabs” button, you will need to edit the userChrome.css file.
It is located (in WinXP)
C:\Documents and Settings\(user)\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXX.default\chrome\
if you have a userChrome-example.css just rename it to userChrome.css
Add this line to the bottom of the file:
.tabs-alltabs-stack {display: none !important;}
Additionally if you want the the “list all tabs” button shown only when the tabs overflow, use this instead:
.tabbrowser-tabs:not([overflow=”true”]) > .tabs-alltabs-stack {display: none !important;}
sweet stuff, Feel exactly the same way about those two things. Thanks alot for the Tips, now all I gotta get rid of is the CSS problem I am having.
Cheers,
Awsome tips! I googled firefox tab close button and i found the FAQon the firefoc website. It fixed the close button problem. But then I noticed the limit of 8 tabs. Nothing about this in the FAQ. I was about to downgrade to version 1.5 when I googled “I hate the new firefox”. This page came up and your gripes were the same as mine. Good Show! I wonder what else we have in common. Great minds think alike, but you were the one who figgure out how to fix the problem. Right on! –Jon in California
Thanks for posting about how to fix the scrolling tabs – they were driving me crazy!
Do you have a solution for Firefox’s disabling the contextual menu one used to get when clicking and holding on a link (on a Mac)? Now you have to hit control and click. It’s really annoying.
Actually, I found a fix for what I just complained about and I thought I’d post it here in case others surf in via google, the way I did.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=478405&postdays=0&postorder=asc&postsperpage=15&start=15&sid=45aebe99b53bacf2b83f40534eea9e27
To fix contexual menus on a Mac, so that you only have to click and hold to get them, not press control, click and hold, go to the about:config, search on “click”. The last thing listed should be called ui.click_hold_context_menus – just double click on it to change “false” to “true”, and contextual menus will work again as they did in Firefox 1.5.