Firefox 2.0 has been out for a while, and the response to it has been mostly positive.
However, there were a couple of changes to how tabs work, and I, for one, didn’t like them at all. Looking around, I found the solution to one of them, and the other one was pretty easy to figure out.
Here’s the changes, and how to “undo” them:
1- “X” close button on every tab
This one, to me, qualifies for the “What were they thinking?” award. 
Don’t people know that you can close any tab simply by middle-clicking on it (yes, even on Linux)? Not to mention that the “X” button is both harder to click on than the entire tab, and makes it easy to close tabs by mistake, when you just wanted to select it? In other words, there’s already an easy way, and they add a more difficult way, which, besides, can easy lead to mistakes?
Sigh. Sorry about the rant.
Fix: open about:config, look for browser.tabs.closeButtons, and set it to 2 (no close buttons) or 3 (a single close button on the right of the tabs, like in previous Firefoxes - though, again, middle-click makes it useless).
2- tabs don’t get smaller past a certain point; if you have too many, you need to scroll the tab bar to see them all
Maybe I’m weird, but I have tab folders with 10-15 bookmarks of a particular subject, and I like to open them all, with a single click, daily. In Firefox 1.x, the tabs would get as small as they needed to be, to fit in the window. Now, they don’t get smaller than a certain size, and force the user to scroll.
To me, this is annoying. I haven’t found an option to completely disable this behavior, but I can make it virtually go away by reducing the minimum tab width to a much smaller value.
Fix: open about:config, and change browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to a much smaller value, like 1.
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Nice. Didn’t like those 2 new featues in FF2 either.
Thanks.
Uhhh? Obviously everyone *knew* that triple-click-control-middle-abcde-enter-enter-space(*) with your leg above your back would close a tab. What would *you* be thinking about? If Apple has close buttons on each tab, and not a single close at the right side, nor no-buttons at all, what do you think is the best user experience?
(*) did you know that most computer-savy users *still* don’t know about the right mouse button? Unbelievable, but true.
Not on my firefox, no. For me, middle click will paste the content of the clipboard and try to open it either on the current tab, or the tab where it was middle-clicked on. I find this immensely handy! And TabX was always one of the first extensions I’d install, so for me this new behaviour is as it should have always been. So I would not call it “what were they thinking”, I’d actually call it sane.
As for the tabs not going below a certain width, I say that’s a good thing too. It always annoyed me to no end that the tabs would get so small you couldn’t figure out what they actually were. On a 1900×1200 lcd and with firefox maximized, too. It could be better, of course, if instead of having the user scroll the tab bar to find the tab he’s looking for, it’d wrap them onto the next row. Multi-row tabs, now that I’d buy for a dollar!
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
[quote post="374"]Different strokes for different folks, I guess.[/quote]
Indeed.
To me, the “middle-click pastes on Linux” was one of the most annoying things, until I found out how to disable it. How often do I need to paste an address, anyway? Most of the time, I click on one (or middle-click, to open it in a new tab)…
And I find the thought of NOT seeing all my tabs at once (even if I cannot read the text in each one) unacceptable. Horizontal scrolling - whenever in a page, or in a tab list - is the work of the devil.
All scrolling should be vertical.
But, hey, the Firefox developers seem to agree with you…
Oh well. Now anyone has a choice: leave it as it is, or change it.
By the way, I wouldn’t like more than one tab row, as it might cause the main window to move down when opening a new tab, then up when you close a tab, then down again… It’s an “animation” I wouldn’t want.
To my taste TAB functionality in 2.0 became worse in certain aspects.
I am using the tabmix plus extension to set features to my liking and I am glad, that it still works in firefox 2.
With tab mix plus I can set the behaviour of the middle click as well as having a close button on every tab (left or right justified) and also have another close button on the tab bar (in fact I am using both depending on the situation).
It find it also very !! cumbersome that the new firefox now makes a scrollable tab bar so I set tab mix to wrap tabs multi-row (Display -> TabBar -> When Tabs don’t fit…)
add on:
As I suffer lightly with RSI symptoms I am always looking for solutions with minimal clicks, keystrokes or pointer movements. Sometimes I would wish developers had the same problems so that they are more likely to come up with more ergonomic solutions or offer customization options.
I have replaced my mouse with a pen tablet but unfortunately I have no middle click button on the pen. So I am using the close button on every tab, but when I want to close many tabs it is much more convenient to use a general close as I do not have to move the pointer between clicks.
“Don’t people know that you can close any tab simply by middle-clicking on it?”
No. Especially since the middle button could be set to do other things.
Following your logic, maybe there should be no close button on the corners of windows. I think it is more consistent UI behavior to have them on each tab, as well.
Three words: five-button mouse. You’ll never go back.
There’s also Ctrl F4 for when I’m on my laptop with no mouse.
Or you could simply use the “show/hide close tab button with mouse-over” userstyle (http://userstyles.org/styles/835). I especially like it when combined with protected tabs, or better yet the PermaTabs extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2558).