Is there a way to add a Previous Tab button?

[raywood]

There used to be an add-on, called Toolbar Buttons I think, that provided what its name suggests. Among its buttons, there was one for Next Tab. Drag that button to the toolbar in Customize, click on the button, and the focus moved from the present to, you guessed it, the next tab. This functionality, using the very same button, now appears in the glorious albeit obscure nextTab addon. (I forget how to work with the URL button here, but it's at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nexttab/.)

We come, then, to the title of the present post. The creator of the brilliant yet almost completely overlooked nextTab addon has somehow not yet gotten around to creating its counterpart, to wit, the widely anticipated though oddly unmentioned previousTab addon -- which is to say, it doesn't exist. This would be the essence of the question I bring to you, then: why not? Or no, actually, what I really care more about is, is there a way? Could the world yet see a latter-day resuscitation of the sadly truncated functionality of the esteemed Toolbar Buttons addon?

The benefit of the buttons is just that they enable a truly lazy user mouse around in the upper right corner of the Firefox window, clicking Previous and Next and the Close Tab X button and so forth. They can be convenient.

[the-edmeister]

What's the problem with using the "Go back one page" button? The "back history" is displayed for each tab; switch to a different open tab and the history changes.


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[kerft]

If your mouse has a wheel, you can go to about:config and set or create toolkit.tabbox.switchByScrolling to true. Now, mouse wheel up while hovering the tab bar will switch to previous tab, mouse wheel down will switch to the next tab. Note that in Firefox settings you may want to check the box for Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order. Also if you have too many tabs so they overflow it will not work.

[raywood]

The-edmeister -- what I'm asking about is a button to switch to the previous tab, not the previous page within a tab. Sorry if my attempt at flowery prose yielded misdirection.

Kerft -- that's a handy tweak. Thanks. Regrettably, I may be in the "too many tabs" category. If "overflow" means I get the < and > symbols indicating there are more tabs to the left and right, that is and often will be the case. Regarding which, I am still mourning the loss of Tab Mix Plus, with its multiple rows of tabs. Anyway, for whatever reason, after that about:config adjustment, my mouse wheel scrolls the tabs but does not change the focus to the previous (or any other) tab.

I wish I knew enough to tweak the line in nextTab that would create previousTab, or to update Toolbar Buttons for the current FF.

[morat]

The previous tab and next tab commands are supported with the Foxy Gestures extension.

Foxy Gestures
http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/foxy-gestures/
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxygestures
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxyges ... reGestures

Foxy Gestures User Scripts
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxyges ... er-Scripts

[ZekeBlue]

The-edmeister -- what I'm asking about is a button to switch to the previous tab, not the previous page within a tab.

Simple extension that works fine for me:

[raywood]

Most Recent Tab would work for a somewhat different purpose. Sadly, no option to configure it to move the focus to the next tab to the left.

I looked at Foxy Gestures. I see where it's apparently possible to configure it to move to the previous tab (not sure if that means left tab or most recent tab) in response to a certain mouse gesture. I didn't see an option to add a button to that end.

But thanks for the suggestions ...

[Yokai]

The previous tab and next tab commands are supported with the Foxy Gestures extension.

Foxy Gestures
http://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/foxy-gestures/
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxygestures
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxyges ... reGestures

Foxy Gestures User Scripts
http://github.com/marklieberman/foxyges ... er-Scripts

Okay. Thanks for this links. This helped me.

[smsmith]

I looked at Foxy Gestures. I see where it's apparently possible to configure it to move to the previous tab (not sure if that means left tab or most recent tab) in response to a certain mouse gesture. I didn't see an option to add a button to that end.

In the Tab Commands, Go to Previous Tab is the tab to the left of the tab you are on. Go to Next Tab is the tab to the right of the tab you are on.

You can enable this in the rocker gestures of Foxy Gestures. Much more useful in my opinion than a button on the toolbar, since then you have to hunt down the button every time and click it. With a rocker gesture, you press either the right or left mouse button and hold, then press the opposite button. I set it up for me as click and hold the right button then click the left button to go to the previous tab, and click and hold left button and then click right button to go to the next tab.

[raywood]

Thanks for that. I reinstalled Foxy Gestures and am trying to figure out how to add rocker gestures. There doesn't seem to be a section in the options for them.

[smsmith]

Sorry, appears they are called "chord gestures". You can find them in the "Other Gestures" section of Foxy Gestures at the bottom. Alternatively, you could use a wheel gesture, also in the Other Gestures section.

[raywood]

I must be doing it wrong. I go into Firefox's list of installed extensions > Foxy Gestures > Options > Other Gestures tab > Enable chord gestures > Left + Right > select Go to Next Tab. I go to a tab > hold left mouse button > click right mouse button. It doesn't move anywhere; it just opens up the tab context menu.

On the positive side, I did discover that, when the mouse cursor is on a tab, holding the right mouse button and scrolling the wheel moves me left- or rightward along the list of tabs, better than the > and < buttons at the ends of the row of unpinned tabs.

[smsmith]

Gestures won't work on the extension's settings page, add-on page, addons.mozilla.org, mozilla.org, the Firefox home/new tab page, Firefox settings and some others I am probably forgetting. It's a limitation that Mozilla put in place to prevent extensions from modifying those pages. Switch to another tab and then try the gesture.

[raywood]

Huh. Still no joy. I killed & restarted Firefox, but that didn't help. I'm using FF Quantum 66.0.1, if that makes any difference.

[smsmith]

See if this image helps you get it setup correctly:
https://imgur.com/tZta9VV

The Go to Next Tab command is listed under "Tab Commands". Same with Go to Previous Tab.