Tab Utilities revived

[stux]

Hang on tight! This is going to be a long post...

tl;dr:
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• Real-life priorities have taken my time away from this project. I haven't even had a chance to look at FF 27.0. I will look at FF 27.0 compatibility issues when I get some time and get my stuff in better order (I hope sooner rather than later).
• Sorry, no planned support for Australis in the immediate future (please use FF 24.0 ESR whenever possible).
• Ask Mozilla to leave a non-australis option in place or ditch their plans.
• Please see bug reporting instructions below
• Many thanks for the positive reviews and words of appreciation!

Australis:
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I'm trying it on Nightly channel with Australis but the TabStack feature doesn't work... I switched the "extensions.tabutils.dragToStack" option to true but still nothing happens... please fix it!!!

(source)

First, the difficult news:

So it is my understanding that the New Australis Theme has made it to nightly and is one step closer to becoming standard Firefox fare. It has also been pointed out that Tab Utilities does not work in Australis. To be honest, this has me a bit worried. Real life priorities have meant that I did not give this project the time it needed and have not achieved my goals in learning the TU code. That means that I don't know if I will be able to deliver an Australis-compatible version of TU by the time it gets released with Firefox. (I also don't know what ithinc is up to or if he's even working on making TU compatible with Australis.)

As a contingency, I would highly recommend that TU users migrate to Firefox 24.0 ESR should that eventuality come to pass (I know that's not feasible for everybody). There are also Australis-free builds made but I don't know if those options will make it to release. Absolute worst case, I will have to make sure TUP is ready for the next ESR release (probably FF 31). I am a Pale Moon user and they do their best to maintain some the original Firefox 3.x interface features and, as I understand it correctly, they too are sticking to the ESR release for compatibility; and they're also waiting to see what comes out of this Australis mess.

[Warning: Rant. Please ignore if you don't like rants.]
That leads me to my little rant about Firefox development: I am entirely new to Firefox Development and have found it dismaying how fast things change in firefox and how much work it is *just to keep your add-on in working order*. It seems to me FF developers are focusing on making Firefox look more and more like Chrome and in the process are leaving developers in the dust. (This is part of a larger 'app'-centric development trend I see which I'm not a fan of, but I won't go into that here.) I believe that Extensions are a big part of what made FF great and Firefox, as an environment, should be making this development easier, not harder on the developer. Browser components should be treated as an API and API components should not change this frequently.
However, in the end, I am but one voice, and I seem to be in the vocal minority. I can go on and on and rant and complain, but it seems things are not changing any time soon. In the name of progress, or so it's called, things have become like this.
[end of rant]

Bug Reporting:
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If you have a bug or an issue to report (this is primarily for those posting on the AMO reviews page), please list bug reports in the forum here, instead of using the reviews page for bug reporting. It is easier for me to respond and gather information that I need here.

When reporting a bug, please list the following information:

• Version of Firefox that you're using.
• Version of Tab Utilities that's installed.
• List the steps that I need to make to replicate the bug or issue.

NOTE: If the bug is Australis-related please do not file a bug report. See above for details.

Please try to rule out interference with other add-ons my disabling them systemtatically.

As I mentioned above, adding new features or functionality beyond the original Tab Utilities is of low priority, but I will strive to maintain existing functionality (once I get my personal priorities in order) or re-package ithinc's code .

I apologize for not having been able to devote much time at all to the project in the last few months. Personal concerns have taken me away from this project. I hope I am able to devote more time to TUP again in the near future.

Bug Report Responses:
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pintassilgo:

These are default behaviours of original Opera tab stacking.

Regarding these behaviors, I have also noticed other unexpected tab stack behavior. For now I'm keeping current behavior as-is. Once I start working on some of this logic I will change it so it matches the way you describe it, since it makes more sense (or maybe even make it an option).

If you remove it from tabutils.js the problem disappears, but I don't know if there are side effects.

I'll have to look at that when I get a chance. Thank you for the detailed bug reports!

I may have missed some bug reports (especially from the AMO page). I will try to respond to those later. Even if I can't address them right away I will try to make sure I make note of the bugs reported thus far.

Thank you:
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Since it's been such while, I wanted to thank everybody who is using (and have tested) this version of Tab Utilities. Thank you for the kind words and positive reviews :

So far, it's good.
thx for your effort.

Yes, no problems here so far.

Thank you very much for your work.

reported here as working proper including external links.

I've been using pre9 for a while and I have to say it works perfectly! Thank you very much, it is one of the best add-ons for FF!

You're welcome! I am sorry I cannot dedicate the time to this project that it needs but I'll keep working on it and give it what time I can!

PHOENIX from the ashes

Nice project name.

Thank you! I thought at the time that the name was fitting .

I hope you can follow the way ithinc brought new FF features to us.

And THANK YOU (and all others) for continuing TU maintenance and (maybe) development!

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to give it as much time as I wanted. I will try to do whatever maintenance I can given the circumstances

Thank you Keith94 and WokingWounded also for assisting other users :

When i go to close other tabs i get a confirm close pop up, how do i disable that?

Go to this page and double click the preference to disable it:
about:config?filter=browser.tabs.warnOnCloseOtherTabs

Now that 26 is out...can someone confirm basic compatibility?

I've just updated to FF26 and it seems to work OK

Thank you again to everyone who has supported this add-on!

Future Plans:
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As mentioned above, I haven't been able to devote any time to this project in the last month and a half. Going forward my time available for this project will also be limited, at least in the near future. I will try to provide updates as things change.

If ithinc releases new, australis-compatible versions (that are also FF24 compatible) I will integrate it into the code. He has set up a Git Repo as well so I should be able to fork it and allow for external development as well (for those who wish to diretly contribute to the project).

I have several options/things to look at for future development:

• Do what I can to maintain and hope Australis doesn't break absolutely everything. This is the likely short term scenario.
• I may end up having to start from scratch. This means thoroughly understanding ithinc's code and hopefully being able to refactor it so that it is more modular and easier to maintain. This is the most likely long term scenario but also the most time consuming.
• Fork Firefox. While really I wish I could do that I have neither the time, tools or familiarity with the code in order to undertake such a monumenal task. It shall, for now, remain a dream of mine.

That's all for now folks. Thank you for your time, patience and understanding and thank you for flying...

[WokingWounded]

Anybody got feedback on compatibility with Firefox 27.0?

[keyman]

I don't have feedback on 27.0.1 specific to "Tab Utilities revived" other than all the functions I've tried have been functional. However, I recommend against upgrading to 27.0 or 27.01. I have seen a dramatic jump in the number of crashes since upgrading. I have submitted 32 crash reports in 5 days of use. I am sure that there were more for which I did not submit crash dumps. Across the board crashes per user on 27.0* are running between double to 5x that of 26.0 (depending on what time frame you are looking at).

Initially, I reverted to 26.0 within less than 36 hours of moving to 27.0*. I have only gone back to it because I looked at my crash dumps and there was one group which was in a localized section of code. Thus, I felt it might be helpful to try to find a repeatable test case. I would still be on 26.0 if not for that. I am probably on the high end of crashes per user, seeing 10, or more, times as many on 27.0* than on 26.0.

My crashes on 27.0* do not appear to be TU specific.

[WokingWounded]

Thanks. I'll stick to 26.0. Any way to suppress the FF reminders to upgrade which keep bothering me?

[Starquest]

How do you unlock tabs with this utility? I accidentally locked a tab and it seems the only way to get rid of it is to kill Firefox and uncheck it at session restore. For the life of I cannot figure out how to unlock tabs. I googled it up and down.

[Starquest]

How do you unlock tabs with this utility? I accidentally locked a tab and it seems the only way to get rid of it is to kill Firefox and uncheck it at session restore. For the life of I cannot figure out how to unlock tabs. I googled it up and down.

I figured it out. It doesn't have anything to do with this utility. It's a Firefox built-in "feature."

To unlock a tab in Firefox:

Search for the page in the History. Click on the page and remove the tags (locked, protected, whatever) at the bottom. I don't know how a certain URL got locked (my guess is a keyboard shortcut that I accidentally hit), but there was no simple way to unlock it.

[NickJH]

To unlock, probably Ctl+Alt+L, or in the Tab Utilities Options > Appearance > Menus make sure the Lock Tab box is checked. You then get a context menu option when you right-click on a tab.

[Banditz71]

Using 1.6pre9 with FF 29 Beta......I've noticed I can't get "Reload Tab Every" to show up as an option when I right click a tab.....anyone else seeing this issue? Works just fine here on FF 28.........thanks!

[Banditz71]

Well, installed 1.5.27 and the "Reload Tab Every" option is back (in FF 29 Beta)........

[NickJH]

Hi,
With the update to Ff29 I am having a couple of issues. Formatting tabs (TU Options > Appearance > Tabs) no longer seems to work with the options I use (red text for locked, bold for current). Also I've changed the mouse option alt-click on a tab to lock the tab this no longer works. Is there any intention to fix these.

FWIW the original TU has removed the formatting of locked tabs, presumably for a similar reason. I would love not to use the option as I don't like the TU method of overlaying the favicon with another icon.

[jetman]

I haven't been using the full suite of TU's capabilities, but until FF 33.0, I've been very satisfied. Essentially I use TU just to control how and when new tabs are opened. Then I observed a situation, where it (TU) is interfering w/ FF itself. As of the most recent FF update (33.0), one can't manually navigate to an URL via the Address Bar from a new tab or otherwise. Firefox will work normally if the URL is launched via the OS's Run dialog box - confirmed as of yesterday w/ Lubuntu 14.04) and Windows 7. Disabled each extension individually, to isolate the culprit.

[Banditz71]

Being discussed here: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=1702465&start=2625