New tabbed browsing behavior (in Firefox trunk builds)

beltzner · Post by **beltzner** » January 20th, 2006, 10:11 pm

rschultz2002 wrote:I want options. This build I have now if you try to install an Extention it opens a new window and wants to download it. I do not want to download I want to install. It did it with these.

Thanks for the additional feedback! There are some options (all hidden for now, we haven't put in any UI around them) that you can tweak. Details <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308396#c14">are in comment 14 of bug 308386.</a>

What options would you consider the most important? It's a tricky business, preferences. We don't want to overload the user with edge cases, but we do want to let them control the things that they'll most often want to control.

Post by **BenBasson** » January 20th, 2006, 10:21 pm

I can't think of anything related to these changes that needs UI. Tabbed browsing by default is great and so is the addition of the close buttons. The focus stuff is probably too complex to leverage in preferences, hidden or not.

It might be nice if there were a convenience preference that reverts the behaviour (i.e. a single close tab button on the right) for the people who don't like the change (the "old" behaviour is well established in Firefox), but this could be entirely handled by an extension, so it's neither here nor there.

RyanVM · Post by **RyanVM** » January 20th, 2006, 10:22 pm

Is it just me or has the middle click behavior changed? When I middle click on a tab to close it, it then makes the first tab the active tab instead of the one immediately to the right as was previously the case.

EDIT: Hmm, appears to be an issue with TBP 1.2.8.8. If I disable it, the behavior reverts back to normal.

supernova_00 · Post by **supernova_00** » January 20th, 2006, 10:27 pm

Thanks mike.

One thing I noticed that could be changed. Might be hard to explain since i can't remember what its called but something like z-index hirearchy. Basically you close a tab, firefox focuses the parent of that tab. I think a better approach would be...

Parent tab 1
Parent tab 2
- child tab 2.1
- child tab 2.2
-child tab 2.2.1
Parent tab 3

Close the child tab 2.2 and focus is set to child tab 2.2.1 and not Parent tab 2.

Hope that makes sense.

ispiked · Post by **ispiked** » January 20th, 2006, 10:43 pm

I would be very grateful to anyone who comes up with a userChrome.css hack to disable the close buttons on tabs, and make it so the active tab is not made wider. (This is a killer when one uses ~30 tabs.)

supernova_00 · Post by **supernova_00** » January 20th, 2006, 11:00 pm

ispiked wrote:I would be very grateful to anyone who comes up with a userChrome.css hack to disable the close buttons on tabs, and make it so the active tab is not made wider. (This is a killer when one uses ~30 tabs.)

here

mbeltzner wrote:Thanks for the additional feedback! There are some options (all hidden for now, we haven't put in any UI around them) that you can tweak. Details <a href="http://Anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=308396#c14">are in comment 14 of bug 308386.</a>

elart · Post by **elart** » January 20th, 2006, 11:05 pm

I don'like it
With some extension that i don't remember i was able to close tab with a double click on it.
I don't like the close button on the tab because sometime when i choose the tab i click on it and i close tab, the double click on the tab is much better (with old two button mouse the middle mouse click don't work).

Can you make this as a default ?

Go Firefox go.

beltzner · Post by **beltzner** » January 21st, 2006, 12:36 am

supernova_00 wrote:Parent tab 1
Parent tab 2
- child tab 2.1
- child tab 2.2
-child tab 2.2.1
Parent tab 3

Close the child tab 2.2 and focus is set to child tab 2.2.1 and not Parent tab 2.

That should be the way things work now. The heuristic we're using is "if a link opens a new tab with focus, when that tab is closed, focus returns to its parent tab only if the user has not manually switched to another tab." Otherwise the behaviour is close-to-right as before.

What this means is that if you're browsing and you click on a link that opens a new tab with focus at the rightmost edge of your tabstrip, if your next tab interaction is to close that tab, you go back to where you opened it from. Here's an example: I've got three tabs open, and I'm focused on tab #2. I click a link that says "see a diagram" and it opens a new tab with the diagram in it as tab #5. I look at the diagram and close the tab; I'm returned to tab #2.

If the tab had opened in the background, or if I'd switched to tab #3 for a second and then back to tab #5, then the whole "back to parent" thing would be forgotten and the tab closing behaviour would be to focus on the next tab to the right, as per usual.

The rationale here is to support the behaviour of drilling down into a link for more information, and then immediately disposing of that information in a way that returns you to the place you were before you drilled down.

TheOneKEA · Post by **TheOneKEA** » January 21st, 2006, 1:40 am

JFEI, TBP is likely to break rather badly with any trunk build after this patch was checked in, and at the moment I don't have the time to make it work correctly.

If anyone can modify TBP to insert the New Tab button into the new <tabbox/> binding and additionally ensure that any old APIs used are converted, I would be most appreciative.

onemen · Post by **onemen** » January 21st, 2006, 2:46 am

Tab MIx Plus also break in some aspect.

ByTor201 · Post by **ByTor201** » January 21st, 2006, 2:54 am

Personally, my only gripe with it is, there's no [X] on the first tab - if it's the only one open. I think it should just go to about:blank as with the older builds.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2006012023

onemen · Post by **onemen** » January 21st, 2006, 3:34 am

mbeltzner,
1. Y close button don't show when there is only one tab ?
2. can user have option not to show close button on tabs , and show the close button on tabbar?

Peter(6) · Post by **Peter(6)** » January 21st, 2006, 3:35 am

ByTor201 wrote:Personally, my only gripe with it is, there's no [X] on the first tab - if it's the only one open. I think it should just go to about:blank as with the older builds.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060120 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2006012023

You are Joe First-Time-User, what would you expect to happen if you would press the [X] the last tab ?
1. The content should be replaced by about:blank ?
-- I don't think so
2. The window should close ?
-- Most likely, but it's an odd way and would probably require a dialog.. so rather not.

Leaving the Option not to display the button at all... kindoff the easy way out.

onemen · Post by **onemen** » January 21st, 2006, 3:58 am

Peter(6) , if user prefer not to hide the tabbar when only one tab open, then the user probably prefer to show the close button on the tab.

1. The content should be replaced by about:blank ?
-- I don't think so

Y not , when you go to tab context menu and click close tab thats what happen

Peter(6) · Post by **Peter(6)** » January 21st, 2006, 4:15 am

onemen wrote:Peter(6) , if user prefer not to hide the tabbar when only one tab open, then the user probably prefer to show the close button on the tab.

1. The content should be replaced by about:blank ?
-- I don't think so
Y not , when you go to tab context menu and click close tab thats what happen

So, the context menu for last tab is wrong and inconsistent.

Reload all tabs
Close other tabs
Close tab

should be grayed out in the context menu for the last tab

#324230[Firefox:Tabbed Browser]-Contextmenu in last tab has too many options [All]