Bring the old style tabs back!!

Ahriman · Post by **Ahriman** » October 25th, 2006, 5:39 am

Well, I'm also one that hates the "new" tabs, specially the scrolling thing.

As for the close button, the "old" way was so simple as making a middle click, without the complicated procedure described by some previous poster. Ditto that, however it is a good thing to be able to choose the close button position with the browser.tabs.closeButtons option but I agree that it shouldn't be hidden into the about:config

There is a FF 1.5 theme for the people that hates the new look: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3479/
but I still have not tried it, so I don't know how well it works.

rikyo · Post by **rikyo** » October 25th, 2006, 5:50 am

This is horrible.

Now I can get only 10 tabs in the same space I could get twice as many before.

Now it takes two clicks to change to a far-off tab: one to scroll and one to click; or a click and then a scroll if you use the tablist. This is <b>inefficient</b>.

Tabbrowser plus destroys the whole display on an intel mac, so that's not an option.

Thanks for the tip on getting the close button back, but the minwidth thing doesn't seem to stop it from scrolling. ?.

EDIT: yes, minwidth works, but only for newly-opened tabs.

dickvl · Post by **dickvl** » October 25th, 2006, 5:52 am

http://userstyles.org/style/show/891 Tabs with system appearance
http://userstyles.org/style/show/1086 Flat tabs

Hugues · Post by **Hugues** » October 25th, 2006, 7:35 am

And did anyone find a way to get rid of the "List all tabs" menu-tab ?

dickvl · Post by **dickvl** » October 25th, 2006, 7:47 am

Choose what you want to remove: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 58#2529358

LeiraHoward · Post by **LeiraHoward** » October 25th, 2006, 8:05 am

For what it's worth, I did the following:

(1) set browser.tabs.closeButtons to "2" (this disables the close buttons entirely- you could also use "3" to keep the close button in the upper right hand corner)
(2) set browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to "10" (this says that once all the tabs shrink to 10 pixels wide, THEN it will have the scrolling arrows, but not until)

With a 1024x768 screen resolution, I was able to open 50 tabs before it started scrolling.

(Note: The setting only takes effect on recently-opened tabs- I just closed FF and restarted to see the changes.)

Hugues · Post by **Hugues** » October 25th, 2006, 8:37 am

dickvl wrote:Choose what you want to remove: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 58#2529358

Ty Dickvl.

I've used this in usrChrome.css and got rid of the "List all tabs" item:

Code: Select all

.tabs-alltabs-stack{
display: none !important;
}

SLovett · Post by **SLovett** » October 25th, 2006, 10:12 am

agree with OP and most others - the new tab default behaviour is terrible, particularly the scrolling feature. it's clumsy and inefficient. the close button on each is redundant, given the right-click as mentioned above.

for some it may work, but I don't understand why this new feature isn't just made optional.

PS: just so I don't sound too whiny, I really, really appreciate the work of the firefox developers, and this is my only complaint about an otherwise great release.

PPS: heh - did you notice the built-in spellcheck underlines "firefox"?

ziddey · Post by **ziddey** » October 25th, 2006, 1:30 pm

Wow I knew I wasn't crazy but I never would have expected this level of response. I sure hope the developers get site of this and note it clearly for what they need to fix in the next version. The end close button was one of the best traits and I'm glad to have it back. Like said, if I need to close a tab when I'm on it, I'll middle click. The 10 width trick is working well for allowing more, thanks

. And the bar on top of the active tab was exactly what I was looking for. Sure the way it currently is has a distinction between active and background tabs, but it requires more than a simple quick glance. Bravo.

L.A.R. Grizzly · Post by **L.A.R. Grizzly** » October 25th, 2006, 2:22 pm

Hugues wrote:If someone knows how to remove the 'List all tabs' tab, ty for sharing.

You need to add this line to your userChrome.css file:

.tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox + stack { display: none !important; }

Remove Tab Drop Down

rikyo · Post by **rikyo** » October 25th, 2006, 5:26 pm

It's almost there...

dickvl wrote:http://userstyles.org/style/show/891 Tabs with system appearance
http://userstyles.org/style/show/1086 Flat tabs

It's interesting (would have liked some sort of further explanation or comment, btw), but that looks really, REALLY ugly on a mac. I don't want all of those looks now, just reducing the padding in the tabs (especially the trailing space). Which items would I use in userChrome.css ?

dickvl · Post by **dickvl** » October 25th, 2006, 5:48 pm

I guess that this is a better solution to remove the 'List all tabs' button:
.tabs-alltabs-stack{display: none !important;}

ziddey · Post by **ziddey** » October 25th, 2006, 6:48 pm

Damn, I don't believe in the whole windows theming thing. Is there another for making the active tab more apparent? The flat one is kind of wonky. The one before that requires the xp theme.

Lost User 240852 · Post by **Lost User 240852** » October 25th, 2006, 7:09 pm

Um...guys, consider that FF1.5 had been the ONLY browser out there with a single close button to the right. ALL other browser that I am aware of have had close button on each tab since the very beginning of their implementation of tabs. Are all the other guys simply crazy to be implementing their tab close button so? I don't think so. They do it that way because from UI perspective, it's MUCH more efficient straightforward to use.

First of all, having close button on each tab removes any doubt as to which tab the user is closing. Mouse's primary advantage over the keyboard was the visual straightforwardness it offers. If you want to close tabs in rapid succession or something to that effect, you should be opting for the keyboard shortcut anyway. Mouse's primary function should not be compromised for something that can be achieved through other basic devices.

Having a single close button, as pointed out by an anonymous guest, makes tab management very cluttersome as well. Those two favor the middle click approach, here's a reason why that's something to avoid when designing any sensible platform independent UI.

There's nothing visible ANYWHERE that indicates the middle click induces such behavior. NOTHING. How should ot occur to an average user that middle clicking would close the tab?

Also consider:

1. There are people who don't have a scroll wheeled mouse. Heck, over in Mac platform, many users don't even have a right button.
2. The wheel itself doesn't look like a button at all. I've met dozens of people who didn't know that the wheel had such a function.

I myself have a scroll wheel mouse, but despise any application that forces me to click on it. Wheel's function is to scroll, and it usually has MUCH more resistance than the other buttons on the mouse to prevent accidental clicking while scrolling- making for a very unnatural clicking experience.

Also, I've mentioned that EVERY other browser that currently has any considerable user base has close button on each of its tabs. This means for everyone except the hardcore firefox users, that's "the way it's always been" for tabs - making the switch to firefox is that much easier if they choose to do so. Why should they deny newcomers of familiar interface when old interface was so illogical from UI perspective?

rikyo · Post by **rikyo** » October 25th, 2006, 7:38 pm

I don't care about the closing tabs aspect. It's the getting-to-the-other-tabs aspect that was bugging me. In that respect, the scrolling-to-get-more-tabs bit is far more annoying.