Rebuilding TBE's featureset with other plugins

[TychoQuad]

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NOTICE
I no longer maintain this thread, it has been made obsolete by Firefox's improved native tab support and the following thread:
Rebuilding TBE's featureset with other plugins, II
Be aware that this infomation is by no means current anymore.
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EDIT6: Various updates. Still more to do. Thread mainly doesn't know Firefox 0.9 and later exist :P
EDIT5: Control of TBP Project changed hands from Chris Cook to TheOneKEA
EDIT4: Added Undo Close Tab extension, quasi-added Clone Window (+Grammatical error)
EDIT3: Added headers, and "Not Implimented" section
EDIT2: Updated to page 12, 2 new extensions added to this list.

Be sure to visit [url]update.mozilla.org[/url] before getting your extensions here. they will be more up to date, and you can be sure it will work with your build of Mozilla/Firefox.

Many extensions are avaliable to cover those avaliable in Tabbrowser Extensions, which is oversized, and many believe it contains features that they do not desire, and as such, is bloated. Below is the most popular extensions created to replace TBE. These, and others can be found in the Tabbed section of Extension Room.

TBE Replacement Extensions
Tabbrowser Prefrences by TheOneKEA
Tabbrowser Prefrences when configured so, will force the browser to open new windows into new tabs instead. This is the core extension for many users. Unlike TBE however, it cannot do windows opened by javascript. This isn't too much trouble however, as these windows normally have to be a certain size to work properly anyway. TheOneKEA recently took control of this project, and has been steadily been developing TBP into quite a robust and feature rich extension.

Session Saver by rue
Session Saver will restore all tabs you had in every window when firebird was last closed/crashed. It's simple, works well, and much better than the TBE equivilant.

miniT by Dorando
miniT is a small collection of tab enhancements, most important being the ability to drag and drop tabs. This is great in many ways as you can reorder tabs, and even drop their contents into a text document or bookmark. It also allows you to scroll through tabs using the scrollwheel when the mouse is hovering over the tab bar.

Tab X by clav
Tab X is a new extension created from this thread (and clav of course) It will place the tab close button onto each individual tab. While I personally have no use for it, it seems some people do :) Especially Mac users who have a 1 button mouse.

Blanklast by cch
Blanklast is a simple extension which when closing the last tab, instead of removing the tab bar, will replace the tab with a blank one. A nice simple TBE feature which I have missed since switching to TBE-alternatives. No longer! :)

FLST (Focus Last Selected Tab) by Gorgias
This extension I have been using for awhile, but left out of the first release of this list because it wasnt' requested in this thread. I have added this handy extension on request. This extension simply switches back to the previously selected tab when the one in focus is closed. This combined with miniT's ORCT (Open Right of Current Tab) tweak below give you (or at least me) total control of the creation and removal of tabs.

Undo Close Tab by Dorando
Undo Close Tab will allow you to recreate the last tab you accidentally closed. It works by using the Tools menu option, or middle clicking on the close tab button at the end of the tab bar. Another great extension by Dorando.

Duplicate Tab & Close Tab on Doubleclick by Twanno
Duplicate tab is a nifty extension which allows you to create a copy of any existing tab as a new tab in the same window, or as the only tab in a whole new window. It is also partnered on this site with Close Tab on Doubleclick which is pretty self explanitory.

TBE Replacement Mods and Tab related Browser Tweaks
There are also a few tweaks lying around this thread, such as using miniT to open tabs to the right of the current tab, instead of the end of the tab bar. Type into your address bar "about:config" (minus quotes) and search for "browser.tabs.extensions.open_tab_in" Double click on this entry, and change the value to 2. If this entry does not exist, you can create it by right clicking on an existing entry, and going to new>interger.

Or this in the userchrome.css file to place your tab bar at the bottom of the screen:

Code: Select all

/* Display the Tabbar at the bottom */
#content > tabbox {-moz-box-direction: reverse;}

TBE Features Not Yet Duplicated
By request, I have added this section. Since I can't really be bothered going through TBE and identifying and naming every feature, I'm going to ask you people to tell me what I'm missing from this list. So far, the killer features of TBE not implimented are:

Tabbar/Tab Click/Doubleclick Modifier (some extensions may do these features, such as Close Tab on Doubleclick)

I hope this has been helpful. If I've missed anything, or have anything you think i should add here, please let me know. Pretty much everything i have written above here, i have learnt since starting this thread with the text below. Have a browse if you feel like crossing "mysetery lane" :P

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Okay, people are pretty adamant that you will get better performance out of Firebird by not using TBE. That's fine, I can accept that, but I can't remove TBE without reproducing the features I use out of it. I have identified a number of other extensions which will fill most of the holes. Those being:

Tabbrowser Prefrences
Session Saver
MiniT

The last couple of features I want is the ability to have new tabs opened to the right of the CURRENT tab, and the ability to remove the close button from the tabbar without removing it from the sidebar. Can someone help me with those two features?

Another important question to ask, is will running these extensions together slow me down to TBE speeds anyway? and is there any conflicts with these or any other extension I may need/want that I should know about?

[rue]

Nearly a year ago, mozilla's nightlies suddenly began exhibiting tab-opening next to the Current tab -- it was great. Then, within a week, it was gone.
.
Granting wasn't a bug, that would be a great "hidden pref" to track down.
.
I've rewritten SessionSaver to handle crash-recovery and more, btw.

[TychoQuad]

I saw your Session Saver rewrite thread, and that's what started me looking for other missing parts. In Session Saver's previous state, it was just not a contender to replace TBE, however, now it has exeeded TBE's equivalent.

Remembering MiniT's draggable tabs option, and knowing about Tabbrowser Prefrences for yonks, I realised I needed very little more to finally ditch TBE and give the alternative's a go, hence this thread.

As for Mozilla having one of my favourite TBE features, I never knew that... It was a pity it had to be removed for whatever reason.

Granting wasn't a bug, that would be a great "hidden pref" to track down.

I'm not quite sure what your trying to tell me here, sorry.

EDIT:
It seems this thread is pretty much on the same tangent as I am here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=46569 They mention over there the same 3 extensions I brought up above, so I'm guessing there isn't any major compatibility problems. They did however bring up another TBE feature I would like, but is not as important as the ones above: Undo close tab. Anyone know of anything that can do this for me?

[rue]

Missed a word: "Granting it wasn't a bug, that would be a great "hidden pref" to track down."
.
Meaning: if there's an undocumented way to enable this behaviour, that would be a sweet discovery.

[TychoQuad]

Okay, thanks, that makes alot more sense

Man I hate English, even though it's the only language I can speak

[TychoQuad]

I have found that the gain in speed I get from switching off TBE is not great enough to justify the loss of features, nor the strong compatibility that TBE has with itself compared to these extensions. Not to mention a bug I had which i blamed on TBE turns out to be a problem in Firebird. I will try these 3 again with a fresh profile at a later date, but for now, I'm disabling these extensions, and re-enabling TBE.

[BrownHamer]

I too have seen a lot of complaints about TBE, but have had no real bad experiences with it. The only thing that used to be a problem was that 'Open in tabs' from the bookmarks menu didn't work for some time.
As for speed... i don't see great decreases after installing TBE, they might be there, but if so, it's not bothering me. As for the features, i like 'duplicate tab' the most, also use 'show closebox in tabs' and 'focus to the previously selected.

[rue]

Just because newer hardware is fast enough to hide the inefficiencies doesn't mean they're not there. I only run mozilla on older hardware -- TBE slowed these machines down impressively.
.
Also, for what its worth: I only rewrote SS because I specifically wanted those features.
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Tycho: what specifically was lacking in the non-TBE solutions? Maybe if you clarify, someone will step-up.

[BrownHamer]

Just because newer hardware is fast enough to hide the inefficiencies doesn't mean they're not there.

I didn't mean to say TBE doesn't slow down FB, just that if so, on my computer it doesn't bother me enough to really notice, and yes, maybe that might be a hardware issue, although my computer isn't all that... i just got used to it.

[TychoQuad]

Tycho: what specifically was lacking in the non-TBE solutions? Maybe if you clarify, someone will step-up.

It's not that much lacking, pretty much all I want I have mentioned in this thread. It's just that at this time, the alternatives seem to have issues with each other, SS unfortunately, seemed to cause more breaks than anything else, or maybe the problem was miniT, regardless, they fight like my little brothers. I'm attempting to hunt the issues down with the devs (in SS's case, you) but until then, it's TBE for me.

EDIT:
Silly me. I forgot the most important rule of using Firebird: Try a new profile. Fixed the bugs i was having instantly. (Exept one, but i'm on to the miniT creator about that.) I guess I'll migrate my stuff and begin with a new prefs.js Report back soon, depending on how ready I am to throw my computer out the window.

[Paradox52525]

I'm basically in the same boat as you Tycho, TBE provides too many useful features to be worth shutting down for what is in my case, a very minor speed increase. Still I'd love to see people figure out a way to isolate some of TBE's features for use in other extensions. Tab positioning specifically is FAR more complex than what you might expect. I worked for hours upon hours with MozFBRH trying to figure out how to make tabs open to the right or left of the current tab rather than at the end of the index. To date I still haven't been able to do this without severly screwing things up, so even the new version of MozFBRH is can still only open tabs to the left/right of current if TBE is also installed. I even tried copying TBE's "MoveTab" function completely, but it refers to so many other TBE functions/methord/variables that it's nigh impossible to make it work independantly.

[soccer_dude182]

I'm the guy that started the other thread about tab-related extensions... I like TBE, I really do. There are a few bugs that annoy me and I can't fix. This is why I'm looking at TBE replacements. I don't use a lot of the features in TBE, but I use enough. I'm kind of half-half on whether getting rid of TBE... I'll try both ways and see which performs better. Hopefully, with Firebird .8, everything will be just dandy.
Also, is TBE still in development.. ie is the developer adding any new features or fixing bugs?

[c∂n]

userChrome.css :

Code: Select all

#content .tabs-closebutton {
  display: none !important;
}

[Torisugari]

TBE is not Tab Browsing Extension, but Tabbrowser Extension. tabbrowser is browser. TBE is a moster, because tabbrowser is a monster. If you split TBE, they will conflict with each other.

[TychoQuad]

userChrome.css :

Code: Select all

#content .tabs-closebutton {
  display: none !important;
}

...the ability to remove the close button from the tabbar without removing it from the sidebar.

That's very interesting Paradox52525, also, I wasn't aware of MozFBRH, I will check it out and see what it has to offer me in upgrading my browser the anti-TBE way