Three things:

1) Someone has built a FF2 extension that brings the simple tabs back. People should explore extensions and use the ones they like; it’s been shown that Firefox can handle loads of extensions with not much of a performance hit (see: Superbrowser).

2) “an inch or so from the right of the window” would require just as much time wasted as scrolling through them. I use “Ctrl+1″ to scroll to the left side and “Ctrl+1, Shift+Tab” to scroll to the right, and generally don’t have so many tabs open that this doesn’t cover all of them.

3) If you click the button on the far right, you get a dropdown listing of ALL your tabs. Yes, it’s an extra movement and click, but then not only is everything legible, but also viewable.

I would prefer the config to the plugin. Whilst it’s not much, if I used a plugin for every config tweak I have Firefox would be checking to update 20 more plugins when I startup (unless they can specify that they will never update), and my plugin browser would be quite busy.

I personally don’t mind the feature. I don’t often have enough tabs open to need it, and it allows me to see what I’m doing better (I’m not switching back and forth enough to learn that the one I want is an inch from the right). I have, however, made the minimum width slightly smaller as the default is ridiculously large.

I think a better solution may have been to expand onto multiple lines of tabs. But that comes with it’s own problems.

And noone said they invented them. They said they introduced them to the masses. Which it did.

@pomJ: “Firefox introduced tabbed-browsing to the masses.”

This is about as correct as it can get. I don’t see “invention” anywhere.

“Think about it, 5-10% of the time you spend on your computer is wasted because your fiddling with windows.”

Hell yeah! That’s why I went to the Mac.

Oh, wait…

Still, that makes a good out-of-context quote :-)

Jan
–

Kuba, I frankly find that the mouse scroll trips me up much more than it helps: 9 times out of 10 when I scroll the tabs, I was actually expecting to scroll the page instead. That’s a good example of a modal inteface where the behavior depends on the position of your cursor. I for one don’t like it.

And it’s even worse if you use a touchpad.

When I have to deal with a lot of tabs, I break them up into separate Firefox windows. Say I’m multi-tasking and I have 5 tabs open on one topic, and 5 tabs open on a completely different topic. Dividing those tabs between two windows makes them very easy to manage. Until I switch topics (and, thus, windows) I don’t need to give those other tabs any thought at all. Concealment becomes a boon to concentration. This is where windows are still very useful.

Dreamweaver has something similar to the scrolling tabs when you have a lot of files open, and it’s just as painful.

This has mystified me for some time and your article hasn’t helped much clearing it up: How is a row of tabs so spectacularly different from a row of task bar buttons?

Zephyr, you’re right. If anything, tabs are worse, because they can only be used to organize web pages. The taskbar, on the other hand, is a more general way to organize the different tasks that are active at any given time.

I’m not sure about the config options in FF, but in Opera, you get your tabs that shrink down to the favicon level. And then the favicons shrink down in size as you continue to add tabs- all staying on the same line (as opposed to the earlier Opera comment from Joe Clark) I greatly prefer this method to all others.

Gregory

We are only focusing on one tab.

Bookmark them? Why? I’m going to read them once only. Opening them in tabs is really no different then bookmarking them, just that I’m “bookmarking” them on my tab bar for a short time.

Bookmarks are like my library of links that I want to keep around- I have them shelved and stored away and I refer to them often or just really like them.

The tab bar is like my coffee table where my books, news, mail and other tidbits are placed for a short time. …Some might get saved (“shelved”) in my bookmarks, but most of it is subsquently discarded.

I have twenty tabs open all the time. If I visit an aggregator or sites like fark.com with lots of links on it, I will load the interesting ones up in the background while skim around the main page for interesting articles and links…. Each time I open a tab, that’s like throwing something on the coffee table to glance at later.

*cleanup happens *much* quicker (like every time I sit down at my computer) on my tab bar than on my coffee table…and coffee table is really an abstraction of my deskt and coffee table and nightstand, but you get the picture :)

I think I’m with Gregory on this. Clutter is clutter. If you allow it into your workspace, life gets harder. At the extreme, it seems like a browsing strategy problem more than a technology problem to me.

I’d personally prefer to give my screen space to my current focus than to a giant always-visible block of links to what I’m not focusing on.

1 more vote that the tab scrolling in FF2 is annoying.

Jan wrote:
@pomJ: “Firefox introduced tabbed-browsing to the masses.”
This is about as correct as it can get. I don’t see “invention” anywhere.

—-

Well, If you argue that way, with the amount of users, than Microsoft introduced with IE7 tabbed-browsing to the “masses”.

I totally agree with you!!
I always have lots of tabs and is terrible to use the arrows. I use FaviconizeTab extension, but it don�t resolve all the problem.

“Firefox introduced tabbed-browsing to the masses”

It was OPERA, not Firefox, who introduced tabs in the web browsers.

I absolutely agree with your post.

I miss the X on the right to close the current tab as well.

The new tabs are interesting but give me a config to switch back to the old way.

I think eveyone that wasn’t aware of the fact that Firefox didn’t create tabbed browsing has got the message.

I have to go with the tabs getting a downgrade in 2.0. It’s not so much that the new scrolling or resizing is annoying so much, as the entire program is more sluggish than 1.5 was. Webpages take about 3 times as long to load up, and switching tabs usually incurs a couple seconds of lag time…getting used to it…but may soon go back to 1.5.

Initially, I didn’t like the Firefox 2.0 tab feature. But got used to it sooner that later. The tab feature in the initial version was much better. Totally agree with you.

Couldn’t agree lesser. The tab feature in previous versions of Firefox is much better than the one in Firefox 2.0

Thank you so much for writing about this and informing me of the about:config fix. I too considered this a huge step backwards for FF 2.0. I was surprised that Mozilla, which had chosen so many of the perfect default settings and browser behaviors, would go and ruin tabs and not even include a place in ‘Options’ to switch it back to the old behavior.

Here’s hoping by 3.0 they do something to make their default tab settings more usable.

I’ve got a fix… don’t open a million tabs! It just slows down your memory anyway.

For me the most annoying thing about FF2′s tab behaviour is where new, middle-clicked tabs will open.
With previous versions anything diverted into a new tab would open as the last tab, making it easy to see where your new content was and enabling you to have a sort of browsing ‘timeline’ – if you were looking for something you opened a while back look to the left; for more recent stuff look to the right.
In FF2 middle-clicked or diverted tabs open next to the current tab regardless of where that tab is in the tab bar. After a while, particularly when researching finding things becomes a nightmare.
I want my new tabs back at the end of the list, where they belong!

I like the idea of browser trees. :)

I would agree that for anything but the odd edge cases if you have enough tabs open to necessitate scrolling you should probably think about splitting different topics into different windows (again, there are edge cases). A little tip, you can drag tabs into other Firefox windows. However, it doesn’t close the tab in the other browser window or remember any information, such as where you were, but it certainly helps.

And as to why tabs are useful when there is the taskbar – it’s exactly the same situation as described above. If you have dozens of websites open, each with their own browser window, then the taskbar gets very cluttered. Even worse, it’s not not just websites that are difficult to locate, but every program.

By using tabs you move the cluster of windows from the taskbar to the browser. Now you have all of the tabs available when you are browsing, but they don’t clutter up when you are using another program.

There are other advantages too, like the fact you can manage the one browser window (moving, resizing, minimising) and it will affect all of the websites, not having to manage each window.

I do, however, think Firefox is lacking in the management of tabs. It should be possible to drag them around, like I mentioned earlier, between browser windows and have the scroll position, and even entered fields remembered. This would also mean you can break out individual tabs into their own windows if you choose.

IMO Tabs make browsing forums manageable since I usually scroll through teh threads and middle click the good lookin ones.

“the wise show the sun, the dumb look at the finger”

I’m using TBE for a tree view of my tabs but i’m stuck to firefox 1.5
iRider does it for explorer but didn’t try it yet, don’t want to switch and loose all my other extensions also

Oh man, I’m so with you on this one.

Zephyr,

Tabs are just like taskbar buttons, except in a different space. The generic taskbar is just one big flat space where all applications get dumped. Right now, I have 11 application windows open, and 17 browser windows. Without tabs, the browser windows would be intermingled with all the other application windows in one huge mess.

Often, I have 2 or 3 browser windows open with 5-10 tabs in each browser, which is far more organized than having 30 browser windows clogging up the taskbar.

Auto grouping taskbar buttons helps a little, but causes other problems (similar to the issue with the new firefox tabs) and is not configurable.

Anyway, thanks for this post, I also disliked the new firefox buttons and am happy to see I’m not the only one.

The url of the extension seems to have been lost. It is lkozma.net/fisheyetabs

Good post. Here’s a mozilla knowledgebase article talking about this:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabMinWidth

The smallest you can make a tab is 38 pixels.

I agree with Laszlo… FishEye Tabs is the way to go. (That is, if you don’t have multiple monitors to stretch the browser across…)

I used to use Faviconize tabs, but I have found that Fisheye Tabs and Colorful Tabs combined make an excellent team! (I’d actually like to see something like this in an OS task manager. You’d think we’ve spent enough time tooling about with operating systems that someone would have thought of it by now.)

If you want firefox even more like Opera however, there’s the “Stop or Reload Button” extension, and there’s even an “Opera View” plugin for when you just give up trying with firefox and need to switch to opera for something. Alternatively, there are also IE Tab and IE View extensions.

what i find annoying is operas way of closing tabs. when you close a tab you go back to the original tab, instead of the next one. meaning if you spawn a buncha tabs from a google search so you can pick through them, you spend a lot of time clicking tabs because opera stupidly goes back to the original tab instead of the next spawn result. inefficient.

Tried Firefox 2, found real problems. If I passed my pointer over a tab once it became disable and wouldnot drop down, yet the little arrow oon each tab would change as i passed over it.

Could not open ” File” after passing my pointerover it once.

FIX: Went back to Firefox 5.X, great browse I have used for years.

is that how you spell yahoo?
I like child windows in applications. Is there a performance gain to using tabs instead of “new windows” in firefox? I would like to be able to have child “windows” in the form of tabs. This way I could choose to display more than one tab at once(as often there is empty space/unimportant whereas in positioning multiple windows in browsing my computer files I can arrange the windows adjacently, thus utilizing more screen space.)
It is a bit of a help to have “tabs” which are similar to the task bar, just incorporated into an application…but without the flexibility to display MORE than one content “window”(or tab) at once, it is bothersome(a little less efficient than desired) to compare and sift through multitudes(or even two^^) tabs at once(or because of this predicament, at one sitting).
Snope!

I personally don’t mind the feature. I don’t often have enough tabs open to need it, and it allows me to see what I’m doing better (I’m not switching back and forth enough to learn that the one I want is an inch from the right). I have, however, made the minimum width slightly smaller as the default is ridiculously large.

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