Firefox 2.0 Help.

I’ve just downloaded 2.0, and now every time I click on a link that opens a new window, that window is somehow connected in such a way to the other window that I can’t close one without closing them all. Annoying. Any ideas?

Are you talking about tabs? Here is an introduction to the concept.

I guess. At any rate, while using the previous version of Firefox, if I opened a tab, I could close it without closing all the others. Now, I get this message:

You are about to close (x number) of tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?

From the OP, it seemed like you’d never seen a tabbed browser before, hence my link.

Go to the Preferences dialog (click Edit in the topmost bar and click Preferences in the menu that drops down) and uncheck the box that says “Warn me when closing multiple tabs”. That should do the trick.

It sounds as though you’re closing the whole app by clicking the X at the top right of the window, rather than closing just the individual tab by clicking the x on the tab itself.

That’s it! The old browser did not have an x in the tab, and I could close an individual tab by clicking at the top right of the window. Many thanks.

If you’d prefer the “close tab” button behavior that the older versions of Firefox had, you can do the following:

Open a new tab, and in the website address window type “about:config” (without the quotes) and hit Enter. This will open up the configuration settings. Scroll down until you get to the Preference Name called “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Double-click on that. Change the integer value to 3.

The result: no more “close tab” buttons on each individual tab, and one single button on the right side of the tab bar.

Cool.

Very!
Try setting that value to 4. Now the X only appears on the current tab regardless how many tabs are open. Plus, if you click on a tab where its X should be it won’t close it. This is very nice.

This is a royal pain to me, although I do love the spell check built into 2.0. I am so used to using the back arrow or backspace to return to the previous site, that I often don’t see the damed tabs (which I don’t want or use…don’t ask). Or, when go to a link, the back arrow doesn’t show, so used to just close that window and be back at the previous site. Now if I do that, the browser closes and I’m back at my desktop.

I know most people love tabs, but I don’t, and it is ridiculous that Firefox incorporated that “improvement” without letting us shut the damn thing down. Really annoying.

I posted once before asking if it could be turned off, and all I got was a bunch of posts suggesting I was an idiot for not loving tabs, but no help or suggestions. If you love tabs, don’t bother telling me.

Here’s my view: PCs are just that - PERSONAL computers. Use it the way that suits you personally and forget about anyone else. It’s mostly a matter of taste. If you don’t like Firefox, use IE - with my heartfelt and unqualified blessing, if you want it.

You can get free spell check for IE. As to the back arrow, I’m not sure what you mean. In Firefox, to get to a previous site in the same tab, use alt-left arrow instead. There should be some way to customize and change that back to the backspace.

If you were using alt-f4 to close a window, then switch to ctl-f4, which closes a tab. With Firefox there are other ways to close a tab. I mousewheel-click on the tab.

Here I’m confused. Tabs are THE thing about Firefox. That’s the principal reason it exists and why people switch. It behaves differently from IE and does require a change in the way you use the browser. Many people find the advantages far exceed the adjustment they must make. But if that isn’t true for you, Firefox is not the way to go.

What was it about Firefox that persuaded you to try it?

If you have any questions, there are many people such as me who are just users who’ll answer them as best we can without putting you down.

I use Firefox, but dislike tabs - there are plenty of other reasons for choosing it - ad blocking plugins, the download manager, standards compliance…

The best way to customize tabs under Firefox is Tab Mix Plus. I personally think it should be folded into the main Firefox program, but it works just fine as an extension.

rowrrbazzle: Where did your attitude come from? Who in this thread was attacking anyone else?

It’s driving me nuts, and I’ve only had 2.0 since last night. (New computer.) If I have more than 8 tabs open in a window, the tabs don’t shrink, so some of the tabs sidescroll off the page, and I’ve got to go up and hunt for them. I’d rather have 20 barely readable tabs that are all visible and instantly clickable, like in Firefox 1.x, than have 8 that are clearly visible, and 12 that I’ve got to sidescroll the tab bar in order to find. Too much damned mousing involved.

Does selecting "New pages should be opened in " => ‘new window’ do what you want?

As for the tab list, if you hover your mouse over it and use the scroll wheel, you can shift it left and right to see all your tabs.

The only time when Firefox would open a link in a new tab rather than the original one is when the link is supposed open in a new window. If you open one of these in either Firefox or IE, the back button still won’t work.

This is why we have user preferences. I think the “x button on each tab” with the default behavior is a great improvement. I can dismiss tabs without having to display their content again, losing the one I’m looking at.

I also like the scrolling tab behavior. I read “news of the day” pages by middle clicking on all the articles I want to read, creating a buttload of tabs which all start downloading at once. I then scroll through them, reading the first one as the rest finish loading. If they get too small, there isn’t enough of the tab title to read, and they all have the same favicon since they come from the same site. Of course, that STILL doesn’t work for sites like this one, where all the flipping titles start out “Straight Dope Message Board”.

I would hereby like to suggest a new standard that web page designers indicate the most specific part of their content in the LEADING part of the page title, not the trailing part.

Try going to about:config and setting or changing browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to something less than the default of 100 (mine is set to 50). See tabMinWidth .

If you can’t find it, right-click on the about:config page, and select New Integer to create it.

By the way FordPrefect, from looking at the docs I think you’re supposed to set Closebuttons to 0 to get the effect you’re talking about. Presumably 4 works because it only looks at the first 2 bits, but using 4 might be dangerous if they ever decide to add more variations for Closebuttons to new version.

Ah, no. IE is the prostitute of web browsers. It will do anything to open a web page, even if it means to accept non-standards compliant code. IE is akin to driving down a very bumpy road and being told it’s that way because the road is bumpy. The manufacturer of IE won’t tell you the road is bumpy because IE uses square wheels on less than perfect roads.

I use all kinds of browsers at work and at home because my job requires me to do so. IE is the last browser I use because its compliance just isn’t there. It never has been. And the new IE7 is no better. That’s because web developers are told they must change their code with conditional comments so that IE7 works properly. Whaaat? That’s like telling road builders they need to change the roads to accommodate the square wheels of the new car so that the trip doesn’t feel as bumpy.

Firefox, Opera and Safari don’t abuse their users. IE has never stopped. But when so many people use IE and have black and blue marks from their travels, of course, the odd ones out with no bruises are the one seen as being different.

It depends on what is wanted. That setting controls what happens with “new window” links in an application (TARGET attribute), for instance this one. Normally, those opened a new browser window. Firefox default behavior is to now to open a tab instead (yay!). This setting can be used to make those open new windows again. I just tried it. It does not seem to modify the middle mouse button behavior, though, which still opens a new tab.

Personally, I NEVER want a new browser window, and installed “tabpreferences” on the old version to get it to behave the way it now does by default.