Heh, I really understand that once Ben and Google folks made usability tests, the results said that the very obvious feature from Flock, Camino, Safari and Opera is better.
But take a look at those bugs – suprise. People were asking for that!
I’m not sure if I like Firefox’s version. I think that I’d prefer to be able to close any tab – not only the focused one. On the other hand this could let me close tabs by accident, so maybe close button should be by default disabled for background tabs (with UI option to make it enabled). Hmm???
Another nice thing is that now, when you open a new tab from another, and close it, the focus will go to that “parent” tab, not the first on the left. It’s a really good choice.
I’m a bit suprised that Ben decided to remove a really nice option to create a new tab by double-clicking on tab bar. What’s wrong with that, Ben?
Note: Mozilla never made a “RC” goal. Always, there were UI and L10n changes after RC. We should really stop using “RC” name for it not to confuse users, media and ourselves 😉
Update: Confused… Bug 308396 has a “UE fixes for tabbed browsing for 1.5” title, but in last comment says that it won’t get into 1.5…
6 replies on “On tab close button in Fx 1.5”
I hope there will be some magic setting in about:config to restore double-click on tab bar…
I hope that there will be an abbility to close a tab just like in the current versions (with close button on the right).
In my opinion it is better to have the close button on the right – then it doesn’t take additional space (the tab bar is often too short… ;-))
Also, I am used to – and think it is very useful – to close tabs using middle-click (so usually I even don’t need the close button) and to switch between tabs using mouse wheel (scrolling over the tab bar switches tabs) – then I won’t close any tab accidentally, beacuse I even don’t click the tabs.
But AFAIR those features are provided by extensions, so it shouldn’t affect the browser itself. But – in my opinion – closing tabs by middle-click should be a standard feature.
Also, there was a very nice feature (also provided by an extension – don’t remember which ;-)): middle-clicking on the tab bar opens a recently closed tab. It was really useful and it is the main lack in my Fx 1.5b2 (because this extension – maybe it was Tab Mix? – currently doesn’t work in 1.5b2).
I pray for extension to make this close button in default place.
I’ve used both Opera and Flock and found the “close is on the tab” irritating. I got used to have close button on rightmost edge of tabbar and, when done with a page, automatically moved mouse there and clicked.
The result is, that I stopped using Flock because when I open many windows I never could read the last article I opened.
Now closing a tab is not going to the edge, but: 1) search for the damn active tab 2) locate _its_ right edge and move mouse there. I’m not used to such actions, so it takes me approx. 1-2 seconds longer than ff soluiton.
And, maybe I am wrong, but don’t those bugs ask for having close button on active tab _only_ when “close on tabs” mode is used?
I prefer a solution offered by Tab Mix Plus – the close button appears when I move the mouse cursor over a tab.
And even when I accidentaly close any tabs I can bring them back with undo close tab (included in TMP).