SubscribeFirefox 2.0 Alpha 1 Tab Close Button
Posted by stuart on March 23rd 2006
In my hasty mini-review of Firefox 2.0 Alpha 1 (also know as Bon Echo) I didn’t get around to opening up multiple tabs in the browser window. If I had, I would have found another new “feature” of Bon Echo – each tab has it’s own close button. My earlier concern now seems more plausible that the Places window seems to have been inspired from Internet Explorer 7’s new bookmarks window. Now, the tab close button also seems to be taken directly from IE7 which implements the same thing.
I don’t like this at all, but I recall reading that the IE team put the close button on each tab based on tester feedback so I’d be interested to hear why people prefer the inline close button. I personally prefer the close button to appear in one fixed place so that I can close consecutive tabs without needing to move my mouse to each tab. A typical scenario where this is useful for me is when I visit a web page that has a lot of interesting links – I’ll middle-click each link and let them load in their own tab. Then I’ll switch to the last tab opened and glance over the page to see if it’s interesting – if it’s not, it’s a breeze to close the tab and switch to the next tab. I can quickly close a whole bunch of tabs easily this way.
Another note… although I don’t like the inline close button, at least IE7 implements it better – you can’t close a tab that doesn’t have focus. This prevents you from accidentally closing a tab that you don’t have active yet. In Bon Echo, you can click a close button on an inactive tab and it will instantly close. As this is pre-beta software, I’m sure this won’t be the final behaviour of how this works but it should be noted anyway.
Please leave comments on whether you prefer the separate close button or the inline close button, perhaps I’m missing something obvious here…
Posted by stuart
Filed under Firefox 2.0
Tagged with alpha, bon echo, browsers, firefox, Firefox 20, IE7, microsoft, mozilla, software, tabs
15 Comments
[...] The beta @ amanzi site looks at a controversial change to Firefox in the alpha Bon Echo version. The tab close button has been moved onto each tab from it’s orginal static position on the right. Lots of people have already been complaining, while others prefer each tab to have their own close button. What do you think???read more | digg story Tags: [...]
Safari for OS/X has placed the close button on each tab for years now. I doubt that Firefox borrowed this idea from IE7. When I started using Firefox a couple of months ago, I added an extension that put the close tab button on each tab.
I can see why people would like either way… I was just used to my way. As long as Firefox keeps it open for you to put an extension to match your preference, then I could really care less which way the default swings.
I prefer both to have a close button on each tab and in the same time a close button fixed!
i think that is it very crowdy the whole bunch of close buttons. I think the middle mouse click is the best way to close tabs along with the fixed location of the close button. A least we can change whatever we want in firefox, and that’s what’s great in it.
Indeed, the new “multiple-close-button” theme is extremely annoying. I would like to have the fixed-location by default. Maybe at the left corner rather than the right (since tabs flow from the left).
A floating location for a button makes me search for it each time — and its extremely annoying.
What the mozilla people would benefit of, if some usability guru (like nielsen for example) would fix stuff with this ‘extremely-important-and-widely-used’ application.
I has not made me go ‘wow’ for a long time now.
as with me i also hate having to click on each tabs close button it very annoying
Amen to that! I do browse the web in much the same way as you do, and I really want the global close button back. For the new buttons on each tab; toss them for what I care.
um, it’s Opera behavior btw .. anyhow, there should be an option; eye prefer the close button on the tab, so ..
good post, tnx.
Personally, I already have one close button per tab as an extension in FF 1.5, and I prefer it much more to the “old” positioning. And yes, I can also close background tabs, something that comes in useful especially when you have web pages suddenly start spouting music in the background.
I frequently open several tabs and then use one close button to cycle through them in reverse. I find the constant requirement that I hunt down the new close button to be an annoyance. I understand that it appeals to some people, but there should be an option.
~Ty~
Tyler W. Cox
YES! I agree with you. I still can’t get used to the close button on each tab even though so many people seem to love it. Especially when the tabs dynamically resize, it can be difficult to close a whole bunch of tabs at once.
I REALLY want the global close button back, preferably where it was before, for the same reason as mentioned above, i.e. whenever you do a search in Google and open several pages it is much easier to close non-desired results using a fixed mouse position. But I suspect an extension is soon posted by someone…
There is a fix to this! In Firefox 2.0 browse to about:config and look for the browser.tabs.closeButtons setting. Change the value to 3 and restart the browser. You should get the old tab behaviour back. I’m just about to test this out (the machine I’m now still has 1.5)
Cheers – stuart.
thanks stuart, you saved my day, close button is back! The individual close buttons are gone, but i really don’t care since i did’nt use them anyway.
ib
thanks alot stuart, that really got my browsing done alot easier with hat global close button!
fyi, if u set the value of browser.tabs.closeButtons to 2 it gets rid of all close buttons on tabs altogether (no need to download that extension, either).