The changes that appear in your new Mozilla Firefox 3.5 are obvious. There is something extra that some may want and sometimes some thing different. This can be achieved by tweaking the Firefox 3.5. Here are some trips and tricks for operating your tabs.
You can also visit http://mozillalinks.org/ for more information.
1. In Firefox 3.5 tabs can be dragged out of the current window into their own. If you do not want this facility or want to undo it or want to drag the tab to the desk top to create short cuts then you can install the extension bug489729(Disable detach and tear off tab) . When you access the options of this through the Add-ons manager and click “Disable detach Tab”. You can also restore the ability to drag tabs to the desk top to create short cuts by selecting the other option. Short cut icons can still be created by dragging the web pages favicon to the desk top or book marks by dragging to the book marks menu or tool bar.
2. Hide the new tab button in the tab bar
While most users (specially new ones) will appreciate the new tab button added to the tab bar, some may find it useless. You can make your Firefox look cleaner by removing it. Add the line below to your userChrome.css file (*):
.tabs-newtab-button {display: none;}
3. Hide the tab bar when there’s only one tab open
To restore Firefox 3.0′s default behavior of hiding the tab bar when there’s only one tab, in Options/Tab, uncheck Always show the tab bar.
4. Switch to new tabs opened from links
When you open a link in a new tab, you may want to switch to it immediately to cut some procrastination. To set this behavior, in the Options window, open the Tabs page and check When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately.
5. Keep the window open when you close the last tab
In Firefox 3.5, when you close the last tab, it also closes the window. While I can’t remember when was the last time I had only one tab open, there may be people annoyed by this. For those types, set browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab to false via about:config to keep Firefox open in those cases, just like in Firefox 3.
6. Show the close button in the last tab
By default, when you only have one tab left it doesn’t have a close button, because if you close it it would close the whole window which may be unexpected. You can still close it pressing Ctrl + W, or selecting Close Tab in the File menu. But if you just have to have your button, add the following code to userChrome.css (*).
.tabbrowser-tabs[closebuttons="alltabs"] > .tabbrowser-tab > .tab-close-button {
display: -moz-box !important;
}
.tabbrowser-tabs:not([closebuttons="noclose"]):not([closebuttons="closeatend"]) > .tabbrowser-tab[selected="true"] > .tab-close-button {
display: -moz-box !important;
}
7. Change the number of recoverable windows (and tabs)
In Firefox 3.5 you can recover your recently closed windows through the History menu. By default you can only recover the last three tabs, but you can change it to a value that better suits your needs.
Access the advanced preferences entering about:config in the location bar and search for preference browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo and set it to the number of windows you want to be able to restore.
You can do the same for the number of recoverable tabs from the default 6 to the desired value modifying browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo.
* The userChrome.css file is located in the chrome folder in your profile folder. If you can’t find the file, but there’s a userChrome-example.css, just copy or rename it and make the change in it.
