How do I get rid of these blankety-blank tabs?

July 1, 2007 5:17 PM

Firefox opens a blank "(untitled)" tab when downloading certain files used by helper applications such as torrent files, or .smil files which are processed by a homegrown vb app. How can I suppress these blank tabs or force them to autoclose? I thought I saw an addon or greasemonkey script to do this at some point, but can't find one now.
posted by Manjusri to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: In Tab Mix Plus, there's a checkbox for "Prevent blank tabs when downloading files". It seems to work, as I don't get blank tabs. Probably overkill if that's all you want it for, though. (But most people already have TMP installed, yes?)
posted by anaelith at 5:27 PM on July 1, 2007 [2 favorites]

Seconding Tab Mix Plus. It's the only thing I got to not get the blank tab to show up. Plus it's handy for so many other things (like setting double click to close the tab and reopening tabs you accidentally close).
posted by schnee at 5:45 PM on July 1, 2007

Reopening tabs you've accidentally closed doesn't need Tab Mix Plus; shift-ctrl-T does it without extra help.
posted by flabdablet at 6:08 PM on July 1, 2007

What version of Firefox are you running? Ever since I upgraded to 2.0 Firefox auto-closes tabs that open just for downloads. I'm not running Tab Mix Plus.
posted by chrominance at 6:31 PM on July 1, 2007

google up "disable download targets"

(too lazy...)
posted by chasles at 8:19 PM on July 1, 2007

Response by poster: I'm using Firefox 2 and Tab Mix Plus did the trick. I've been resisting that addon, but it plays nicely now with ieview and others. disable download targets has not been updated for 2.0. They think 2.0 is supposed to have corrected the problem, as apparently it does for chrominance.
posted by Manjusri at 12:49 AM on July 2, 2007

flabdablet writes "shift-ctrl-T does it without extra help"

Sweet! Didn't know that little gem - thanks, flabdablet. Up until now I'd been using the History --> Recently closed tabs menu...
posted by caution live frogs at 6:33 AM on July 2, 2007