Help with Firefox

January 14, 2005 1:52 AM

I can't seem to get Firefox tabs to work in the way I want them to. (more inside)

I used to use an application called CrazyBrowser before I moved to Firefox. CrazyBrowser is a browser that sits on top of the IE rendering engine and provides a few additional features (such as tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking). Following the later releases of Firefox, I moved across to that and have ditched CrazyBrowser.

However, I'm having trouble working with tabs and have been trying desperately to install and configure plugins to do the following:

1. Double clicking a tab closes it
2. Ctrl-clicking or middle clicking a link opens it in a new tab immediately to the right of the currently active tab.
3. When 2 occurs, the currently active tab is loaded in the background (ie. you don't lose focus from the current one).

(1) was solved with the "tab clicking options" extension and (2) was solved by the "tabbrowser preferences" extension, but I can't see to find any extension which will solve (3). At the moment, I can't ctrl-click a bunch of links on one page because the focus always shifts to the new page.

Finally, the "Tabbrowser extensions" extension solves all of this but is so buggy that the author warns that the mozilla extension developers refuse to list it because of its many issues. Indeed when I was running it, the thing crashed Firefox several times a day.

Any ideas on how I can get (3) to work? Or can I ditch both extensions for something else?

posted by ralawrence to Computers & Internet (15 answers total)

In the Mac version:
Preferences > Advanced > Browsing > Uncheck "Select new tabs opened from links"

The Windows version should be similar.
posted by cillit bang at 3:39 AM on January 14, 2005

Response by poster: Bizzare as it sounds, the Windows version is missing this option!
posted by ralawrence at 3:46 AM on January 14, 2005

Are you sure? It's in mine.

Tools>Options>Advanced>Tabbed Browsing> "select new tabs opened from links"

It's under the box, though. It's apparently not considered a major option, but it is there.
posted by jlkr at 4:39 AM on January 14, 2005

Response by poster: Hah, found it!

Turns out that "Tabbrowser extensions" removes this option completely from the enhanced section in favour of a new icon entitled "tabbed browsing".

I disabled the extension, restarted Firefox (which made the options appear), unchecked "select new tabs opened from links", re-enabled the extension and restarted Firefox.

All that because it hides an important option!

Many thanks for your help.
posted by ralawrence at 4:45 AM on January 14, 2005

While we're at it, does anyone know of an extension (I'm fairly new to Firefox) that will open a particular selection of tabbed URLs upon browser start-up? Basically, when I get to work, boot up and open Firefox for the first time, a package of certain URLs (that I use for work all day) will just open at once without me having to do anything. Follow me?
posted by Witty at 6:18 AM on January 14, 2005

Witty, you can do that manually without an extension by putting all the bookmarks in the same folder, then right-click on the folder and select "Open in Tabs".
posted by matildaben at 6:23 AM on January 14, 2005

On a tangent, the matter of fact explanations that the Japanese developer of Tabbrowser extensions gives as to the shortcomings of his project are pretty funny. For instance he lists as a "disadvantage" to using the extension the following:

Less maintenancibility by huge codes.

Virtually, now no one can update TBE codes, excluding me. Its codes are like as entwined spaghetti. Many unknown bugs are maybe there, many known problems (with unknown reasons) too.

Hmm, nobody can read his "entwined" spaghetti code and there are many bugs caused by unknown reasons floating around in it = Sweet!

By the way I use the extension and my firefox is buggy, but I'm addicted to some of the features. I also think that some of Firefox's bugginess is produced because I use two profiles... Ah well.
posted by sic at 6:26 AM on January 14, 2005

For what it's worth, I use tabbrowser extensions and FF almost never crashes for me, even when I have so many tabs open that I have to scroll to find them.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:32 AM on January 14, 2005

Witty, to use multiple tabs as your startup page:

1) Open all the urls in tabs, like you want it to look at startup
2) Tools>Options>General>Home Page
3) Hit the "Use Current Pages" button
posted by smackfu at 7:01 AM on January 14, 2005

I've always wondered why tabbrowser extensions was never listed at mozilla update. I never really looked into it. Write me down as a satisfied user on both Windows and Linux, one of the first extensions I install. I just want my tabs to behave the way I tell them to, and the other extensions seem incomplete by comparison.

Still, I guess it'll be good to switch if the other extensions give in to feature creep.
posted by splice at 7:08 AM on January 14, 2005

I installed tabbrowser extensions on my OS X machine. Holy crap, what lousy software! It was all I could do to get rid of it. Avoid it at all costs!
posted by tommasz at 9:53 AM on January 14, 2005

I've never had any issues with TBE, and I've been using it since...Firefox .8? It's been a while, I can't remember specifically.
posted by m0nm0n at 10:49 AM on January 14, 2005

I tried TBE when I switched to Firefox way back when, but had so much trouble I quickly uninstalled it. To the extent I want to vary from the built-in options for tabbed browsing, I've found that there are numerous function-specific extensions that will work better in combination than TBE by itself.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 10:58 AM on January 14, 2005

i wish there was a way to move the tabs from right to left, or visa versa ... it would come in useful sometimes
posted by pyramid termite at 6:12 PM on January 14, 2005

You can click and drag them...is that what you mean?
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:37 PM on January 14, 2005