redemption in a blog

Agreed 100%. The default behavior should be switched, with the option in about:config remaining.

Posted by: Jafe Mourner on September 30, 2004 11am

Yep, I also agree with you, this has annoyed me since long time ago. I also think that since one of the main features of firefox is the use of tabs, there should be a separate preferences section in the options for the behavior of tabs.

Alex

Posted by: Alex on September 30, 2004 11am

Alex:
There will be such a section in Firefox 1.0 — there’s some small reorganization going on in a bug right now that will eliminate Multimedia and introduce Tabbed Browsing (which really makes sense, because Multimedia was underused and most of the Browsing prefs were for Tabbed Browsing anyways).

Posted by: Jeff Walden on September 30, 2004 12pm

Appending tabs was the default for a while and i didn’t like it at all. Whenever i open tabs, i want THAT set, and not that set plus the previous set. Whenever i want to keep the previous set, i open a new window and open the new set of tabs there. This keeps things simple for the majority of usage cases.

I use tabs and bookmark folders EXTENSIVELY and have NEVER accidentally middle-clicked a bookmark folder.

In the UNLIKELY event that someone opens fewer tabs than were there, AND had critical info on the tabs that were closed, couldn’t he retrieve then from history?

PS. I initially thought your article was going to be about how the “ope in tabs” is in inconsisten locations in you screenshots (i would have disagreed with that too). ;-)

Posted by: Peter Lairo on September 30, 2004 3pm

>> And it is easy to make those accidental middle-clicks
>> when you’re not thinking straight or not aiming properly.

or are browsing at midnight…
I remember clicking on “Close other tabs” instead of “Close Tab” to loose all the important tabs.
I do remember one night when my co-worker accidentally clicked on “No” to the question “Do you want to save” while closing word.

I really tried to remove the “Close other tabs” option through extentions. But now I save all the important tabs by adding all the tabs to bookmark folder by checking the “Bookmark all the tabs” option. Then I use “Close other tabs”. It’s much faster than closing one tab at a time when there are 20 tabs open.

I have since then, never clicked on “Close other tabs” by mistake. I think the current design for “Open in tabs” is right and logical. We need to get used to it, the way we got used to microsoft products like excel.

Posted by: Shantanu Oak on September 30, 2004 5pm

Somewhat off-topic: what Windows or Firefox theme are you using here? I like the Office 2003-style menus a lot.

Posted by: Manuzhai on September 30, 2004 5pm

On the subject of Firefox behavior, I love using tabbed browsing and wonder whether it is possible to set Firefox up in such a way that when I click on a URI in Outlook it will display the web site in a new tab of the current window instead of opening a new window?

I would much rather have one window with 8 tabs than 8 one tab windows.

Posted by: Andy Mason on September 30, 2004 7pm

I would much rather have one window with 8 tabs than 8 one tab windows

Try Opera :) Tabbed browsing works much better in Opera, IMHO.

Posted by: selda on September 30, 2004 8pm

i support your view!

Posted by: pkmk on October 1, 2004 4am

Opera doesn’t have Tabbed browsing, it has an MDI interface.

Posted by: Chris Neale on October 1, 2004 5am

What about opening them all in a new window? I browse using windows for clusters of related tabs, and opening all tabs in a single new window would work perfectly for me.

Posted by: Mike on October 1, 2004 8am

In Safari, if you open a bookmark group in tabs, it blows away all the current tabs in that window, and replaces them with the new set of tabs.

However, if you then realise your mistake and hit the back button, the tab group you opened will vanish, and all your previous tabs will return.

Quite neat, really.

Posted by: Charles Miller on October 1, 2004 9am

Thanks for the mention :)

A concern is that in its current state, there is a ‘Warn when closing multiple tabs’ option which doesn’t cover this particular scenario and thus gives a false peace of mind. I’m more likely to accidentally close multiple tabs using ‘Open in Tabs’ than when closing Firefox.

Posted by: Thomas Rutter on October 1, 2004 10am

Opera doesn’t have Tabbed browsing, it has an MDI interface.

What was that guy smoking?

Posted by: Bernie Zimmermann on October 1, 2004 1pm

Somewhat off-topic: what Windows or Firefox theme are you using here? I like the Office 2003-style menus a lot.

I’d also like to know what theme you are using.

Posted by: Joel Kitching on October 2, 2004 6am

Peter (Lairo): Well, sure, you can retrieve from history (I almost put that in my blog entry), but most of the time I can’t even remember what were in those tabs. I guess that’s because I have a long history list and a less than perfect memory.

I’m not asking for a big fix, I’m just asking for consistency (by making the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace preference false by default). “Open in Tabs”, to me, carries the implicit meaning that the tabs will be new tabs and will be non-destructive. Especially when you can do the same with a middle-click, I find it very important not to surprise the user with a different behavior. At the very least, middle-clicking a bookmark folder should append tabs.

Charles (Miller): Hmm.. that sounds really neat. That would be a nice way of implementing “Open in Tabs” (so long as the middle-click thing is consistent like I said just now).

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on October 2, 2004 1pm

Manuzhai, Joel (Kitching): It’s not a theme, but done through a change to the userChrome.css. I can’t find the original webpage where I got my CSS rules from, but I’m sure this Office 2003 userChrome.css Skin Release thread will do just as well.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on October 2, 2004 1pm

Cheah: “I’m just asking for consistency (by making the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace preference false by default).”

When you open a bookmark, it *replaces* the previous web page. Consistent, to me, would be that when you open bookmarked tabs, they should *replace* whatever web page(s) were there.

IMO, the BACK button should restore all previous tabs (bug#?); or the the BACK button’s dropdown could have an item: “Restore previous tabs”. That would solve your problem, without causing inconsistency. :-)

Posted by: Peter Lairo on October 4, 2004 6pm

When you open a bookmark, it *replaces* the previous web page.

I think you misread - I was saying when you middle-click a bookmark, it opens in a new tab. So if you middle-click a bookmark folder, it should open the contained bookmarks in new tabs.

Posted by: Cheah Chu Yeow on October 4, 2004 6pm

Many thanks for the about:config tip. I’ve been using Mozilla heavily for a year, but have recently been given incentive to switch to Firefox. As I frequently leave a browsing session open for weeks at a time, it’s of vital importance to me that I be able to open my daily reading link folder without trashing existing tabs.

Posted by: Scott Ventura on December 17, 2004 9am

oh my god, i’ve been searching all over for a solution to this problem which has plagued me forever

this was a retarded decision by mozilla, and i’m glad to have fixed it and never have to deal with losing important information because i accidentally middleclicked on a folder instead of the tab right below it

Posted by: Ed on March 4, 2006 1pm

Thank God for this user tip.

Actually, even changing the setting to false is not enough for me. I would like to disable “Open in Tabs” altogether. I suppose that might be heresy as it is a touted “feature” of firefox but I really do more harm than good with it (slip of the finger and, oops, 30+ tabs start opening up - Esc, Esc, Esc, Ctr-F4, Ctr-F4, Ctr-Alt-Del).

Thanks,
Alex

Posted by: Alex on May 30, 2006 4am

[…] If you ever tryed to use the “open in tabs” command in firefox, you saw that all the new opened tab overwrite current tabs. So here the fix: go to about:config and set the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace to false (thanks to codefront.net permanent link […]

Posted by: SanBaldo » Blog Archive » Open in tabs (firefox) on July 9, 2006 7pm

In case anyone’s still listening to this old thread, I vote that “Open in Tabs” opens tabs in included folders as well. This is probably the wrong place to reuest features–plz tell me at pbuck at his.com where to send my request. Thx - Peter

Posted by: Peter Buck on December 5, 2006 3am

you can go to about:config and set the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace preference to false

thanks for this. I went searching for bug reports about the destructive behavior after it recently happened to me, and I agree, the default behavior should be changed, but for now your solution is great.

Posted by: Darius on December 21, 2006 1pm

[…] The del.icio.us developers take bug reports and feedback on a Yahoo Group so I posted my problem there. And, a few days later I got this reply saying that this actually happens due to a change in a Firefox update. Workaround provided and tested to work as expected. While I certainly don’t agree with the default behavior, it’s at least nice that you can change it. […]

Posted by: protocol7 » Blog Archive » del.icio.us "Open in tabs" issue on January 17, 2007 6am

For Firefox 2.0, add this to the userChrome.css file in your profile directory:


menuitem[label="Open All in Tabs"] {
display: none !important;
}

You may have to create the userChrome.css file by making a copy of the provided example file and editing that.

Posted by: Jay Valatka on February 10, 2007 8pm