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

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). ;-)

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

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.

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

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.

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

What was that guy smoking?

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).

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. :-)

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.

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

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

[...] 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. [...]