The Inside Track on Firefox Development.

November 3, 2005

Improving Tabbed Browsing

A lot of us are fans of tabbed browsing. It's one of the most useful changes in window and document management since the Task Bar on Windows. People who like to work with multiple documents like quick, convenient access to them. It's part of the reason Microsoft moved Office to a SDI model. That said, Firefox is a browser for everybody, and a lot of people don't use a lot of windows. In one of the PDC videos released a month or so back, a Microsoft representative said that they had done studies that showed that users generally had no more than 5 windows open at a time. This surprised them because they, like most of us, were used to browsing with tens of windows. The challenges that face us building the Firefox UI is how to make Tabbed Browsing useful to those who want it, discoverable to those whose lives would be made easier by it, and transparent to those who don't need it.

The first step in this process was to look at what people were used to right now. Most people are still using IE, and the model there, at least until IE7 ships and consumes the IE marketshare numbers, and the model in IE6 is a document-window based one. So, we should look at how windows work, and how tabs work, and see if there are any areas where tabs don't work as well as windows and try and improve those areas, as well as other unrelated improvements.

Here at Google, we did some usability studies on the tabbed browsing feature. Our usability analyst designed a study to see how well people responded to tabs and how easily they were able to switch between them and close them. In these studies, a build of Firefox 1.5b1 was used, with a single configuration change - the new "targeted links open new tabs instead of windows" preference was set, to force users to encounter tabs as they browsed around (rather than having them hear a spiel about the tabbed browsing user interface and have to think to use it, as we're all trained to do by now, this seemed a more natural flow). The results showed that the set of people sampled were generally capable of recognizing the tab strip, and switching between documents. We found though that unpredictable behavior of the back button (new tab = blank session history) is still a problem, since users expect clicking back to go back. What we also found is that the users we sampled were by and large using the context menu to close tabs. Some tried to close the entire browser window first, and most paused before trying the context menu. We also found people were surprised by the z-index used by the virtual stack establed by the tabbed browser. Tabs opened by links with target attributes, when closed, select the adjacent tab, not the tab that opened them. All our subjects used computers fairly frequently as part of their daily work, and seemed familiar with the basic GUI concepts of the environment.

Some of the issues felt by the test subjects echo ones that we have felt personally, but probably moreso since we use tabs pretty heavily. At Google, we are constantly bit by the z-index issue since we use a lot of web apps (like web mail), and links opened from web mail, forums and other such apps generally open things in new windows. When you have targeted links open new windows, when you close the opened window the page you came from is usually the window behind it, so it works out nicely. With tabs, not so much.

So here are a couple of things we have been experimenting with.

Put close buttons on the tabs. This makes it a lot easier to close tabs with the mouse. People weren't seeing the close box in the usability test. It's also out of the way and not connected with what's actually being closed. Mindful of stealing space from the tab strip when there are many tabs, the close boxes on inactive tabs are hidden when the tab width falls below a certain minimum value.
Implement a simple heuristic for z-index handling. When a new tab is opened in the foreground by any operation (targeted link, external application link, Ctrl+T, etc.), set the new tab's "owner" to be the tab that opened it. When the user closes it, select the owner, not the next adjacent. So that the mass-close condition doesn't become annoying (with selection jumping around as many tabs are quickly closed), forget the owner property when the tab is switched away from. This more closely matches behavior of window z-index.
While we're here, consolidate the preferences for links sent from external applications vs. targeted links internally into a single pref: "Open links that would open new windows in tabs" instead, since web applications are becoming more advanced to the point where it seems odd that clicking on a link in Thunderbird should open a link one way, but clicking on a link in GMail should open it a different way.

Here's a screenshot of the tab strip:

I used this opportunity to significantly polish the appearance of the tabs in the selected and non-selected state, as well as the focus rings. Also, on MacOS X the close button appears to the left of the favicon, similar to other Mac browsers and Mac windows in general.

We've been testing these changes and they're working really well. I've been producing some test builds. I'll have them linked here shortly. The Windows one is here. There are older Mac and Linux ones in the Tabs experimental directory on ftp.mozilla.org. Try them out and let us know what you think.

Posted by ben at November 3, 2005 10:47 AM

Comments

The one thing that makes me more productive with windows rather than tabs is the ability to use Alt+Tab to rapidly switch back and forth between two sites. I can't even count the number of times I've opened a new tab and tried to use Alt+Tab to switch back to the previous web page. I know Ctrl+Tab, but it's not as convenient to use (after all, Alt+Tab is something I've used in over ten years), and it always focuses the next tab in the strip.

Posted by: djst at November 3, 2005 3:21 PM

I forgot to add that I agree with the proposed changes. I've seen the same behavior on Sofie when trying to close a tab (accidentally closing the window instead).

Posted by: djst at November 3, 2005 3:26 PM

Just a quick question, would the close box stay to the right of the tab on mac builds, or would it be shifted to the left side to make it more consistent with safari/camino, and the mac UI in general?

Posted by: crzyhanko at November 3, 2005 3:46 PM

>The one thing that makes me more
>productive with windows rather
>than tabs is the ability to use
>Alt+Tab to rapidly switch back and
>forth between two sites.

You can use CTRL+TAB to progress from left to right throught the tab strip and CTRL+SHIFT+TAB to move from right to left. In FF 1.5, you can also reorder tabs so that they are adjacent or use the MiniT extension in FF 1.0.x to do the same thing.

Posted by: breiter at November 3, 2005 3:49 PM

I think that firefox's focus on usability and polish are great. Don't take this the wrong way -it's not a criticism - but that screenshot could almost be Opera and Opera currently does do all 3 of your points.
Point being I suppose, that these are all things that currently annoy me a bit when using Firefox (especially point no. 1) and I'm not a casual user - I've been a software developer for 15 years. So I think that these changes would be beneficial to a larger proportion of the ff user base than just casual users.

Posted by: dflock at November 3, 2005 6:18 PM

I'm surprised no one's asked you why Google is researching tab behaviors. I know there are quite a few Firefox engineers there, but...

Actually, I wasn't interested in gBrowser rumors until now.

Posted by: xiner at November 3, 2005 7:28 PM

I think it is great that Google invest the time and money to improve Firefox usability.

Why do they do it?
Maybe they just want the best possible transporter for their services?

Besides, Google are the good guys...

Posted by: Shetil at November 4, 2005 2:19 AM

The main reason why I don't like Opera is its tab-behavior(+middlemousebutton-behavior) and I just can't get it to behave like Firefox. It's probably because of the way I read my news: open everything in tabs and read them from left to right while closing every left tab when done. The problem with opera is when I close the left tab it randomly(for my brain) chooses a tab afterwhich I have to click te left most tab to surf like I want to.
My suggestion: group tabs that come from the same site visually(second tabbar with only tabs from te active site or close/group tabs to a single name/icon for inactive sites to the right)

Posted by: Fergy at November 4, 2005 2:26 AM

The only problem with the [X] buttons on the tabs is that when I'm using such a browser (e.g. Epiphany or Opera) I sometimes click the tab closing button when I just want to switch the tab. This leads to dataloss.

Thus, I find the current Firefox behavior superior to Opera and Epiphany.

Posted by: marcoos at November 4, 2005 3:06 AM

when click on close tab button on tab it need not to select the tab befor it removed.
i think it better to add pref to let user choose where and when to show close tab button
you cna check tabmix plus 0.3 at http://tmp.garyr.net/alpha/

Posted by: onemen at November 4, 2005 5:03 AM

Your suggested z-index hack applies when somebody opens a tab in the foreground, never switches from that tab, and then closes it; she gets transported back to her previous tab. So effectively it doesn't matter where the ‘transient’ tab appears in the tabstrip; its position relative to the other tabs doesn't come into play.

So, instead of the z-index change you suggest, you could have newly opened foreground tabs open just to the right of the current tab (rather than at the end of the tab-strip). Your desired behaviour will still occur (closing that tab will return to the one to its left, which is the previously opened tab), but there is no need for the potentially confusing z-order, which may occasionally surprise people.

Further, if a user does switch away from the opened tab, he has the advantage that the 2 related tabs are adjacent in the tab-strip. This means that at any point later when he closes the opened tab he still returns to the parent tab.

Opening at the right rather than at the end would also be good when opening in the background, though in this case you want to open also to the right of any other tabs that have already been opened to the right of the current one, if you see what I mean.

Posted by: Smylers at November 4, 2005 6:04 AM

"When the user closes it, select the owner, not the next adjacent."

This is the method that the original tabs in FireFox used wasn't it? The problem with it is it fails when you are viewing an image gallery. You middle click on all the images and then go through them closing them one at a time. When you go back to the parent you are always shoved to the thumbnail view instead of the next image and it becomes highly frustrating.

It depends entirly on the type of content that the person doing the test is viewing. If you have a lot of programmers, you probably won't see it. If you have artists/porn aficionados then you will.

Posted by: NeilM at November 4, 2005 7:11 AM

Neil, No you're not thrown back to the gallery because you opened each of those tabs in the /background/... Try the builds and see for yourself ;-)

Posted by: Ben Goodger at November 4, 2005 8:59 AM

dflock - LOL. I just tested Opera 8.02 and you're right. And we thought we were so clever for coming up with this heuristic. -_-;

Posted by: Ben Goodger at November 4, 2005 9:04 AM

"The problem with it is it fails when you are viewing an image gallery."

Not just an image gallery. It's also how I handle reading sites like del.icio.us/popular, Slashdot, BoingBoing, and so forth. Any page that provides me with a lot of links I want to follow. (See! An argument that doesn't appeal to pr0n.)

I like the idea of opening new tabs next to the current tab, though. It would be potentially confusing, with a higher chance of tabs getting "lost"... but that might be addressed with, say, a color fade effect? Of course, it would also require changing the current default tab-close direction (go right!), which would be rather jarring to current users.

Posted by: David Lynch at November 4, 2005 9:05 AM

I'm so glad someone is addressing the tab issue.
Ad 1: Ben, that's what I've been suggesting many times. Finally, there's a close button on each tab, though still not perfect. What I've been dreaming of is Eclipse-like behaviour where only the focus-having tab can be closed by clicking on close button and, more important, the close button doesn't take up tab space since it appears, and superimposes the tab's title, only when you hover the tab.
Ad 2: The order in which tabs show when closing closing them one by one is ideally maintained by FF extension FLST (not updated to be compatible with 1.5 though) and I've found it in Opera too.
Also, inspired by Opera again, cloning of tab's session history into a new opened tab would be cool too. Perhaps yet better, since the parent tab, which opened the current tab, might have been closed already.
Ben, I hope you consider all the options and will post here what you've fund the best user experience solution.
Good luck!

Posted by: funTomas at November 4, 2005 9:17 AM

Sounds like you are asking for tabbed browsing features that come standard in Netscape 8.

Posted by: hackme at November 4, 2005 9:21 AM

This is probably not the place to post this, but you sound like someone to get things done! I used (and liked) Opera up to v 5.0, at which version I found it unstable and a general hassle, so moved back to IE. I have been using Firefox since v.0.7 and love it. I am trying to spread the gospel, but this is hampered by the faults mentioned below.
It seems churlish to be rude about an excellent product that people have sweated over, then given to me. However the REALLY great thing about Ffx is tabbed browsing . You obviously think so and even our friend$ @ M$ are now ca$hing in on it! Why then does Ffx, as installed, spawn windows at a rate matching IE? To actually GET tabbed browsing, you need to re-configure. Once you start configuring, extensions are a necessity, and here is a new mess! There are now over 750 extensions, most of which aren't useable with Ffx1.07! In my opinion a few should already have been incorporated into browser options by Ffx1.0 and I suggest that they ARE built into Ffx1.08/1.09.
Concrete suggestions, which I believe are not merely MY preferences but universally useful, include:
the "Options" menu would be completed rather than bloated by incorporating Tab Mix Plus and Menu Editor. These allow easy configuration of tabbed browsing and clicking. Flash Got and Faster Fox belong in the WebFeatures section . Open Book's functionality belongs in the bookmark options and Sort Extensions in the extensions popup. I cannot see anyone NOT wanting Adblock, Print Preview and IE View (to fix idiots who refuse to stick to standards and screw up Ffx!). Integrating these extensions into the browser would remove the present incompatibility problems with updates and newbies would no longer need to discover them.
There are doubtless more that I have missed, have but these would be a welcome start. The integrated extensions could then be retired, along with a plethora of others similar, with profuse thanks (and, perhaps, a "welcome onboard") to their authors. The extensions should then be re-grouped into smaller version/OS-compatible groups (you used to do this!).
If this request is against development philosophy it would be very interesting to hear why. I can't wait to see if others agree with me or if this brings down upon me the wrath of those of you who have built Ffx.

Posted by: albirto at November 4, 2005 9:33 AM

Well, my feedback is "very positive". For me, this is how Firefox should have worked since the begining ;-)

Posted by: N�co at November 4, 2005 9:53 AM

I know that a lot of people will welcome the close-on-tab button, but I would like to make a few negative points too :

- you can click the X on accident (Fitts law and all that). So you need something like the undoclosetab extension or whatever it's called

- if you have an auto-hide button, a normal user won't discover this. So you need to keep the X on the right too (and the context menu, although that's also difficult to discover.

- a "move-tab-to-a-new-window" option would be useful too, to take a tab out of the toolbar, and transform it into a window, so that it can be separately minimized into the OS-toolbar or dock. I should not be a "reload" option, like the ones for frames, to make sure that we can use it for POST-urls too, without posting them a separate time.

Posted by: jhermans at November 4, 2005 10:14 AM

I agree wholeheartedly with David Lynch's comment above. It would be better for the close box to only appear on the tab with focus (or after hovering the mouse over a tab without focus for at least 1-3 seconds).

The argument in favor of this behavior is that by putting the close box on every tab, you are solving one usability problem, but creating another that could potentially be much worse for novice users, because it is destructive. Novices can now easily close tabs, so that problem is solved. But, as they are switching back and forth between tabs, their click accuracy will occasionally be off, and they will accidentally click on the tab's close box when they meant to give it focus. Whoops! A power user would already have an extension installed to "undo" closing a tab. But a novice (like you are trying to help), would just shake their fist and curse, because they accidentally closed a page that they were actively using.

Posted by: Mark at November 4, 2005 10:29 AM

Personnally, I use double-click on a tab to close it (through "tab clicking options" extension) similarly I use double-click on the empty space to open a new tab.

If it's wasn't enough I even customized the toolbar by adding the "new tab" button.

HTH

Posted by: Bernard at November 4, 2005 10:31 AM

A few people above commented on cases where multiple tabs are opened from the same parent, like on an image gallery. My prefered setup is like this:

Start with two tabs open, A and C. I'll use capitalization to denote which tab has focus.

A-c

You open a link from A in the background. The new tab b1 is adjacent to its parent, A.

A-b1-c

Two more tabs are opened from A. They appear from left to right in the order they were opened, rather than always placing the last-opened child directly adjacent to the parent. (1-2-3 rather than 3-2-1) This is more natural if the links have a logical order, such as a sequence of images.

A-b1-b2-b3-c

Focus is changed to the first B link.

a-B1-b2-b3-c

You're done on page B1, so you close it. Rather than going directly back to the parent tab, it takes you to the next child in the list.

a-B2-b3-c

You move down the line looking at and then closing b2 and b3 in the same order that you opened them. Then after b3 is closed, you're taken back to the parent.

A-c

I've been running this sort of setup for a while now using TabMix Plus, and it's served me quite nicely.

...

On a seperate note, glancing at that tab bar screenshot above, I notice that the close button is grayed-out on inactive tabs. Would it help as a visual aid if the favicon on the inactive tabs were also grayed out?

Posted by: Toe at November 4, 2005 11:29 AM

[Personnally, I use double-click on a tab to close it (through "tab clicking options" extension) similarly I use double-click on the empty space to open a new tab.]

Ditto ditto. And with "Undo Close Tab" in the menu, even idiots like me are fireproof! Tab Mix Plus (forget Tab Clicking Options, Tabbrowser Preferences and a couple of other previously essential extensions) also makes many of the wishes expressed in this thread about opening and focussing easily controllable.
As an aside, I have always striven to ensure that EVERYTHING opens in tabs (so organised and contained) so was fascinated that people have found valid uses for a new window.

Posted by: albirto at November 4, 2005 12:47 PM

The Flock developer preview handles the tab-close button the way that you propose (by putting the X to close tabs on the tab itself).

Personally I have found this approach to be _less_ usable, for two reasons:

1) As others have noted, it is too easy to hit the close button when you just mean to select the tab. Depending on what was going on in the closed tab this could lead to dataloss.

2) In the case where you wish to close several open tabs quickly, having a "stable" location for the close button makes it easy -- just mouse there and start clicking. When the X button is attached to the tab, each X you need to click jumps around the tab bar as tabs disappear and other tabs widen to fill the new space.

However, since I'm a power-user of FF I recognize that my experiences may not map very well to the common case. Of these two issues I think only #1 is one that a general user would run into.

Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz at November 4, 2005 12:59 PM

If there was some sort of colour-based cue to the tab that relates to the back button, that might make it more understandable.

Posted by: whatever at November 4, 2005 3:18 PM

I would have to stop using Firefox if these tab changes were implemented. Like many other users, I open a lot of links all at once and prefer the current Firefox way of handling tabs. It's the number one reason why I use Firefox.

What I don't understand is why people think that tabs are a complete replacement for windows, and getting frustrated when they don't act like windows. To me, tabs are for links that I want to read later. If I want to view a link now, I'll just click and have it open in a new window. Why only use tabs or have tabs behave like windows?

Posted by: Jon at November 4, 2005 4:26 PM

1. I like the idea of a close button in the tab. To keep the things clean & tidy why not combine the close button with the tab favicon, with the "x" showing on mouseover? Just as it's done in the MultiZilla extension.

2. However I'm not too keen on the proposed behavior changes. The way things are at the moment seems to me to be common sensical & coherent. It's one of the things I like most about firefox. If you do implement this change, please at least give us the option of changing back to the current behavior. Even if it has to be tucked away in about:config, just publicize the tweak!

3. This, on the other hand is a great idea.

Posted by: David at November 4, 2005 5:40 PM

Safari features the "close button in tab" approach and as others have mentioned it does seem to increase the likelihood of accidental closure. Instead of being 100% likely to select the tab you're probably only 80% likely to select it and 20% likely to close it.

If we're taking votes I'd vote against adding close buttons to the tabs in this manner.

I do agree that the current location of the tab close button isn't directly linked to the tab it affects though which is possibly less than ideal.

Posted by: Phil at November 4, 2005 5:45 PM

I just use middle-click for closing tabs. It's a lot faster and not having close tab buttons saves space for the tab title, but I'm still glad they're making tab browsing smarter and easier to use :)

Posted by: DesertFox at November 4, 2005 6:30 PM

Didn't an early Phoenix build have the close-on-tab? Seems familiar.

I would add that the only close icon visible should be on the active tab, and that the Undo command undoes the close-tab-command to undo an accidentally closed tab.

Actually thinking about it, applying undo to any XUL command would be quite cool.

Posted by: NeilS at November 4, 2005 6:36 PM

the close button should be smaller and less agressive

Posted by: Arkar at November 4, 2005 6:50 PM

Instead of heuristic for z-index why not open new tabs caused by 'target' just next to the current one? Thus you can keep selecting adjucent tab and it will be the 'owner'.

Manually opened tabs may still be appended at the end of list.

Posted by: Maniac at November 5, 2005 1:53 AM

I open lots of tabs at once and just middle click to close tabs. I recently installed Varun Sharma's colored tabs extension which I find really useful. If a close button was only visible on the active tap then that would be ok. However I like different colors for each tab and closing tabs by middle click. I also like the idea of opening new tabs next to the current tab

Posted by: Errol at November 5, 2005 1:57 AM

Is there a whitepaper or any more documentation this study that will be released?

Would be interesting to see.

Posted by: Robert Accettura at November 5, 2005 8:50 AM

Probably my biggest gripe with Firefox is having the tab close button disconnected from the tab itself. Every other browser I use has the close button on the tab and it's easy to see which tab I'm closing. With Firefox I have to look for the close button and then feel an anxiety about whether it will close the tab I think I'm closing.

Posted by: Miraz at November 5, 2005 9:58 AM

I never really had problems with the old tabs, but I can see as how these changes will make tabbed browsing better understood for newer users. That said, as long as we're discussing how the tabs work, might I make a request/suggestion?

When you use Control Enter or Control Left Mouse Click to open a link in a new tab, I think that new tab should get focus by default rather than be opened in the background. That is the behavior I would expect: I want to look at the new page now -- I just want to keep the old one open for later. As it stands right now, forcing a link to open the page in a new tab where I can read it is a multi-step process: First you have to follow the link, then you have to navigate to the page. Because I use the keyboard far more than the mouse, and because -- as others have already discussed -- new tabs are placed at the end rather than immediately after your current tab, I find myself having to Control Tab a bunch.

Posted by: jd at November 5, 2005 11:44 AM

+1 to opening new tabs next to the parent
+1 to hiding close buttons on inactive tabs

Opening tags to the immediate right of the parent would get you several advantages. One, if you have multiple "parents", the tabs are grouped logically in the tab bar. Two, if you start at the rightmost (first-opened) tab, you can very quickly go through all the opened tabs: as you finish each and hit the close button, it falls back (to the left) to the one you opened next, landing finally at the original parent page where you may want to e.g. continue your search further. Three, it solves the web-apps new window problem: since the parent is to the immediate left, it will fall back to the main app once you close the new tab.

Posted by: fantasai at November 5, 2005 12:11 PM

While we're here, consolidate the preferences for links sent from external applications vs. targeted links internally into a single pref: "Open links that would open new windows in tabs"

Not something I would like: I often create task-specific windows with tabs related to that task.

I don't want to add a random tab from whatever outside app/email in which I happen to click a link. To further make a mess of things, it adds the tab to whichever FF window I last viewed.

Posted by: guanxi at November 5, 2005 1:52 PM

I think your research applies only to users, who are used to browsing via IE windows; with tabs, most firefox users I know prefer opening all links from their current site into a new background tab, then read the new tabs from right to left, closing them after they are done. For all those, who want to customize their tab behaviour in more detail, there is the excellent Tab Mix Plus extension, which does everything that you have mentioned and more.

Posted by: Magumi at November 5, 2005 3:02 PM

I'm pleased this is being looked at, it needs addressing. I have been considering and researching this for a very long time, and comparing with other browsers. I like the build, and have the following comments.

1. I got my family using Firefox, first I had to get tabs by default. Then for they're understanding, I had to add tab close buttons to tabs. This is definitely better overall than the current system. A user associates closing a page, with a close button on the page in question, its the most intuitive and consistent with programs, OS's, particularly Windows.

I personally have tab mix to show close buttons when I hover on any tab. This however is more advanced, and not very nice UI for a novice.

Really, on this and all of the points, all the other browsers have this right, Opera, Netscape, etc. Have tabs by default, have tab close buttons on the tab. This isnt too problematic for them, but more beneficial.

The tab close button should also be a fair bit smaller, and top right aligned like windows close buttons, which will dramatically improve things. A undo close tab should be added to context just incase too. But all kinds of accidents happen to people using software, closing a window instead of a tab is an easier mistake, and its a learning curve, people make mistakes and have accidents, its about doing whats best overall, and this is that.

3. On the point of having the option 'Force links that open windows in' disabled, this is very inconsistent with having links from other applications opening new tabs by default. I cuncur, this needs correcting as of immediately. Tabs should be the default as they are more intuitive and easier to use, so if implemented right it will benefit the majority. Can we have some more information on when this will be corrected?

With The options change, the word 'window' should not be used however, it sounds wrong, and should instead be 'page' like Opera. This addresses the education and understanding of the differences of handling pages: windows and tabs. So a user is using pages, and they can see and understand the different ways a program can handle them, and generally that tabs are easier. This is much better, and makes thing clearer, easier to grasp.

Posted by: Kris Silver at November 5, 2005 5:54 PM

I just don't get it with tabs, I've used them with NetCaptor for MANY years before moving to Firefox quite some time ago...

The MiniT enhanced extension has the options that I feel Firefox should have as standard which are:

1) Allow the user to decide which way to go when closing a tab - I prefer to go to the LEFT tab when closing a tab.

2) New tabs are my biggest Firefox annoyance, I can't live with the MiniT extension, it lets me open new tabs NEXT to my current tab, not 15 tabs over to the right from where I was! :)

Fairly simple options to let users choose exactly how they want the tabs to behave. NetCaptor, Avant, Opera, all these products give you ways to do this, hence greater flexibility.

Thanks, Fedorov.

Posted by: Fedorov at November 5, 2005 6:14 PM

excellent, it's definitely far better than using the context menu or middle clicking. it makes sense too.

Posted by: timothy lim at November 5, 2005 8:55 PM

Ehm. Thank God, I an not the only one to disapprove of the proposed changes! If I understand them correctly, they want to have Firefox behave as Opera does by default (closing tab switches to previous or parent, close buttons on tabs). Please, for crying out loud: NO! I like the way tabs behave now. If I want to close one, it's usually the one I read. I don't want to check which one that was again, and then click IT'S button. I like the general close button on the right hand side of the tabs. And I like the way FF switches to the tab next to it, when I close one. I open a lot of tabs from a single page pretty often, I read one, close it and am moved to one of the others I haven't read yet. I like that.

Please do not touch this behaviour, or at least make a 'legacy' option, so I can switch back to the old behaviour. Please. Pretty please.

Posted by: Max at November 6, 2005 4:40 AM

Of course users would be able to choose the behaviour they prefer, some like you will like it as it is now, its impossible to get it right for 100% of people. Whats being said in light of other browsers, research on users, is that its best to have links that open new pages set to open new tabs (like links in programs) and close buttons on each tab, as the user associates a close button with what its on. That is behaviour throughout many programs and OS's, and user intuitive. How do we go about getting more information on the happenings of this? I'd love to see a comment from Ben updating.

Posted by: Kris Silver at November 6, 2005 9:31 AM

having "X" in each tab would be cool, but having a choice of both options available would be cool. Undo close tab would nice, like tabmix-plus.

Posted by: mdew at November 6, 2005 2:09 PM

As I posted a few above, some simple control over which tab it takes you to when you close a tab, and give the option of having new tabs open NEXT to the active tab.

Currently, the default Firefox tab behaviour I find totally crazy, I mean, I have 10 tabs open, I'm on the first one (far-left), I middle-click a link to open it in the background and it appears on a tab waaaay over on the right at the end of all the other tabs. Default behaviour SHOULD open it next to and to the right of the tab I am currently using. imho.

This way, when I close this new tab that opened NEXT to my previously active tab, I close it and it closes to the LEFT so I am back on the tab I came from, makes a whole lot more sense to me - this is why I cannot use Firefox without the MiniT enhanced extension, I find Firefox default tab behaviour almost impossible to use on a daily basis :(

Posted by: Fedorov at November 6, 2005 3:10 PM

As mentioned in some of the above posts, I agree it would be better to have the close tab button appear on mouse-over, after a half-second delay.

Benefits: the user would see very quicky how to close a tab

The user would also not accidenly close the tab, as the button would only appear after half a second.

The user would not have to right-click the tab and choose from a context menu to close the tab. Although, of course, this option should be retained.

The option of middle clicking to close the tab should also be retained.

And a legacy option in about:config should be available, to please users who prefer things the way they are.

Session history: this should carry on from the parent tab. Maybe an about:config to turn this off if required, though I personally can only see it of benefit.

Focus: Close a tab, and the last selected tab should take focus. This would most likely be the parent tab, but if I had selected another tab in the mean time, then of course that tab would be the last selected. about:config option to alter this behavour, so that the prefs window remains user-friendly and un-cluttered.

Nice to see these are areas that are being worked on. It's good to see the dev team are always working on improving the browser, and that user feedback is requested an actively acted on. Truly open source!

Posted by: Mr Lizard at November 6, 2005 11:37 PM

I think more could be done to improve the visibility of the selected tab. While with the grayed-out close buttons on non-selected tabs the problem is diminished, for those who choose to not use individual close buttons it can still be hard to find which tab is in the foreground.

While overall I think Firefox's tab behaviour is superior, in my opinion Opera does a better job in pointing out the selected tab. With a color change for the full tab instead of just a small orange strip on top as in Firefox, the focus becomes much more clear among a bunch of open tabs.

Posted by: Laszlo Oslo at November 7, 2005 12:08 AM

One thing I think is worth mentioning is that although it might be easier to close a tab when the close button is part of that tab, it's much, much harder to close several tabs.

When I use Eclipse, which has a close button for each tab, I often find it's easier to close all tabs, then open the 3 or 4 I want to keep from the recent items in the File menu, than is to close the dozen or so tabs I no longer need. That just can't be right.

Posted by: Bitter at November 7, 2005 1:29 AM

My two cents: I would suggest that we have the close button only on the active tab. What are the chances that a person would want to close inactive tabs? Having a close button only on the active tab would reduce the chance of accidentally closing a tab when switching tabs.

Posted by: Adarsh Bhat at November 7, 2005 1:57 AM

Just to add to my comment above: It would be nice to have to have the "Close all tabs but this" in the context menu.

Posted by: Adarsh Bhat at November 7, 2005 1:58 AM

a opens b. focus b. press back.

"This tab was opened from another window, would you like to close this tab and open the other?

[x] always do this in the future
"

Posted by: ballsface at November 7, 2005 2:00 AM

What about "having new tabs open NEXT to the active tab", like a lot of people want and to be more comfortable, increasing the size of the tab of "parents tabs" or use a tab color code to differenciate groups of tabs?
(and maybe the possibility for an extension to make the tree of tabs in the left panel...)

Posted by: David, biologeek at November 7, 2005 2:43 AM

I'm also for opening a new tab to the right of the parent. First of all, right now, it's easy to close a lot of tabs by holding down Ctrl+W or clicking the tab close button repeatedly. If you change the tabs so that they hop to the parent when the child is closed, then the tab ordering is a lot harder to predict, which leads to several problems, one of which is that closing multiple tabs is harder.

Second, the lack of predictability will be harder on the user, since the user may have more trouble understanding how he got from the child tab to the parent tab. Especially if he has a lot of tabs open.

Third, the behaviour of the tabs with the parent being forgotten after the tab loses focus just sounds confusing, even to experienced users.

If you use the "open tab to the right of the parent" model, then you don't lose any of the predictability of the interface. While you have the problem of multiple children being opened, by default, the new tab is shown as soon as it's opened, so the next time a child is opened, the parent must be rehilighted first, which means the parent/child relationship would have been broken in your model, anyway, as soon as the user switched back to the parent.

Anyway, that's just me two cents. I'll use it, whichever you decide. There will probably be extensions so it can be changed, anyway.

Posted by: Jason Bouzane at November 7, 2005 2:46 AM

I get thrown by Firefox opening tabs on the far right hand side, rather than inserting them next to the parent - I'd also like to see this feature.

Posted by: Spong Bo at November 7, 2005 4:23 AM

Way to go in copying Epiphany, now can you copy a few more usablity ideas they have such as how the find box only hides once it looses focus and NOT after being inactive for 10 seconds which is just stupid and lame not to forget, annoying.

Posted by: Yom Tov at November 7, 2005 5:44 AM

While we're here, consolidate the preferences for links sent from external applications vs. targeted links internally into a single pref: "Open links that would open new windows in tabs"

I'm all for the simplification of options, but I would have to agree with guanxi that having all links open new tabs would be an unproductive decision, at least for the browsing habbits of some more advanced users.

In addition to the task-specific windows that guanxi mentions, there is also the case of the user using virtual desktops, where there may be a browser on one desktop, and an email client on a second. With the change being proposed here, clicking a link in the email client would then open a tab on a different desktop, instead of a new window on the current one.

Posted by: Tyler Hunt at November 7, 2005 6:11 AM

-I like the idea of putting the close
button on the tab handle itself, makes it much more obvious to users that they can easily close tabs this way.

-Unfortunately this makes the tab bar much more cluttered. How about fading out the close button, only fading it in (showing it) when the mouse is over a tab handle? This will reduce screen clutter dramatically. Apple has an easier job in ths regard because they don't show FAV icon's like FF does.

-The z-index hack you guys have come up with is clever but too clever. Software that tries to be smart often baffles and annoys users. You want a simple solution people can understand that will be more robust. Opening new tabs next to the tab that caused them to open (aka in the middle of the tab bar) is a MUCH better solution. You can flip back and forth between tabs and the parent tab idea still works out. Furthermore, your tabs are automatically organized by browsing context. This is a huge deal. Right now tabs are unorganized. FF developers have already acknowledged this, going the distance of allowing users to drag and drop the tab order, when in fact if tabs were automatically organized a bit better you never would need to reorder the tabs. Honestly, does anyone WANT to reorder their tabs? This is exise!

Posted by: Will Stokes at November 7, 2005 6:17 AM

yeah i like the idea of fading it.. ive used opera and the problem with the close button in the tab is that i accidentally closed the tab when what i want is to go to another page..

Posted by: joesixpack at November 7, 2005 6:34 AM

When attempting to close one tab in Firefox on a PC, I sometimes close the entire browser window by accident. At work I'm on a Mac and I don't have trouble with it, but on a PC, the close boxes for the browser and for the tabs are too similar and close to each other. So I'd like to try the individual tab X option.

Also, I agree with Adarsh Bhat that you should test having a close box on the active tab only to prevent accidental closing of tabs you meant to focus on.

Posted by: JenInSC at November 7, 2005 6:40 AM

So, basically, we want TabX and Clone Window installed by default.

Personally, I prefer having 'close' buttons on every tab AND at the right edge of the tab bar. That way, I can close a number of tabs at once, but I can also associate the button with particular tabs. Older versions of TabX did this, but not the more recent ones.

Posted by: dhasenan at November 7, 2005 6:40 AM

I have to say I agree with fergy regarding the close buttons per tab. While it might help a novice recognize how to close a tab more easily, this is one of the things I dislike about the tabs in Gaim. I've done just what fergy suggests: trying to change to another tab without cycling through them I accidentally click on the little red 'X' and lose the entire conversation (I don't log the scrollback at work).

Might it be optional instead? Default to having an 'X' per tab and then let the seasoned folks turn it off if it's a distraction?

Posted by: Steven Klassen at November 7, 2005 7:15 AM

I'm a Web Dev, and I'd like to share my thoughts.

1.) I use, and will always use, middle-click to open a link in a new tab.
2.) I use, and will always use, middle-click on an open tab, to close it. (although if there is an [x] there, I may left-click it, since it is visually obvious)
3.) I have my settings set, that all pages launched from external apps, create a new tab, in the current window.
4.) The ONLY thing I miss/desire, is a 'clone' of the browser history, when I open a new tab. I understand as a Dev, that this is funky, at best to decide how to implement, but I would take *any* implementation, over the current (which is no history)
5.) Remove the "Go" menu... I know it's a holdover from before, but I can honestly say I never ever use it, and I don't think anyone else does either. (if however, you plan to keep it, please prefix the site names, with the site icons, where applicable)
6.) I haven't checked it out yet, but I do look forward to being able to drag/drop tabs... ;-)

Posted by: Steve at November 7, 2005 7:46 AM

One thing that'd be a big help is the ability to easily convert a tab to a window and vice-versa.

It'd look like the dockable toolbars in Office;
drag a tab off the tab bar to an empty place, and it's a window. Drag a window back to the tab bar, and it's a tab.

Posted by: ranseus at November 7, 2005 8:22 AM

When Ben has spoken previously about UI and other engineering decisions being very difficult, it is because it requires doing whats best for the majority based on testing, clever decisions, not just preferencing or requesting the behaviour that they prefer. This is about generically having the best default setup, to suite the majority.

Research, comparison, and usability tests show that simply having a tab close button on each tab is generally easier, and more intuitive. This is because a user associates a close button, with what its on, and rightly so, thats the simplest, most generically common and best all round.

For the few who prefer otherwise, of course there will be an option or better, and extension for the user to choose.

The same goes for a tab close button only on the current tab. This wastes the productivity and intuitivity of having a tab close button on the tab. A user wants to close a 'page' at the click of a button, and doing that needs to be as obvious, clear, comfortable , consistent with other programs and OS's as possible.

As for tab close buttons only appearing after hovering over a tab for a second, this is good but a more advanced configuration, again for extensions. Buttons appearing, disapearing and re-appearing is not particularly novice user friendly UI, or generically suitable as default.

On the more important issue of the option of "open links that open new windows in" tab, this must be done asap. Having it not so is in direct contradiction to opening links in other programs in a new tab, and tabs are clearly more intuitive, suitable, and beneficial to the user. This should be regarded to as 'page' as per Opera also, to help make clear the options of dealing with pages themselves. Again on this particular serious point, this really needs to happen asap, I'm sure many of use await advice as to when this will happen, and these other general browsing improvements.

Posted by: Kris Silver at November 7, 2005 8:22 AM

I will be the first one to disable the close buttons in tabs, but it is likely that it has sense.

I find that point 2 is sometimes good, but sometimes not. I ussually open 10 pages from single page, read each of them and close them afterwards. Now, apply your concept. It leads to mess in such case. I won't use it as I do this very frequently. Not sure how frequent other users do that.

Point 3 misses the point. I believe that I, as a user, should have every control over whether page will open in new tab/window. So, if I want that I middle-click. If I don't want that I just click. As far as my experience goes, most of the websites use target attribute when I don't need them, so I really like the option to force them to open in the same tab. On the other hand, I can use only left click in Thunderbird, and I want it to open windows in new tabs.

Posted by: Ivan Icin at November 7, 2005 10:19 AM

I forgot to mention that the default configuration I had been playing with was to (for Windows at least, murky on other platforms), to only show the close button on the active tab. This was easy to do because like I said, once there are many tabs and tab width falls below a preset minimum (browser.tabs.minTabWidth), the tab close button is only shown on the active tab. Setting browser.tabs.minTabWidth to something large like 5000 effectively hides close buttons at all tab widths. We were going to do more research and experimentation when setting the appropriate value of this preference. In the mean time, those that want the background close boxes can set browser.tabs.minTabWidth themselves in about:config.

Posted by: Ben Goodger at November 7, 2005 10:30 AM

The problem of accidentally closing tabs by clicking the close button when you meant to just switch to the tab, is mitigated in Opera by having an Undo.

If you close a tab in Opera by mistake or you change your mind, you can hit Ctrl-Z or Edit/Undo and the tab re-opens (instantly, out of the memory cache). Although this doesn't entirely solve the problem, it makes mistakenly closing a tab much less costly for the user.

Opera also does 'Duplicate', 'Close', 'Close all', 'Close all but active' and 'Lock tab' on the tab context menu. Locked tabs (an Opera 9 beta feature) can't be closed unless you unlock them and Duplicated tabs have full history and cache.

Interestingly, in Opera 9p1, Opera have dropped their 'Pages' terminology in favour of using 'Tabs', bowing before the mighty Firefox juggernaut (or at least trying to pinch some ff users) :)

Posted by: dflock at November 7, 2005 10:42 AM

Point 3 only really makes sense for users with a single window containing all their tabs/pages.

The difference between Thunderbird and GMail is that GMail can open the link in a logical location (GMails window) whereas Thunderbird would appear to open the link in some random ff window. This becomes more of a problem with more ff windows and is null with one window.

Posted by: Johnny Kuan at November 7, 2005 12:08 PM

I think this is a great idea.

I used to have TabX extension, which isn't working so hot lately. Other tab related extensions are SingleWindow, Focus Last Selected Tab, Disable Targets for Downloads, Hash Colored Tabs (not currently compatible), Last Tab, Ook, Session Saver, Tab Clicking Options, UndoCloseTab, and maybe one or two others which I don't currently use because of compatibility. If any or all of these could have their functions built in, all the better.

Especially important are TabX, SingleWindow, Focus Last Selected Tab, Disable Targets for Downloads, UndoCloseTab.

In fact, I was going to open a "tracking bug" to keep track of missing tabbed browsing features and their progress. Maybe no longer necessary if this idea moves forward.

Posted by: sasquatch at November 7, 2005 3:00 PM

I forgot to add Duplicate Tab to that list.

Thanks for doing this.

Posted by: sasquatch at November 7, 2005 3:33 PM

"... a Microsoft representative said that they had done studies that showed that users generally had no more than 5 windows open at a time. This surprised them because they, like most of us, were used to browsing with tens of windows."

I'm not surprised. For these people with so few windows open, the only advantage of tabs over taskbar buttons is their position, which more obviously communicates their relationship to the pages. (The disadvantages are increased danger of a window's close button, and the hesitation effect of the tab bar being used for some switching and the taskbar being used for others. The way tabs break Alt+Tab/Expos� would be a disadvantage too, but I suspect most people don't know about Alt+Tab, and of course most people don't have Expos�.)

Posted by: mpt at November 7, 2005 3:55 PM

Just replicate the main features from TBE.

Now that developer knows how to work with tabs. He should be hired by Mozilla Corp. just to do tab work.

He certainly knows his stuff.

Posted by: Greg at November 7, 2005 5:02 PM

As to back button: "users expect clicking back to go back"

so let them...

I feel microsoft (IE) has provided a good solution by carrying over the history when opening new windows.

Posted by: JtR at November 7, 2005 9:15 PM

Everything you just describe as something you're "experimenting with" is already fully functional in Opera. Check it out for free at www.opera.com

Posted by: Anon at November 7, 2005 10:55 PM

"The only problem with the [X] buttons on the tabs is that when I'm using such a browser (e.g. Epiphany or Opera) I sometimes click the tab closing button when I just want to switch the tab. This leads to dataloss.

Thus, I find the current Firefox behavior superior to Opera and Epiphany."

Someone said that earlier...

I would like to point out that, in Opera, there is a "Recycle bin" of all the tabs you have closed in the current browser session, so it's quite easy to get a page back that you didn't mean to close.

Posted by: John at November 7, 2005 10:57 PM

In the real world when you have a stack of files with their tabs visible when you remove the top file you see the file directly beneath it. You don't magically see a file somewhere in the middle of the stack just because it is somehow related to the file you just removed. I expect the same behaviour from my tabbed browser.

Posted by: AL at November 7, 2005 11:35 PM

I use VirtuaWin for virtual desktops. I sometimes have several virtual desktops each with several firefox windows, each with several tabs. Opening a link from Thunderbird in a new tab is likely to use a firefox window on a different desktop.

Posted by: Adam at November 8, 2005 1:49 AM

so many comments I may have missed someone mentioning this, but...

Is it not possible to have user movable tabs like in Opera. There are times when being able to move the tab is realy, really usefull.

another comment, do not have close buttons that appear as you hover - they lead to accidental clouser of tabs as you move to click on a tab and it suddenly becomes a close button as you click.

Posted by: neil at November 8, 2005 2:27 AM

Hi!

If you want to put close tabs buttons on the tabs make avilable the old proper way.
It is a huge mistake!

Posted by: Singh at November 8, 2005 4:11 AM

Hi,

ctrl + tab, thats amazing, thanks djst (comment nr1)!

why not have the close tab button hidden, but appear when you mouse over it. sure, its not easy for novices to use, but if you implement it via a tickbox in options, then power users will use it - it wont consume screen space and its easy to use when you know its there.

personally i use the middle button to close tabs :) found it by clicking accidentally one day!

thanks mozilla people, keep up the good work! :D

Posted by: Ben at November 8, 2005 5:29 AM

Hello you beautiful people.

When you click on the link in IE or Firefox or Opera you never know where will it open, in new window or in current and this is very annoying. In Firefox and Opera this is even more annoying since we have tabs, so when you middle click on javascript link you will end up with empty tab, so every time before middle click you need to check is it link javascript link.

This can be very puzzling for not so much experienced Firefox or Internet user and it is very annoying for rest of us since browser should do what we tell it and we shouldn�t guess what browser is going to do and adjust our action to it.

My proposal is, make left click to always open links, even javascript links, in current tab, middle click in new tab, and shift + left click in new window. Of course make this optional and configurable. I think that this kind of option will perfectly match Firefox slogan "Take back the web". Sorry for my bad English, I hope that my idea is clear enough. What do you think about it?

Posted by: Iva at November 8, 2005 2:04 PM

Tabs are the worst thing about the FF interface. I am amazed that it took you so long before adressing these issues although I guess the current situation is okay for a 1.0x product. I am happy to see you guys looking at it now though.

Like other posters I too am a Tabmix user (tab extensions became too complex for my needs, felt like it was messing things up) and would also prefer to see the close icon only when hovering over a tab.

The tab issues give me the feeling FF is still an unfinished product despite all the other goodness. I hope you will release these fixes soon and keep blogging about usability tests, it's great stuff.

Posted by: Paul Steffens at November 8, 2005 4:41 PM

I don't use tabs. I have tried to use tabs in my browser but it just feels completely wrong. I like being able to see every window I have open in windows. I think this may be for a couple of reasons.

1. I do more then just use a web browser. I often have my music playing, download program etc.

2. Switching between tabs is very difficult due to their small size.

I think a combination of these twot things stop me from using tabbed browsing. I think there is more to usability of tabbed browsing then just the considerations you made. I think you may need to do some studies on how people organise all their tasks, not just those related to their browsing.

Posted by: benno at November 8, 2005 9:00 PM

I'd like to repeat what others have said in that the ordering used by FLST seems exactly the Right Way. Additionally, I find the "click on active tab title to flip to the last selected tab" aspect to be extremely useful when working in a window that has too many tabs.

For managing active tabs, something like the bookmark manager could be very useful. A tab is like an individual page, while a window is, in essence, a folder containing them. A tab manager window would provide the user with a convenient means of moving tabs (or groups of tabs) between windows, and of closing groups of tabs -- two things that Firefox can't really do at the moment and for which extensions have only been partially effective.

Theoretically, it could even be integrated with the bookmark manager as a special section of "Currently open pages". Combine this with a native session saver feature and

Posted by: Westacular at November 8, 2005 10:26 PM

z-index heuristics and preference consolidation sound brilliant... Close buttons on tabs less so.

It may help learnability for casual users, but it feels like usability suicide for anyone beyond that -- 10% of the area I click on *to see* a tab now doesn't let me see it, rather, it destroys the tab, preventing me ever seeing it!

If this is to make its way into FF, please make it configurable!

Posted by: Skip Chris at November 9, 2005 1:28 AM

Good observations! Hope to see this improvement broadly available soon.

Posted by: Jens Meiert at November 9, 2005 5:06 AM

Haven't read the otzer comments.

Thats what I hate about Opera. If someone likes that behavior: Use windows, they have all this. But the current behavior with tabs is whats better about them:
You can open many links on one homepage, all in tabs and then click them away without moving the mouse or jumping around betreen the tabs. Thats really nice when reading news for example.

Home this change never makes it way into Firefox...or perhaps only with a config-switch available.

Posted by: David Danier at November 9, 2005 5:19 AM

it is important to mention that firefox has an extension called tabbed browser preferences that really improves the whole tabbed experience.

please check at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=158&application=firefox

Posted by: ben scott at November 9, 2005 11:22 AM

You may want to look into why Konqueror had this tab-closing-button on the tab earlier (like Opera) but chose to move it to a Firefox-like position. I know I was relieved at the move because previously it was much to easy to accidentally close tabs, leading to much frustration. It is good that you do usability studies, but please also learn from each other's!

Posted by: Jonas at November 10, 2005 3:25 AM

Great conversolution in this thread. How about,

1. close X is ghosted behind the tab text
2. click anywhere in the tab to raise it to focus and "arm" the close box
3. click again in the close X to close it

You get maximum tabtext width, and a two-click safety. The sacrifice is, you have to doubleclick fast to close a tab without raising (And re-rendering) it.

Posted by: Chris Lowery at November 10, 2005 11:27 AM

I also support the "un-close tab" icon next to the, er, perma-X on the right of the tabs.

vote Quimby!

Posted by: Chris Lowery at November 10, 2005 11:32 AM

I strongly hope first two changes will be optional (configurable) so that it will be possible to keep current behavior (which I prefer).

Posted by: Michal Kubeček at November 10, 2005 11:36 AM

What came to my mind is that atleast I'm used to middleclicking: so couldn't the left and middle click differiate with the behavior? With left button, the owner tab will be remembered. And then not to do that with middle button, so you could keep the old behavior. This ought to keep most of both new users and old users happy? Guess that leaves ctrl + click to open a new window...

As for the close button... why not have a tab close button below the regular X button? That way it would be more visible to people who are looking for a way to close a page. Read: I dislike the idea of having close buttons on each tab.

Posted by: Vesa at November 10, 2005 6:38 PM

The close icon in the table is too small. double click on the tab or a larger close icon will be better.

Posted by: echoflying at November 13, 2005 1:09 AM

Neil, Firefox lets you move tabs now, at least within the same window.

I do agree I see myself hovering over a tab and accidentally closing it. There's gotta be ANOTHER way to close a tab without raising it. Then again, what's the chance someone'd want to close an inactive tab, as someone else's pointed out? On Windows, windows work that way anyway -- you sometimes may want to close a window without bringing it to the front, but NO ONE puts close buttons on the taskbar.

I'm also happy to hear that hiding the close button will be easy, though I believe it should be the default.

Posted by: Tsee at November 14, 2005 8:23 PM

Sorry for the bugspam, but while using the bittorrent client Azureus, I realized that it has a close-tab button on each tab in its Windows version (it seems from the scr.shot http://azureus.sourceforge.net/img/sc/2.2.0.0/torrent_-_pieces.png which I'm guessing shows it on Linux that it's not the same on all platforms). I fear closing the tabs in that app all the time, but I realize that my pref may not be yours, so I thought you might want to consider this kind of less-prominent buttons. Perhaps the first time a user clicks it you can display in large print that tells the user what she's done.

Posted by: Tsee at November 15, 2005 8:06 PM

good. firefox continues to follow Opera's old inovations.

Posted by: mors at November 16, 2005 11:30 AM

Not sure if someone mentioned this but the feel i get when you mentioned new tabs is that tabs are opened the right of the current tab. Why not use a stack metaphor to open tabs.

more here...

http://utills.blogspot.com/2005/11/firefox-tabs-should-be-stacked.html

Furthermore, it may be a good idea to actually colour or highlight in italics any tabs that have been opened but not yet read/opened yet. This may give a clearer picture to the user about what he/she has opened so far and what is still to be read.

Posted by: Utills at November 17, 2005 11:55 AM

To point out another program that works successfully and is very clear with tabs, www.Shareaza.com. Only the selected tab has a close button which I'm actually beginning to favour for Firefox perhaps, next to close button on all tabs, but options for this.

An unread tab has red text, which many Fx extensions do anyway and Fx should by default to help users. Also, the selected tab is much clearer to see with having a tab close button, and a nice shading system. Fx does need to improve this too! See following screen shot:

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b77/Ready4UGoods/untitled.jpg

Really hope these important improvements are being worked on to be implemented soon. For 1.5 release Fx really should open links that open windows in tabs as per this build, like tabs not windows are opened from links in thunderbird. That is a key one to do asap.

Posted by: Kris Silver at November 18, 2005 1:48 AM

These enchantments are really really great. I am very much looking forward to seing them in the regular Fx builds. I wish they were included in the official 1.5 release.

Posted by: Paul Goscicki at November 18, 2005 2:58 AM

It's good to see Firefox catching up with Opera.

I'm slightly suprised at Ben's enthusiasm for these changes though, as they were suggested many times on Mozillazine in the past, only for Ben to heavy-handedly dismiss them every time.

Posted by: Dan100 at November 19, 2005 2:52 AM

By the way, accidently clicking the tab close button is not a problem with Opera - clicking on the trash can on the right side of the tab bar opens a list of all recently closed tabs.

Posted by: Dan100 at November 19, 2005 2:54 AM

I really like the look of the experimental windows tabstrip. That looks nice. I can't wait to see thing in the general releases...

Posted by: Scott Johnson at November 19, 2005 3:46 PM

In K-Meleon if you attempt to close a window with multiple tabs (layers) it will ask what you want to do rather than FF's confirmation only dialog.

KM's prompt is "There are __ layers open in this window. Do you want to close all of them?" with buttons for Yes No and Cancel.

Yes closes the window, No closes the current tab, and Cancel does nothing. This doesn't require users to have to discover any new method of closing tabs though it does require the confirmation.

I think putting the close box on each tab is a bad idea. With a lot of tabs that will take up a lot of the space the title otherwise would be visible in. And as others have pointed out, it will lead to accidental closing of pages.

Normally I use the Tab Clicking Options extension to make double click close the tabs. When I am using FF without that extension I usually use the context menu to close the tab. I am used to moving my mouse to the tab to close it so I hardly ever use the close button at the end of the bar.

The tab bar is closely related to and replacing the function of the OS (Windows) taskbar. From the taskbar the quick way to close a window is from the context menu, otherwise you must open it and click the close on the window.

The close button on only the current tab seems like an ok solution. With this method you cannot close multiple tabs quickly. First you have to select them and then hit the X. That may be fine for an average user (which is the target), but for power users that would be a pain though no worse than it is now.

Posted by: Joe at November 20, 2005 5:35 PM

The only difference then from the confirmation dialogue in K Meleon is the option to cancel. That isnt particularly worth adding and is more confusing then beneficial.

I agree a close button on the active tab is the best solution all round. Far more intuitive and minimising accidents. Theres more accidents now resulting from users clicking the main window close button, and just generally not understanding tabs.

This is best for the majority of users of which are average, novice whatever, not power users like many whom are posting here. Power users are not a majority and are freely capable of acquiring tab extensions to get the behaviour they desider via extensions and more, which most already do. Dont forget its possible to right click on a tab and select close all other tabs, close tabs to the right and such via extensions like Tab Mix plus, which handles the functionality you speak of for power users perfectly.

The other 2 points should too be implemented asap, eagerly waiting these improvements to be made, and hopefully for 1.5 release. Sooner the better.

Posted by: Kris Silver at November 22, 2005 9:16 AM

Late in the game here, and not reading all the above to see if it's been said already. If so, my vote for it. If not, I think it's worth mentioning.

Instead of the "tab owner" until swtiched away from, I think "open new tab immediately to the right" makes more intuitive sense, and much easier to explain in a radio-button toggle (ie. new tabs open "far right" vs. "immediate right").

Thanks.

Posted by: Tollie at November 24, 2005 8:14 PM

Hi!

Just wanted to ask whether the version mentioned in the article will be or already is updated to come to the basis of ff 1.5?

I find the whole package very useful but don't want to get out of the whole ff bugfixing steps too much.

Greets

Sven

Posted by: Sven at November 29, 2005 11:26 PM

I can't agree more that a close button should be on each tab. As a matter of fact, it is the main reason I don't use Firefox on the Mac: Safari does have a close button on each tab.

Posted by: Aaron Jensen at November 30, 2005 6:55 AM

i am an idiot and i am lead by richard simmons

Posted by: idiot at November 30, 2005 2:59 PM

Reordering tabs is great, whenever somehow my gmail, bloglines or other open at all times tabs get moved from where I normally find them, I immediately want to drag and drop them back to where they belong.

A close button on each tab is too cluttered in Safari, with a multi-button mouse, just hitting the scroll wheel or middle button closes the firefox tab.

Posted by: laurie at December 1, 2005 3:13 PM

As others here, I use middle-click to close a precise tab, and like to have a fixed positioned close button when reading news.

Of course, the problem with middle-click is that it is not discoverable for regular people. To solve that problem, I think having a close button on the active tab only would be a nice solution:
- it is discoverable, since anyone has at least an active tab,
- it does not get in the way (any other tab you want to select does not have this button),
- it hides part of the title of the active tab, but that title is reproduced on the window title.

The only drawback is that it does not allow to close non active tabs in one click, which does not seem to be an issue for regular people (we still have middle-click for that).

This solution may have been discussed already, in which case I just wanted to vouch for it.

Posted by: Stephane at December 5, 2005 4:22 AM

Another idea: When the mouse rests on one of the open tabs along the tab bar, a Close button pops up in the screen space directly above that tab. The user would then need to move the mouse again to close the tab, thus avoiding accidental closures. You also won't waste precious screen real estate. I still believe that the current close button should be retained and a New Tab button be placed to its left to make tabs in general more discoverable. When the user clicks on that Close button, a popup could let them know about the new method, perhaps via animation.

Best,
Tsee

Posted by: xiner at December 5, 2005 7:24 PM

I use an extension called Close Tab on Double click.
IMHO, it reduces the space used per tab & clutter caused by adding a X to every tab.

Now, if I could just get my inactive tabs to grey out..

Posted by: curious fred at December 11, 2005 2:48 AM

And undoclosetabs is useful also

http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=226

Posted by: Me again at December 11, 2005 2:59 AM

A feature that I woud like to see, which I think I saw in other browsers, is that I can re-open a link I closed by error. Sometime, if I'm a little to quick on the mouse, I will close the wrong tab, and I would have to reclick the links that brought me there. A "Undo tab close" would be a great thing to do. Also, saving all currently opened tabs in a separate "entity" would be beneficial. Currently, I think I can only save all my opened tabs in my other bookmarks. I would like this to be something like a set that I could name, like "morning news", where I could open all news web sites I usually open every morning.

Great work, guys !!!

Posted by: Jean-Francois Messier at January 3, 2006 9:42 AM

iRider is has the best tabbed browsing interface. If Firefox had tabbed browsing more like iRider I'd switch to Firefox.

Posted by: Martin Lukes at July 4, 2006 9:35 AM

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