get the browser.tabs.tabClipWidth hidden pref working again if the fix in bug #318168 lands as is, this useful hidden pref will no longer work. mconnor tells me that the default (140 px) was chosen based on UI testing, but some power user will want to set the min width to a lower value.

*** Bug 342890 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

from logan: bug 318168 adds tab overflow and bumps tab minWidth to 140, which would be about 5 tabs at 800x600. I think there's probably a good amount of users who would be willing to go with smaller tabs vs overflow. Needs some error checking, but maybe something like this: --- ./content/global/bindings/tabbrowser.xml.orig 2006-06-26 15:35:08.000000000 -0500 +++ ./content/global/bindings/tabbrowser.xml 2006-06-27 13:27:31.000000000 -0500 @@ -1095,7 +1095,7 @@ t.setAttribute("crop", "end"); t.maxWidth = 250; - t.minWidth = 140; + t.minWidth = this.mTabContainer.mTabMinWidth; t.width = 0; t.setAttribute("flex", "100"); t.setAttribute("validate", "never"); @@ -2389,12 +2389,15 @@ Components.classes['@mozilla.org/preferences-service;1']. getService(Components.interfaces.nsIPrefBranch2); try { + this.mTabMinWidth = pb2.getIntPref("browser.tabs.tabMinWidth"); this.mTabClipWidth = pb2.getIntPref("browser.tabs.tabClipWidth"); this.mCloseButtons = pb2.getIntPref("browser.tabs.closeButtons"); } catch (e) { } + this.childNodes[0].minWidth = this.mTabMinWidth; + this._updateDisableBackgroundClose(); this.adjustTabstrip(false); @@ -2464,6 +2467,7 @@ } }); </field> + <field name="mTabMinWidth">140</field> <field name="mTabClipWidth">130</field> <field name="mCloseButtons">1</field>

clip width was lowered to 130, but firefox.js still has tabClipWidth set to 140

(In reply to comment #2) > from logan: > > bug 318168 adds tab overflow and bumps tab minWidth to 140, which would be > about 5 tabs at 800x600. I think there's probably a good amount of users who > would be willing to go with smaller tabs vs overflow. Well, according to this ad hoc poll on TechReport ( http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/10273 ), where the demographic is computer literate advanced users, the modal average of tabs open is single digit... so the default now is "probably about right". That said, I'd be one of the 6% of users whom open ~30 tabs per window and quite able to "navigate the tabs" just from their favicon. Having tab overflow kick in at 140px is quite an annoyance. :D

Are there corner cases where this isn't working or is there just some confusion with this and bug 342890? I lowered tab minWidth below tabClipWidth and the close buttons on inactive tabs were hidden when tabClipWidth was reached.

logan is right on several counts. 1) when i logged this bug, I was confused. bug #342890 (about the tabClipWidth pref) was what I intended to log 2) this pref *does* indeed work, as he points out. 3) there is a 140 vs 130 discrepancy in what I checked in. I'm trying to determine if the default value for tabClipWidth should change because I'm about to change the default value for min width (and minTabWidth) to be 125 px.

note, if the min clip width is less than the min tab width, it's a moot point, since the tab will never be less than the clip width, so we'll never stop showing the close boxes on the tabs that aren't selected. by default, the tabs start at 250 px and then decrease in width until 140 px (soon to be 125 px, see bug #342890). I think we should set the default .tabClipWidth pref to be less than the default .tabMinWidth pref, so that by default, users will not have their close boxes disappear. I propose 115px and 125 px. I think that having the close boxes disappear at all (for default users) isn't a good since it isn't necessary anymore, now that we have the min tab width and the tab scroll boxes. beltzner / mconnor / ben / et al: what do you guys think?

Yeah, this makes sense to me, and I think we need it for Fx2b1, too. We're going to want to play around and listen to reaction to the changes to the tab system really carefully so we can quickly iterate towards a best fit solution for beta2.

fixed on the trunk, along with the patch for bug #343019 note, the browser.tabs.tabClipWidth hidden pref was never broken. But I have set the default down to 115 px, to match the default for the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth value of 125 px.