User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; cs; rv:1.9.2b1) Gecko/20091029 Firefox/3.6b1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; cs; rv:1.9.2b1) Gecko/20091029 Firefox/3.6b1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) Situation: I have one Firefox window with more (10 to 20) tabs. Until now, it was possible to treat it as one window - when I looked at the big Windows 7 taskbar icon of Firefox, it showed that only one window is open (which is RIGHT). If I opened Download Manager, Places Manager or another window to organize my tabs, the look of the icon in the taskbar changed so that it showed these 2 or 3 windows, so I could get to any of them by hovering the icon and selecting the right one. Now, this isn't possible any more, as multiple panels are considered being multiple windows (which is WRONG, tabs must not be confused with windows). So now, even with one window open, when I have Firefox minimized and want to go back to the tab I last used using mouse (not Alt + Tab), I have to hover the taskbar icon and examine the thumbnails one after another like an idiot. It's gets even worse with more panels, more windows etc. Seriously, can anyone explain the point of treating tabs as windows? I consider this behavior highly inappropriate. I know IE8 works the same way, but IE users aren't used to working with more tabs in general (behold IE6 :D). On the other hand, Chrome 4.x behaves the right way (the same, as Firefox behaves in 3.5 branch). Please fix this, this is a major drawback in usability. It's the same thing if I used Alt+Tab and among other application's windows there were 20 tabs of Firefox, which I had to get through. Reproducible: Always

I found a partial solution - the behavior can be switched to previous mode by setting compatibility mody to Windows Vista...

This is the standard Windows 7 behaviour; all Windows and tabs from an application are coalesced into a single taskbar entry. Check out IE8, you'll see the same behaviour for "panels". You can still select an individual window using Alt-Tab; this is not broken. You can control whether or not Firefox uses per tab previews using an about:config preference (browser.taskbar.previews.enable) if you don't like the behaviour. There are legitimate questions about how much of the behaviour we want to copy, but I don't think we want to break the UI paradigm as much as suggested in comment 0.

Oh, thanks for comment and information about about:config preference. :) I just didn't know how to put this "bug" (it's not a bug, it's a feature :D) to anyone's attention, so I marked it as potentionally blocking. However, the fact that IE8 behaves this way doesn't necessarily make it right. New Windows Live Messenger is also adapted to Windows 7 and it looks like this: http://myego.cz/img/windows-7/WLM-okna.jpg so you always have to click twice or use Ctrl, which is definitely not right. Although I am happy to hear about the about:config item, I still think that user shouldn't by default be forced to browse through the thumbnails and look for the one he wants. Just compare the number of mouse clicks in Vista and 7: - switching to Firefox when it's minimized or hidden: 1 vs. 2 - switching to another tab: 2 vs. 2 Is there a chance that Mozilla's dev team would make polls about such significant changes in the UI? It's the same as with integrating Ctrl-Tab - I personally do not know anyone, who would be happy about that. Nice and cool as that may be, it slows your work down... PS: I hope it isn't a problem to change this to Unconfirmed again. If there is another place to discuss future look of Firefox, please let me know and I'll go there. :)

Like Martin Stružský, I find this new behaviour to be slow and cumbersome to work with. I understand why it has been implemented this way, but perhaps a little more feedback could be gathered on a UI change that changes a user's workflow so drastically. I came here hoping to find the option mentioned previously. Thank you.

How about just right-clicking on the taskbar -> Properties and changing the taskbar buttons option to "Never Combine"? The preview still show for tabs and the add-on manager and the downloads manager get their separate taskbar button.

Why would I completely disable combining buttons? I love the new Windows 7 taskbar, but the way Firefox and IE8 work with it is bad and slows workflow down. There is no reason to interchange tabs and windows. I don't know why can't anyone in the Mozilla dev team see that and I wonder if they ever tried using the new Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 for a longer time as their primary browser. :-/

(In reply to comment #6) > Why would I completely disable combining buttons? I love the new Windows 7 > taskbar, but the way Firefox and IE8 work with it is bad and slows workflow > down. There is no reason to interchange tabs and windows. I don't know why > can't anyone in the Mozilla dev team see that and I wonder if they ever tried > using the new Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 for a longer time as their primary > browser. :-/ Sorry, I thought when they were not combined that each taskbar item only showed the tabs for that window and not both.

Something that will help out a little is ctrl+clicking the taskbar button which will immediately bring up the focused window. This way you don't have to click, hover over preview and click the preview.

(In reply to comment #2) > Check out IE8, you'll see the same behaviour for "panels". > > You can control whether or not Firefox uses per tab previews using an > about:config preference (browser.taskbar.previews.enable) if you don't like > the behaviour. IE8 also allows one to toggle this feature through a normal options menu item instead of something relatively obscure and obtuse like about:config. I hope this convention is also replicated.