(Note: this is filed as part of the “Paper Cut” bugs — we assume that there may be multiple existing bugs on this. Please make them block this bug, and we will de-dupe if they are indeed exactly the same. Thanks!) - People are split on opening tabs at the end or next to - Lots of people have TabMix Plus, but also a lot of problems reported from it - People want control here, we should give it to them Recommendation: Give users more control over tab preferences

Most relevant prefs should exist already as hidden prefs, just would need to be exposed.

Do we have a concrete proposal here? Which preferences should be exposed? How should they be exposed? Where should they be expressed? (Note also the following RFEs which were all resolved WONTFIX: bug 514799, bug 463827, bug 149297, bug 344182, and bug 242827)

Is this going to get any love for 4.0?

Unlikely. We'll see if we can pick it up again for 4.1.

Note that we are making at least one pref hidden in bug 594614.

I propose to add into the options all possibilities to control the behavior of tabs: browser.link.open_external; browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction; browser.search.openintab; browser.tabs.animate; browser.tabs.tabMaxWidth; browser.tabs.tabMinWidth; browser.tabs.closeButtons; browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab; browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent; browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground; browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground;

I second that. Since firefox is known for it's customizability and there is now much more space available it would be really nice if you could expose more preferences. Especially for the new smooth scroll algorithm.

We should survey to find out what prefs most users would like exposed.

Bug 767313 seems that can to affect it.

sorry for spamming, but I second the survey idea and start with listing the to me most important preferences of “Tab Utilities” ( 1.6 pre21 ), which would be great if I wouldn’t need a plugin + some notes for UX (hope ) 1) open new tab from: - Bookmarks - History - Search bar [ note: then I don’t have to open a blank tab first, if I e.g. want to look up a definition on wikipedia, a word in my English dictionary etc. ] 2) open a new tab next to current (active) tab [ note: often are those tabs related and I don’t want to have x amount of tabs in between them ] ( + Keep the original order for continuos background tabs ) [ note: if I close one, I want to go back this related tab; relevant for #3 and #5 below ] 3) focus last visited tab when closing tab [ note: usually when I close one tab, I want to go back to the previous one, as they are often related ] 4) duplicate tab ( including history ) [ note: I just need it a lot; e.g. I want to go back one site in the browsing history to compare something with the current page ] 5) left click on tab: “switch to last visited tab” [ note: related to #2, #3 and #4 switching between related tabs ] 6) middle click (mouse wheel) or double click on tab: close tab [ note: simply because it is a fairly easy target ;) ] Again, sorry if this is not the right place for such a list.

@Jack & Tina, What do you think about the tab preference? Maybe we can have a discussion about this together with the recent Preference UX improvement works, thanks

The general consensus is that all these options are relevant to small segment of users that is probably better served with add-ons. For example, there is this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-tabs-next-to-current/?src=ss There is some work underway to surface add-ons like these contextually based on usage, which should help interested users discover it.