When there are lot of tabs open the active tab to small And when we do "Tabs on Title Bar" bug 572160 it will be difficult read the title of a web site. So I suggest we should make min-width: 250px for active tab. You can add following to userChrome.css to see the effect #main-window toolbox#navigator-toolbox .tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned])[selected="true"] { min-width: 250px !important; } additionally if you want to see some animation add max-width: 145px for inactive tab. #main-window toolbox#navigator-toolbox .tabbrowser-tab[fadein] { max-width: 145px !important; } demo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yybkuez3DDk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-CF2xuOTuk discussion : http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.usability/browse_thread/thread/d5290d18ae19c3f2# you can also substitute following CSS instead of first one. I dont know which one is better #main-window toolbox#navigator-toolbox .tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned])[fadein][selected="true"] { min-width: 250px !important; }

Sorry, this isn't how we'd want to do it. It introduces a lot of disruptive movement/shifting of the tabs, and it also means that tabs aren't in the same location they were before you clicked. A better way to solve this is to detect duplicate text in the tab titles and strip the redundant parts. Example, two tabs: 1. "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Cats" 2. "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Dogs" Becomes: 1. "Cats" 2. "Dogs" (with favicon intact, so you still have a strong indicator of which site you are on) This is filed as bug 583890.

(In reply to comment #1) > Sorry, this isn't how we'd want to do it. It introduces a lot of disruptive > movement/shifting of the tabs, and it also means that tabs aren't in the same > location they were before you clicked. The following minimizes the shifting for me (for use in "userChrome.css", as posted to the ng): @-moz-document url(chrome://browser/content/browser.xul) { .tabbrowser-tab[fadein]:not([pinned]) { max-width: 200px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab[selected="true"][fadein]:not([pinned]) { min-width: 250px !important; max-width: 250px !important; } .tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned]) { -moz-transition-duration: 0.25s, 0.25s !important; } } But I also see a problem of tabs not keeping their location, how would it play with Bug 465086, for example.

(In reply to comment #2) > The following minimizes the shifting for me (for use in "userChrome.css", as > posted to the ng): I think by "shifting" Alex actually meant changing the size of all targets on the tabstrip; thanks for the change, maybe we can turn it into a Jetpack?

(In reply to comment #3) > I think by "shifting" Alex actually meant changing the size of all targets on > the tabstrip; thanks for the change, maybe we can turn it into a Jetpack? Indeed, sorry about the ambiguity. :)