Comments on: Tabbed browsing UI changes considered painful

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 15:22:48 +0000

I started using the Tab Mix Plus plug-in and appreciated all of its functionality, but I too had a problem with having no X on the far right to close the current tab. To help me out, I followed the instructions from this web page to make the active tab easier to distinguish.

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips

Instead of the: rgb(222,218,210) that they suggested, I used (255,255,102) to get a pale yellow background.

Here is a link for different colors:

http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

Hope this helps.

By: Abe

Abe — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:02:15 +0000

Jesse - I remember when I switched to firefox (from Galeon if I remember correctly), I didn’t like the single close button on the right. Having a per-tab close button does make sense. My problem isn’t the idea, but the way it combines with my muscle memory to create unexpected data loss.

Other than undo-close-tab, some possible ways to improve the behavior would be to make clicking anywhere on a background tab bring it to the front (as Ken suggested), use a mouseover effect to highlight the entire tab that will be closed, or make the close button close onclick intead of onmousedown, so you have a little more of a chance to realize you’re doing the wrong thing.

Scott, thanks for the suggestion - if and when I do switch back to FF I’ll check it out.

By: Scott Johnston

Scott Johnston — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:35:31 +0000

If you do go back to firefox I highly recommend the Tab Mix Plus plug-in. It adds functions like “undo close tab” and “duplicate tab,” which are quite handy.

By: Jesse Andrews

Jesse Andrews — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 05:25:18 +0000

Abe & Calvin,

Most firefox extensions do work in flock, but aren’t configured to do so. We (Ian specifically) just implimented a hack to the extension manager to allow flock to install firefox extensions warning you that the extension was written for firefox and may not work.

Also getting how the (x) works isn’t easy. Many people like the ability to close tabs they aren’t using (instead of having to switch, close, be taken to another tab after it closes, then switch back).

Undo tab close is an interesting idea though!

By: Abe

Abe — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 02:24:53 +0000

Calvin -

Flock has a bunch of extensions available at http://extensions.flock.com/extensions. I couldn’t use Flock as my primary browser without at least the Web Developer and FireBug extensions, so I was glad to see that they have them. From the description here it sounds very easy to modify Firefox extensions to run in Flock. Hopefully in the future it won’t require modification at all.