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How do I get zoom to affect just one tab and not all of them?

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One particular correspondent sends me emails in large type, so I set up a separate tab just for those emails, and zoom out to make the text smaller. However, this affects my other tabs. How do I get zoom to affect just the tab I'm in and not the other tabs?

I had a similar issue with Firefox some years ago, and someone told me to set browser.zoom.siteSpecific to false in about:config. How do I do something similar in Thunderbird?

Thanks, --Steve

One particular correspondent sends me emails in large type, so I set up a separate tab just for those emails, and zoom out to make the text smaller. However, this affects my other tabs. How do I get zoom to affect just the tab I'm in and not the other tabs? I had a similar issue with Firefox some years ago, and someone told me to set browser.zoom.siteSpecific to false in about:config. How do I do something similar in Thunderbird? Thanks, --Steve

Chosen solution

I found https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=458948 which seems similar to what I want. I added a comment to that to request per-tab zooming. We'll see what happens.

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All Replies (6)

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Firefox, and other browsers, can set a zoom level per website, but I don't know of a similar option in TB to set zoom per tab. But if you open this sender's message in a new window, from the right-click menu, changing the zoom in the window doesn't affect other tabs or the message pane. Unfortunately, the zoom setting in the window isn't retained if the window is closed.

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Well, that's a good workaround (it didn't occur to me to try that; thanks!), but I'd really like to be able to set the zoom independently per tab.

I'll wait for a TB developer to reply with something like one of the following: - This is how you do it : _____ - There is no way to do it, but it's a good idea; we'll put it on the list.

Thanks, --Steve

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sfhowes said

Firefox, and other browsers, can set a zoom level per website [...]

In Firefox, you can set a zoom level per tab, not just per website. By default, if you have different pages of a website open in different tabs, changing the zoom on one changes it for all of the tabs open to pages from that website. But if you go to about:config, accept the fact that you might be breaking the warranty :-), and set browser.zoom.siteSpecific to false, then you can have different zoom levels on each tab, even to ones that are to the same website.

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Steve Chessin said

Well, that's a good workaround (it didn't occur to me to try that; thanks!), but I'd really like to be able to set the zoom independently per tab. I'll wait for a TB developer to reply with something like one of the following:

It will be a long wait, developers do not come to the support site except on rare occasions.

- This is how you do it : _____ - There is no way to do it, but it's a good idea; we'll put it on the list.

If you want to file an enhancement request, that is done through bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

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Matt said

[...] It will be a long wait, developers do not come to the support site except on rare occasions. [...] If you want to file an enhancement request, that is done through bugzilla. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/

Okay, I will do that.

Thanks, --Steve

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Chosen Solution

I found https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=458948 which seems similar to what I want. I added a comment to that to request per-tab zooming. We'll see what happens.