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if I "Open in New Tab", how (in that new tab) do I find the address of the 'opened from' tab - surely it's available somewher in History?

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I often see an interesting article, that links onward to another article, and then another. I may accidentally close earlier tabs if they had little extra to say, other than providing the further reference.

I finally end up at a real nugget of information, but also want a 'call/tab trace' of how I got there.

My browser hasn't been closed so the trace info should be there 'somewhere', so any ideas on how to get the back trace.

e.g., just now I have https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snakeoil.pdf but can't find the start point as some of the intermediate tabs have been closed.

Any suggestions for a 'tab open backtrace'?

I often see an interesting article, that links onward to another article, and then another. I may accidentally close earlier tabs if they had little extra to say, other than providing the further reference. I finally end up at a real nugget of information, but also want a 'call/tab trace' of how I got there. My browser hasn't been closed so the trace info should be there 'somewhere', so any ideas on how to get the back trace. e.g., just now I have https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/talks/MIT-STS-AI-snakeoil.pdf but can't find the start point as some of the intermediate tabs have been closed. Any suggestions for a 'tab open backtrace'?

All Replies (4)

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Firefox keeps track of the opener tab in the background, at least for a while, which allows it to return to that tab if you close the new tab without having left it. But that isn't exposed in the user interface anywhere, as far as I can tell.

The extension Tree Style Tab that displays a "tab tree" in the sidebar shows tab relationships in a way you might find interesting. I haven't tried it myself.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/

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This 90% solves the problems and looks quite good. I'm keeping the addon.

In my test case I opened a BBC news page (1), from there opened a new tab (2) from a useful news article, found an onward link and opened that in a new tab(3); close the middle tab(2).

Actual: the TST shows (1)->(3) Wanted: (1) -> (2)[closed] -> (3)

where [closed] is that the title line is either greyed out, or strike through, indicating the tab is 'missing' (but we do remember its address and title if you want to re-load it).

Writing this so I can consider it as a suggestion/issue for the upstream devs.

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If you're the one closing the tabs, you could also have a look in the History -> Recently Closed Tabs. It is accessible from the menus, or from the Library button on the toolbar under history.

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Thanks, that's a useful tip.

I hadn't noticed that option - it should reduce the number of tabs that need searched (not sure if the list is in chronological order..)