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ERROR: browser.tabs.onTop not working now, my reason for using Firefox gone forever now?

  • 1 reply
  • 7 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Moses

vqvq
vqvq
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In the latest FF, setting the browser.tabs.onTop has no effect. I believe this is completely wrong step in UI because thinking of the user's focus: - The web page is the 'topmost' content having user's focus for the most of the time - The next are the tabs which he/she recently opened - Only then come the bookmarks - And finally, only then comes the address line

Moving the tabs to the top means you force the user to move his attention/focus from the page contents skipping the lower priority areas (bookmarks, address line). This distracts the user and is simply bad news. Being quite simple option, I see no reason why the browser.tabs.onTop functionality was removed. This effectively removes another important advantage of FF over Chrome/IE. I know Classic Theme Restorer (Customize Australis) add-on, but don't want to rely on such things. Is THIS what the proclaimed customizability of Firefox is about these days? Sad. After many years of FF use in our company, I'm sorry but I will reconsider FF usage in our company if these things don't get fixed soon. Regards and thanks, Vaclav

In the latest FF, setting the browser.tabs.onTop has no effect. I believe this is completely wrong step in UI because thinking of the user's focus: - The web page is the 'topmost' content having user's focus for the most of the time - The next are the tabs which he/she recently opened - Only then come the bookmarks - And finally, only then comes the address line Moving the tabs to the top means you force the user to move his attention/focus from the page contents skipping the lower priority areas (bookmarks, address line). This distracts the user and is simply bad news. Being quite simple option, I see no reason why the browser.tabs.onTop functionality was removed. This effectively removes another important advantage of FF over Chrome/IE. I know Classic Theme Restorer (Customize Australis) add-on, but don't want to rely on such things. Is THIS what the proclaimed customizability of Firefox is about these days? Sad. After many years of FF use in our company, I'm sorry but I will reconsider FF usage in our company if these things don't get fixed soon. Regards and thanks, Vaclav

All Replies (1)

Moses
Moses
  • Moderator
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You can use either of the following add-ons.

If you don't want to install an add-on, put the following style in the userChrome.css file and restart Firefox. You can use the Stylish add-on instead, if you have it installed. 

@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
/* The above line should appear only once in the file */

#TabsToolbar { -moz-box-ordinal-group: 99 !important }

Also see

One of the developers recently posted this explanation

MikeDeboer said 

Each setting you see in a computer program you use requires work; when a developer wants to build something new or improve something, he or she has to go through each related (hidden) setting and test if it still works like before and do that on each platform Firefox runs on. That's Apple's Mac OSX, various flavours of Linux and various flavours of Windows, including Windows XP. This costs time, lots of it, and that amount grows exponentially with each setting that's added. This comes on top of our work to continuously fix, improve and innovate Firefox. 
 
 That's why we also removed the tabs.onTop preference. Awesome community members, who were unhappy about that change, created the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. They deserve our collective hugs.