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How can I make open link in new tab cause tabs to the new tab's left to shift left rather than tabs to the new tabs right to shift right?

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by finitarry

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When I follow a link in a new tab, the tab opens to the right of the current tab as expected. To make room for the tab on the tab bar, any tabs to the right of the current tab shift right. If there is room for all the tabs on the bar, this behavior is perfect. If however, there isn't sufficient room, some tabs must be hidden to the right or the left of the visible bar. Currently the rightmost visible tab is hidden. This behavior is suboptimal for me because I very often want to switch to tabs on the far right while I very seldom want to switch to tabs on the far left. Is there is a way to cause tabs to the left of the new tab to shift left thereby hiding the leftmost visible tab? Thanks

When I follow a link in a new tab, the tab opens to the right of the current tab as expected. To make room for the tab on the tab bar, any tabs to the right of the current tab shift right. If there is room for all the tabs on the bar, this behavior is perfect. If however, there isn't sufficient room, some tabs must be hidden to the right or the left of the visible bar. Currently the rightmost visible tab is hidden. This behavior is suboptimal for me because I very often want to switch to tabs on the far right while I very seldom want to switch to tabs on the far left. Is there is a way to cause tabs to the left of the new tab to shift left thereby hiding the leftmost visible tab? Thanks

Chosen solution

Is the alltabs button visible or not? You can force it to be visible and it is handy for reading the full titles of the pages on the tabs. If you want to see all the tabs listed to find things easily, it works.

/* Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning */
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper
/there.is.only.xul");

#alltabs-button {visibility: visible !important;}
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All Replies (4)

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You can use the keyboard shortcut Alt+9 to go to the last tab or Alt+1 to go to the first tab (Alt 1-8: first eight tabs).

You can also double-click or triple-click a tab scroll button to move more than one tab at the time.

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I'm not aware of a way to make Firefox hide the first tab instead of the last tab; maybe there is an add-on with that feature.

There is a hidden setting to open the new tab at the end of the bar instead of next to the page you're reading. Then, of course, you won't have this problem. Instead, you'll have the problem that it's hard to figure out which tab had that link in it. In case you want to try it out, here's how.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste tabs and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent preference to switch it from true to false (it should turn bold)

You're done here. You can keep it open in case you hate the change and watch to switch it right back. In that case, double-click again to switch it back to true.

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Thanks for the response and suggestions, cor-el and jscher2000. I'll definitely give insertRelatedAfterCurrent=false a try, though, as you mentioned, it comes with its own set of drawbacks. Maybe I'll write my own extension to get the desired behavior. Thanks again for the quick response.

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Chosen Solution

Is the alltabs button visible or not? You can force it to be visible and it is handy for reading the full titles of the pages on the tabs. If you want to see all the tabs listed to find things easily, it works.

/* Do not remove the @namespace line -- it's required for correct functioning */
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper
/there.is.only.xul");

#alltabs-button {visibility: visible !important;}