Speaking of antique, check out my old page on that setting: https://www.jeffersonscher.com/FxPrefs/tabClose.html. Wow, doesn't that bring you back.

There is no setting to have a single tab close button at the right end of the tab bar. You could install an add-on that creates a tab close button and move its button there, but an add-on can't remove the buttons from other tabs.

There is a roundabout way to remove the tab buttons on the background tabs and leave the close button only on the active tab. It requires knowing that the default width of a new tab is 225 pixels wide, although of course they can get much smaller as you open tabs in a window.

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future. Since we have had this setting for a long time, I feel comfortable mentioning it.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.tabs.tabClipWidth and pause while the list is filtered

By default, this preference has a value of 140. If the width of a background tab falls below 140 pixels, Firefox stops showing the close button. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

(3) Double-click the preference to display an editing field, and change the value to 226 then press Enter or click the blue check mark button to save the change.

Nothing will change in the current window, but if you create a new window and open some tabs, you should not see tab close buttons on any background tabs. This will only affect existing windows after you next exit Firefox and restore that session.

Ultimately then, you could have a close tab button on the active tab only, and use an add-on to put a close tab button at the right end of the tab bar. I haven't researched what people are using for this, but I gotta believe there is one out there, or maybe more than one.

Thank you for responding. This is why I left Firefox to begin with - because they changed it so much I couldn't make it work the way I want it to work. Unfortunately.... there ARE no browsers that are flexible enough to let me make them work MY way. I used Pale Moon for years.... but those guys are even more inflexible than the FF devs any more....

I'll give your solution a shot. And I guess I'll look to see if there's another fork that might still have the functionality I am used to. It's a really good thing this is free.... if it was paid software - well I wouldn't be paying for it any more.

In fact there are SO many things wrong with these latest versions of FF. The only reason I havent migrated to Edge, Chrome or Opera are that they are even worse in many many ways. SO annoying.

So to summarize:

• You know the steps to remove all the tab close buttons except the one on the active tab
• You can't live with that, you need it off the active tab and at the end of the tab bar

I don't know whether I should mention it, but if you are suffering...

There is a community of Firefox tweakers that probably can reinsert that original Firefox 1 button, but the technique is not completely safe. I have an article about startup scripting hacks on my site here: https://www.userchrome.org/what-is-userchrome-js.html

Again, thanks. I didn't mean to sound as snarky as I probably did, but I started using FF when it was in beta (so a VERY long time ago now), and over the years as I've aged, I've got less flexible about usability. When I've been using something for nearly 20 years, my work processes are pretty well set in stone. And of course, it takes me longer to change to match different parameters.

I've bookmarked the link; I'll set up your solution today and see if it covers my situation enough to get by with.

You're a gentleman and a scholar, and I'm truly grateful for the help. Sorry for the snark, the older I get the faster I pop off....