Filed under: Browsers
How to disable tab tearing in Firefox 3.5
One of the new features in Firefox 3.5 is the ability to "tear" a browser tab off into a new window. Say you have 5 browser tabs open, but you'd rather have one of those tabs open in an entirely new Firefox window. Just click on the tab and drag it away from the tab bar to launch a new window. You can also drag tabs from one browser window to another the same way. But there are a few downsides. First, you can no longer drag a tab onto the desktop to create a shortcut. Second, it's easier than I'd like to accidentally tear a tab into a new window when you just wanted to click on a tab.
Bug489729 is a Firefox add-on that lets you change the way tab tearing works. You can either disable the feature altogether or just check the box labeled "enable drop url" which allows you to drag a tab onto the desktop to create a shortcut.
[via Firefox Facts]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DeoWulf said 4:28PM on 7-08-2009
What's the advantage of opening something in a new window as opposed to a new tab, anyway?
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sitruc said 1:46PM on 7-10-2009
Sometimes I want different topics in new windows or I may just have a lot of tabs open in one window and don't want to add to the mess.
Daniel Milner said 4:32PM on 7-08-2009
With tab tearing enabled, you can still drag the favicon from the address bar to the desktop to create a shortcut.
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tunaman said 4:32PM on 7-08-2009
"you can no longer drag a tab onto the desktop to create a shortcut"
But you can still drag the tab's icon to the desktop to create an icon.
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Drew Green said 5:21PM on 7-08-2009
I love tab tearing. It's great for when you're using dual monitors.
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roycifer said 8:45PM on 7-08-2009
tab tearing is a very welcomed feature. its not quite as slick as safari's implementation but ill take it nonetheless.
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motang said 9:44PM on 7-08-2009
One of the most useful features in FF 3.5 I don't think I am going to installing this extension!
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David said 8:48AM on 7-09-2009
I'm still trying to figure out how to completely disable tabs in Firefox 3.5. Tab Killer is not compatible...
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19ThunderCross69 said 8:28AM on 7-24-2009
THANK YOU! You have no idea how annoying it is when you're playing a game and tear a tab. XD
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Stephen said 8:04AM on 8-14-2009
Since installing Firefox 3.5 I have accidentally "torn a tab" on a number of occasions.
My experience is that the web page in the torn tab disappears.
This is a major problem when composing an email with Outlook Web Mail as the content can't be recovered.
I think this is something that Mozilla needs to fix
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Brad Linder said 8:17AM on 8-14-2009
This is one of the reasons I prefer the way Google Chrome handles tab tearing. Because each tab has its own running process, you can even start watching a YouTube video in a tab, tear it off into a new window, and keep watching without pausing. Firefox will reload the page and restart the video.
Mozilla is working on making each open tab use a separate process, so future versions should be more Chrome-like.
diablero said 7:15AM on 9-21-2009
Exposé. Exposé is why Mac users HATE tabs. With tabs, Exposé doesn't work. (Macs proprietary feature where you put the mouse in the upper left corner to tile all windows of all apps so you can quickly and easily find the one you are looking for with no need to annoyingly click and drag windows all over the place in a frustrating search)
I NEED to be able to disable tabs! ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!
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