287510 - Option for window or tab browsing when creating profile and in preferences

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Mellem]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050308
Build Identifier: 

Firefox by default creates profiles that use tabbed browsing and the only way to
change back to windowed browsing is to use about:config (or userprefs) and changing:

browser.tabs.opentabfor.middleclick=false
browser.tabs.opentabfor.urlbar=false

This should be an option when the profile is created {do you prefer to open new
web pages in (*) Tabs or ( ) Windows?} instead of defaulting to tabs. It should
also be in the preferences UI to change back.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Well, we've largely deprecated profile manager, and this is just one preference
of many that in theory could be chosen at profile creation time.  So that part
is a straight no.

As for the UI in preferences, we removed those preferences from the panel a long
long time ago, and we have no plans to restore them.  Simply put, its not
something that we feel needs UI at this stage.

Comment 2

[Dan Mellem]

I really hate tabbed browsing (and many other people at and outside of work do
as well) and if Mozilla (Seamonkey) is being phased out, then there needs to be
an easy option to enable windowed browsing. If you don't want to prompt for what
to use, then the default should be windows, not tabs, since that's what most
users (of Mozilla and non-Firefox) are used to and comfortable with.

It was fine to remove many (useful) preferences from a small, alternative
browser based on Mozilla and essentially designed for neophytes, but if Firefox
is going to be the main Foundation browser, then this change really needs to be
in the tree, or an extension needs to be included in the installer.

Comment 3

[Jeff Morris]

I'm definitely not trying to flame here, so my apologies if it comes across that
way...But, when I first starting using Firefox back when it was still 0.3 or
whatever, I wasn't all that wild about tabbed browing either.  However, if you
are like me and slightly ADHD, and like to have multiple browser windows open at
once, you will come to LOVE tabs in a short time.  With IE 6.0, the entire
system slows to a crawl for me at work with multiple windows open, and I have a
P4 3.6GHZ computer with 1GB of RAM there.  But here, on a much older computer
with half the RAM, I can have 30+ tabs open all at once, and the system runs
peachy because of the much smaller memory footprint from using tabs instead of
new FF instances.

So, give it a few weeks.  Hopefully you will come to love tabs as much as I do
now.  If not, and it is major enough to drive you away from Mozilla products,
then that is truly unfortunate and I would sincerely hate to see you go.

Regards,

 JCM

Comment 4

[Dan Mellem]

Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the comments. I tend to have tons of windows open (both
browser and other apps) and keep track of where everything is by its position on
the task bar. I will usually be working on two or three things at once and will
toggle between them with ALT-TAB. With tabs, there's only one window to switch
to, so if I want to switch to the browser, it may not be the particular web site
I want. I can switch between tabs with CTRL-TAB, but it's not as easy as
switching between the last seen window that ALT-TAB does.

I'm not planning on going away from Mozilla. If Firefox doesn't get some of
these needed features, I'll just stick with the suite (and, if needed, the
Seamonkey spinoff).

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Discontinuing Foundation-driven Seamonkey releases has zero effect on what UI we
will/will not ship for Firefox.  There's certainly a lot more Firefox users than
Seamonkey users now, and changing defaults to suit Seamonkey users just doesn't
make sense.  We're offering a different user experience from previous browsers,
not trying to recreate the past.

In any case, tabbed browsing is integral to the core user experience we're
striving for with Firefox, and we're probably going to expose this more going
forward, rather than less.  You can either use the hidden prefs, or choose to
use another browser, if you decide that isn't acceptable for you.

Comment 6

[Dan Mellem]

Mike, I hear what you're trying to say, though I completely disagree. A tool
should be familiar and easy to use. A computer program should use the interface
of the operating system, instead of doing something unique. Tabs are fine for
items that are inherently related to each other (such as pages in a spreadsheet
or the preferences for an application) but they don't make since for disparate
web sites or tasks. I seriously doubt that people are migrating to Firefox
because it has a slightly different user interface. I believe it's because the
core (standards compliance, speed, security) and the included features (popup
blocker and other managers) are better than the other free alternatives.

What can I say...this preference is sorely needed and I believe tabs will become
a greater issue as more people attempt to migrate to Firefox.

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change