358949 - Close tab icon does not appear on hover over a tab if more than 7 tabs are open

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[dhruva_kalita]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0

If more than 7 tabs are open close tab icon does not appear on a tab when u hover on top of it. If 7 or less tabs are open the close tab icon appears.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open multiple tabs 7 or less, can be blank windows.
2. Hover on top of a tab. The tab should be highlighted and close tab icon should appear when you move the mouse to the right corner of the tab. 
3. Open more than 7 tabs. Repeat step 2. close tab icon does not appear.

Actual Results:  
Close tab icon does not appear on mouse over on the right of a tab when more than 7 tabs are open.

Expected Results:  
Close tab icon should have been activated on mouse over on the right of a tab when more than 7 tabs are open.

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.tabs.tabClipWidth

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

*** Bug 359185 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 3

[Kalpesh Bhandari]

Attachment: Reproduced bug

Comment 10

[u301986]

Why is this still an invalid bug? It is still reproducible in Firefox Nightly 29.0a1 (2013-12-28). Why don't we reopen this bug?

Comment 11

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Arun from comment #10)
> Why is this still an invalid bug? It is still reproducible in Firefox
> Nightly 29.0a1 (2013-12-28). Why don't we reopen this bug?

Because this behavior is by design. It's too easy to accidentally hit the close button when selecting tabs when they are narrow.

Comment 12

[Vincent Lefevre]

IMHO, ideally this should be configurable. Actually I've been using the Tab Mix Plus extension for years, where many things are configurable, and I've chosen to make the close tab icon always appear when the tab is hovered. It's true that it is easy to accidentally hit the close button; it happens for me from time to time (with something like 50 tabs). However I can very easily undo the close, so that the feature to always make the close tab icon appear is more practical without serious drawback.

Comment 13

[Vincent Lefevre]

In fact, according to the URL mentioned in comment 1, this is configurable (with the explanation), and I've checked that this configuration still exists.

Comment 14

[beingalink]

I understand why the close icon isn't displayed permanently on narrow tabs. But closing a non-active tab requires two clicks on devices without a 3-button mouse (all notebooks mith trackpad). Why not make the close icon just appear on mouse-over? This would solve the problem in my opinion.

Comment 15

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to beingalink from comment #14)
> Why not make the close icon just appear on mouse-over? This would solve the problem in my opinion.

Actually, I've been using Tab Mix Plus for years with this feature (the reason being that a permanent close icon on each tab is ugly), and this tends to increase the problem, because one doesn't see the close icon immediately, so that it's easier to click on it (in particular with a trackpad, which I find less accurate than a mouse). However, I don't think this is really an issue in practice, as clicking on a tab icon by mistake is uncommon, and when one does this, one can undo the close.

Now, since users are different, the best solution is a configuration option. In my case, I do not care really since I use Tab Mix Plus, which also offers much more useful features.

Comment 16

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Vincent Lefevre from comment #15)
> [...] as clicking on a tab icon by mistake is uncommon, [...]
                         ^^^^^^^^ close icon of a tab

Comment 17

[beingalink]

An option in about:config that lets me switch this behavior on (off by default) would be enough for me. Of course an extension is always an option but I think this is basic functionality and I wouldn't need more configurability.

Comment 18

[beingalink]

Regarding extensions: In this case an extension/addon is no option in the long run. I'm on nightly and with todays build the old addons got disabled and only webextensions work. Tab mix plus isn't available as a webextension yet and as I've just read features like modifying the tab bar aren't possible with the webextension api. So I think it's even more important to have a natively implemented choice.