359010 - Option for 'tab close button' per tab or one 'tab close button' like pre 2.0

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 357782

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Pander]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0 (Ubuntu-edgy)

Before Firefox 2.0, there was a single 'tab close button' that would simply close the tab that has the focus. In version 2.0, each tab has its own 'tab close button'. The advantage of the new situation is that you can close a tab that does not has the focus.

Disadvantage of the new situation  is that there is a lot more mouse movement involved for quickly closing a lot of tabs, also because the most right 'tab close button' is not always at the same position. E.g. after opening lots of new tabs after a Google search, e.g. 10 new tabs (right click 't'), then the old situation would be preferable for quickly closing results which are not satisfying. This is a widely used method of finding the desired result in a fast way.

Please add an option to Edit / Preferences / Tab called 'Single tab close button' that would remove the close buttons from the tabs and facilitate a 'tab close button' for the tab that has focus on the top right of the tab bar (to the rigth of the tab bar pull down). Just as in the pre 2.0 Firefox.

Implementing this would result in less mouse movements when using Firefox and allowing the user more freedom in how to close tabs.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Ryan Flint [:rflint] (ping via IRC for reviews)]

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

Comment 2

[Christian]

I agree with the original poster, and want to add the following:

Sometimes when I have several tabs opne and want to change to a certain tab, the tab is accidentially closed because my mouse pointer was too close to the close button. This is a major annoyance. 

I would prefer to have the old behaviour back, either as a possibility in the settings or as hard-coded. 

Talking for Firefox 2 on MacOS X 10.4.8. 

Christian. 

Comment 3

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

note: you can restore closed tabs in History | Recently Closed Tabs

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 357782 ***