Otaku, Cedric's weblog

Reusing tabs in FireFox

I just installed the new FireFox and by doing so, I lost a little trick that I have been enjoying greatly so far:  whenever I click on a link from outside FireFox, I want it to be loaded in a separate tab in an existing window and not in a new browser.

The instructions to enable this feature are in the FAQ but a bit scattered, so here they are in a more concise fashion:

• Add the following to your user.js:
  

  // Stop reusing active windows:
  user_pref("advanced.system.supportDDEExec", false);

• This file doesn't exist by default, so you must create it.  On Windows XP, it can be found at:
  

  c:/Documents and Settings/[user name]/ApplicationData/
  Mozilla/Profiles/default/[random chars].slt/user.js

• Download and install TabBrowser extensions
   
• Select Tools > Extensions, select Tabbrowser Extensions and click the small Options icon.
   
• Expand the General node.
   
• In the Window Mode panel, select Use multiple browsers only for my request.

Note that the "small Option icon" in the Extensions window is not only minuscule but doesn't look like a button at all (no push affordance).  It's the label with a check mark on it.  I find this inconsistency in the FireFox GUI annoying:  why should options for extensions be in a different menu than the regular preferences?

Anyway, FireFox is a cool browser, and even if the progress in terms of features is pretty slow, it is still light-years ahead of Internet Explorer, which has been stagnating for years now.

Update, 2004/08/23: I updated these instructions for the latest Firebox build since the path of user.js and the Settings option panel of the TabbedBrowsing extensions have slightly changed

Posted by cedric at June 17, 2004 08:20 AM