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Opening New Tab slides other tabs off the screen

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  • Last reply by Scribe

adambeneschan
adambeneschan
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This is behavior that seems to have changed with the most recent release. I tend to have many tabs open in Firefox. Previously, if I was on a tab X and clicked on + to open a new tab, the new tab would open to the right of the X, but X would stay pretty much in the same position. Now, it tries to slide tabs to the left. Much of the time, it slides the tabs way to the left so that the New Tab is now the leftmost tab visible, and X is no longer visible (and I have to use the < icon to see it again). This is undesirable since most of the time I want to be working with both X and the new tab (and often other previously opened tabs just to the left of X), so I do not want the tabs to be slid off.

If this new behavior is intentional, is there an option to turn it off?

This is behavior that seems to have changed with the most recent release. I tend to have many tabs open in Firefox. Previously, if I was on a tab X and clicked on + to open a new tab, the new tab would open to the right of the X, but X would stay pretty much in the same position. Now, it tries to slide tabs to the left. Much of the time, it slides the tabs way to the left so that the New Tab is now the leftmost tab visible, and X is no longer visible (and I have to use the < icon to see it again). This is undesirable since most of the time I want to be working with both X and the new tab (and often other previously opened tabs just to the left of X), so I do not want the tabs to be slid off. If this new behavior is intentional, is there an option to turn it off?

All Replies (1)

Scribe
Scribe
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Hi, tabs do have to move to make way for new ones, but if they are suddenly jumping way to the left, try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).

If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:

  • Click the menu button New Fx Menu, click Help Help-29 and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.

If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:

  • On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
  • On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
  • On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
    (you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)

When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".

SafeMode-Fx35

If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.

To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.

If Safe Mode doesn't help, you can accommodate more tabs by: Type about:config into the address bar, press Enter, accept the warning, scroll down to browser.tabs.tabClipWidth then right click > Modify, and change '140' to something smaller - try 100 or 80. Now restart Firefox. More - Configuration Editor for Firefox.

If your question is resolved by this or another answer, please take a minute to let us know. Thank you!

Modified by Scribe