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Firefox showing a tab even with only one page open

  • 9 replies
  • 30 have this problem
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  • Last reply by weamish

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I'm using Firefox on a Mac. After a new update just now, Firefox is taking up screen real estate at the top of its window to show a tab even when there's no other page open (i.e. there's only one tab). I only need to see tabs if I have more than one open, but I can't find a setting to control this.

I'm using Firefox on a Mac. After a new update just now, Firefox is taking up screen real estate at the top of its window to show a tab even when there's no other page open (i.e. there's only one tab). I only need to see tabs if I have more than one open, but I can't find a setting to control this.

Chosen solution

Hello,

In Firefox 23, as part of an effort to simplify the firefox options set and protect users from unintentially damaging their Firefox, the option to hide the tab bar was removed.

Refer to: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill

Fortunately, this can easily be resolved if you desire the keep tabs hidden. You can install "Hide tab bar with one tab", and extension hosted on Mozilla's add-ons site, which will restore the ability to hide the tab bar.

Thank you and I hope this helps!

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Chosen Solution

Hello,

In Firefox 23, as part of an effort to simplify the firefox options set and protect users from unintentially damaging their Firefox, the option to hide the tab bar was removed.

Refer to: http://limi.net/checkboxes-that-kill

Fortunately, this can easily be resolved if you desire the keep tabs hidden. You can install "Hide tab bar with one tab", and extension hosted on Mozilla's add-ons site, which will restore the ability to hide the tab bar.

Thank you and I hope this helps!

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Thanks, I'll use that add-on.

Interesting article, but it doesn't mention the tab bar. What was the browser-killing danger with that? (It seems like something I maybe should think about before using that add-on.)

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people had no idea how to open a new tab (less advanced users), since you have to use the keyboard shortcut.

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Ah, okay. Not a problem for me, so I'll install the add-on. Thanks again.

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Just because some people thinks that tabs are the best thing since the invention of Espresso Coffee doesn't mean that everyone thinks that tabs are good.

As it is now it's necessary to use an add-on to get rid of the tabs, and that's not really friendly.

Personally I think that there should be other changes done to the browser that are more important - like protecting against changes of the configuration by other applications.

Messing around with the user interface just confuses - and makes this browser to be as bad as Windows has started to get when it comes to usability.

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Personally I think that there should be other changes done to the browser that are more important - like protecting against changes of the configuration by other applications.

Read the addon blocklist and the new protection aganist search engine hijacking introduced in fx23.

Also a question, how many addons do you have now?

Modified by kobe

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I think it would've been simplier to activate the "show tabs even when there's only one page open" by default and then let people chose (maybe from the about:config page, if you wanted to simplify the options set), rather than completely remove the option

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valepu,

That would have been the preferable way of changing that pref, and in the "olden days" it probably would have been done in that manner. But with the big push on right now for "trimming the fat" from the base code so that Mozilla can build both desktop versions of Firefox and the "mobile" version from the same code base, they are removing a lot of code that they won't need down the road.

Newer versions of Firefox have gotten increasingly "fatter". Back in the day of Firefox 3.6 versions, the uncompressed Firefox download (like when the user skipped an update, and the full package was installed as an update) was less than 10MB. Now a days the Firefox 26.0.a1 Nightly is like 32.8 MB if the user skips a Nightly version update, which I did this past Friday. And I can remember the days when a Firefox Zip-build was just over 6 MB.

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For me, the problem with showing a single tab is that I'm constantly shutting down FF, not realizing that I'm closing the last open tab.