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Firefox sporadically moves my current tab to a new window.

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser
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About 2-3 times per week, I'll be browsing with multiple tabs open, and Firefox will suddenly "close" my current tab and re-open it in a new window. I say "close" because the tab is not listed under "Recently Closed Tabs." Rather, Firefox seems to just move the tab to a new window.

I thought maybe there was a keyboard shortcut for this that I was accidentally hitting, but I can't find what the shortcut for that would be. Did I just miss it?

The site I'm visiting doesn't seem to matter, as it's happened with different sites, including my webmail service, Google, and Facebook. The number of tabs open doesn't seem to matter either, as it's happened with 50+ tabs and just now happened with 24 tabs (which is low for me).

This happened

A few times a week

About a month or so ago

User Agent

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

About 2-3 times per week, I'll be browsing with multiple tabs open, and Firefox will suddenly "close" my current tab and re-open it in a new window. I say "close" because the tab is not listed under "Recently Closed Tabs." Rather, Firefox seems to just move the tab to a new window. I thought maybe there was a keyboard shortcut for this that I was accidentally hitting, but I can't find what the shortcut for that would be. Did I just miss it? The site I'm visiting doesn't seem to matter, as it's happened with different sites, including my webmail service, Google, and Facebook. The number of tabs open doesn't seem to matter either, as it's happened with 50+ tabs and just now happened with 24 tabs (which is low for me). == This happened == A few times a week == About a month or so ago == == User Agent == Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729)

All Replies (3)

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser Question owner
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If you move the pointer down as you click you're effectively dragging the tab out of the bar so Firefox activates the "detach tab" which opens it in a new window.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Firefox 3.5/6 versions have a feature called tear-off tabs. You can detach a tab from the current window and open it in a new window by dragging a tab in the browser window. You can drag that tab back to the tab bar in the original window to undo that detaching.

bug489729 (Disable detach and tear off tab): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/12276

AnonymousUser
AnonymousUser Question owner
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Thanks, this was exactly my problem.