This may be entirely the wrong venue for the following post, and if so I apologise. Perhaps if you interpret that post as an account of a certain reduction in usability then it might be considered appropriate. …
Over the last year or two it seems that Firefox’s tab open/close behaviour has changed utterly, and it’s driving me crazy. I’ve tried to find answers and I can’t. It surprises me that other users aren’t as confounded as I am. Please help.
There are two things that are really bothering me.
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If I am on a given tab (which I’ll call tab #0) and I hold ctrl and click on ten links, thereby opening a sequence of ten new tabs to the right of the current tab (which are not immediately switched to, according to my settings), then I ctrl+tab five times to reach new tab #5, then I ctrl+w to close new tab #5, the default behaviour used to be to switch to either new tab #4 or new tab #6. (I confess I never knew how it was decided which to switch to.) Now when I do this and close new tab #5, the default behaviour is to jump back to tab #0. The only workaround I have found is, when ctrl+tabbing to move to new tab #5, to overshoot and ctrl+tab as far as new tab #6 and then ctrl+shft+tab back one tab. This ensures that when I ctrl+w new tab #5 I switch to new tab #6. (I am aware of the “Ctrl+Tab cycles through tabs in recently used order” option and I have it unchecked. When I check it, as an experiment, all hell breaks loose: ctrl+tab opens a great semi-transparent overlay in the vein of alt+tab, and ctrl+shft+tab opens the dropdown tab menu to the right of the last tab.) I want to revert to what was, I am certain, the default behaviour for at least ten years. In essence I suppose I just want to switch to an adjacent tab when closing the current one.
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If in the above scenario, after opening the ten new tabs, I ctrl+click on another link, it naturally opens that link in a new tab that is positioned at the far right of the sequence of tabs, to the right of new tab #10. However, if I first ctrl+tab once to view new tab #1, thereby “leaving” tab #0, and then ctrl+shft+tab to return to tab #0, when I then ctrl+click on another link, the default behaviour used to be to open that link in a new tab (which I’ll call new tab A) that was positioned between tab #0 and new tab #1. The fact that I had left and returned to tab #0 ensured that the original tab-opening process was abandoned and a new process was begun. If I then ctrl+clicked on another link, that link was opened in a new tab between new tab A and new tab #1. Now I find that even if I leave and return to tab #0 before ctrl+clicking on the eleventh link, that link is still opened in a tab at the far right of the sequence of tabs, as if it is simply new tab #11, as if I hadn’t left tab #0. The sole decisive factor in the positioning of a new tab is which tab it was opened from, and all tabs opened from a given tab are sequenced in the order in which they were opened. Again, I want to revert to what was, I am certain, the default behaviour. I want a new tab to be opened to the immediate right of the current tab if I have taken focus away from the current tab since the last time I opened a new tab from it.
If anyone can help me with these issues I would very much appreciate it.