Firefox 3.5 comes with an annoying problem that I’m not able to solve. The developers – for unknown reasons – have decided to make it possible to drag tabs which has the effect that they spawn a new Firefox window and close the tab in the old Firefox instance.
The big problem is that this happens from time to time without intention on my part. One way to activate tabs is to left-click on them. If that button is pressed to long and the mouse moved downwards just a bit it will move the website in the tab to the new window.
There is apparently no way of disabling the feature to drag and drop tabs into new windows in Firefox at this point. It happens about once a day that a tab gets accidentally dragged to much around so that it spawns in a new window. The only solution then is to copy the url, close the new web browser window, open a new tab and load the url again in the main browser window. It is not even possible to undo closing the tab in the main browser window as its history will be completely moved to the new browser window as well.
Please leave a comment if you know of a way to disable the spawning of new Firefox windows when dragging and dropping tabs.
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http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2082/week-in-geek-the-disable-firefox-3.5-tab-tearing-edition/
i havent tried this myself as im not using 3.0 but i hope it works
Probably the best you can do right now, I haven’t tried it by the way
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12276
So far as I understand this “feature” is a copy of a similar function in Google’s Chrome – drag a tab off the main window and it is reparented in a new window. In chrome this is really annoying on a slow machine – many times I accidentally click/drag because the machine is so slow… and then it gets even slower while opening a new window to house the dragged tab :-)
However Chrome, at least, allows the tab to be dragged _back_ to the _original_ window. Did you try that with FF3.5? I can’t try it here because I haven’t (yet) plucked up the courage to download the latest RC, especially as my existing FF (3.0.x) is _much_ slower than Chrome :-)
Just a thought…
I agree with John C. Once you see the image of the page superimposed, just move it up so it’s level with the tab bar and let go of the mouse. I’ve been rearranging tabs on the tab bar with drag & drop but I didn’t know this feature existed to open a new window. I’ve been using Minefield for months now. I don’t know why they don’t just go to release 3.6. Minefield seems fine to me. Then again I don’t use 200 AddOns or run 64 tabs simultaneously as some may. :)
AFAIK, this extension is the only way you can get rid of that feature
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12276
And John C’s right, it is indeed possible to drag a tab back to its original window.
Aidanael. I actually have tried this add-on in the past and it somehow did not work then. I tried it again after I saw your comment and it is now working fine after checking the disable detach box. Thanks everyone for leaving comments, it’s really great to receive that many quick and helpful responses :)
Huh. I’ve been using 3.5 for a while now and I haven’t had that happen to me even once. Perhaps one of your addons is causing a problem?
Anyway, I ran a quick google search for “disable firefox 3.5 tab” and this came up as the first result:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2082/week-in-geek-the-disable-firefox-3.5-tab-tearing-edition/
Along with what looked like at least a few other similar articles. Took all of about five seconds. I have to ask…why didn’t you do that? A quick google search should be the first response to any computer problem that has no immediately obvious solution.
Well I did my research but I may have been using the wrong search terms. It happens from time to time but my search results did not display any viable solution. I researched that problem before and found the add-on that Aidanael mentioned but this time I could not find even that in the results.
i think it’ll soon be fixed. I searched for this problem and i am catching alot of articles on it. I think it’ll be fixed before the official release…
In Chrome it works really good, its nice, its fast, and you can easy arrange your tabs. But in FF its terrible(!) Its looks ugly and really slow :(
Why don’t they make it the same way as chrome? Or just leave it as it was in v.3.0?
have the option “always show the tab bar” enabled, and drag the tab in the new window back into the window where u want it, it works. I tried it on FF 3.5 RC3
I find it interesting how some people like/dislike certain features. Ever since I learned about tab-tearing in one of the early articles about 3.5 I’ve been chomping at the bit for it. I installed the RC for 3.5 when it was made available and I use tab-tearing probably once or twice an hour. It’s invaluable for my practice.
David yes opinions differ on this matter. I for one have no use for it at all and would love an option to disable it. Can’t be to difficulty to add an option for that. I think it would please many Firefox users. I can see its usefulness for users with multiple monitors though.
It happens to me at times, but the solution is easy. Simply grab hold of the tab in the new window, and drag it back onto the tab bar of the window in which it came from. You can easily drag & drop tabs between windows, with no loss of information (try it with an open Gmail session). It’s really handy for dealing with multiple monitors – easy to compare two things side by side. I, for one, love the new capability mirroring that of Google Chrome.
Easy Fix:
Install Tab Mix Plus… I have not had Tab Tearing since!
Ben is this working when forcing compatibility with firefox 3.5?
Martin,
I agree with you… it’s especially frustrating when you’re using the Tree Style Tab extension, where you can drag and drop tabs around to re-arrange them, cause it constantly pops them into a new window.
That little extension works great for me!
I using 3.5 also, and can not duplicate the issue that the article address (and not from a lack of trying!)
I 2nd Tab Mix Plus. I’ve been using it for year and have never even heard of this problem.
Why are you left-clicking and holding for so long that you neglect to release the button before moving the mouse?
Seems to me you have poor relexes or response time. Try playing a fast-paced shooter to improve your mouse finger and quit blaming the developer. No one else has this problem
First of all it is less than a second before this happens. Second I would probably whoop your ass in every shooter on this planet.
This feature was in Opera before Chrome existed.
Clean up your mousing, unless you’re over the age of 60.
Use the Tab Mix Plus add-on and select the “Single Instance” checkbox and “Open New Windows In New Tab” option. Problem solved.
adono:
“Seems to me you have poor relexes or response time. Try playing a fast-paced shooter to improve your mouse finger and quit blaming the developer. No one else has this problem”
Apparently your idiotic self-centered brain hasn’t yet realised that there are different kind of people in the world.
It seems, that Firefox hasn’t made proper usability tests, which is not surprising, because it is open source project.
I’ve been drag and dropping tabs as a mean to bookmark sites and add shortcuts on my desktop for the entire time that I’ve been using the internet. This new ‘tab tearing’ feature breaks a fundamental method of my browsing habits and would love to have the ability to throw it in the trash where it belongs.
How do I disable this filth?
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WORKAROUND
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If you haven’t noticed this–I just found it by accidentally reading the right post…then interpreting what the poster meant–you can STILL drag to desktop WITHOUT patches, waiting for the “bugfix” or waiting for TabMix+ to be compatible with FF 3.5:
The site icon to the left of the address–left click and drag this instead of the tab header. Yeah, it adds extra work because now you have to switch tabs instead of just grabbing each one, but it gets it done…for now.
I’ve made a comment in the Mozilla blogs to maybe give those of us who can’t force our users to read the changelogs with a fine-toothed comb some kind of visual heads-up for features that are (essentially) silently changed.
This feature has been around since Safari was released… it’s actually quite handy, Firefox’s implementation is much clumsier than Safari, but it works…
If you accidentally move a tab out of a window, spawning a new window, it is easy enough to drag your new window back into your tabs of the previous window in Firefox 3.5.
Just drag it between tabs in your previous window to merge it again, and if there was only one other tab, drag it between the first tab and + symbol tab.
Also, when dragging over this area inbetween tabs, you will see a large blue divider icon which indicates you can merge this new window as a tab in the previous window.
The Safari feature I would really like Firefox to implement, is actually “merge all windows”, which can merge all open windows into a single tabbed window.
That one command is missing, and is very helpful…
Looks like Duplicate Tab is an add-on that addressed merging of windows back into tabs, but it hasn’t been updated since June 4, 2008, so it may not be compatible with FF 3.5…
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/28
If anyone knows of another solution for merging all open Firefox windows into a single window as tabs, please post a solution here.
@k242:
I hate to be this stereotype (I try not to evangelize), but….the solution is to use Opera. In Opera there is a sidebar (usually hidden) that lists all your open windows and their tabs. You can select the whole list and drag them into one window.
This also seems to have the effect of outright removing the feature of dragging a tab to another Firefox instance to open the same page in the other instance. I do this to log onto sites with different credentials at the same time if needed and it seems you can no longer just drag a page from one instance to another like you used to be able to in 3.0.
Edit:
It seems you CAN still drag the icon from the URL though.
Extremely annoying feature, and will be trying add-on listed above. Can’t believe that was intentional. If it was, they would have included an option to turn it off.
Wow. Why did you make this without even trying it? All you have to do is drag it back in there. by clicking the tab and dragging it onto the other window, and it will close that new window and put the tab back. There should be an easier way to ctrl + ___ + z it though.
Dragging the tab back to the original window is not a solution if you don’t run your apps windowed. Firefox is getting as bad as Google with annoying new features you can’t turn off.
The solution of dragging the tabs back into the original window doesn’t work for me. that refreshes the page, and I’m listening to Pandora, so whenever this happens it completely restarts the application. It’s quite annoying when I’m listening to a song I like, try to go to that tab to “thumbs up” it, and then the page comes out in a new window, refreshes, and I don’t get to hear that song again for a while.
This happens to me *all the time*. Mainly happens on the meebo tab since i’m frequently switching to and from this tab at work. When the tab to window process is spawned it makes all my IM’s scroll to the top and they all get strangely resized.
I guess the only solution is to downgrade back to 3.0 but I’m not particularly sure if it’s worth the hassle of uninstalling and reinstalling (not really a hassle just dont wan’t to do it).
I am having the same annoying problem, but I work w/ multiple tabs at work and must move around very quickly in a support environment. So I am constantly popping tabs out.
I found this site searching for a solution and will try the plugin RG linked to.
Thank you to the people that suggested the add on. It seems to work.
I’ve been getting so frustrated at the new windows popping up a few times a day. I work with about 10-15 tabs open at a time and I had no idea why some of them were randomly opening in new windows, I actually thought it might have been some sort of virus. Good to know it’s just a stupid feature that can’t be disabled without an add on.
Thank you so much for this article and the resulting helpful comments. I hadn’t found that add-on yet, and this sudden new window crap has been bothering me for some time now. I like having only one Firefox window with a billion tabs in it. Using a laptop touchpad, I find that sometimes it drags by mistake when clicking. The add-on works perfectly. =)
WTF! Firefox 3.5.3 (latest patch) is still got this f*cking problem!
I’m very bored with this new feature.
People! This works:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12276
No more complaining – just use it.
SO glad I found this. I’ve been doing this multiple times a day since it was released but, like you, wasn’t using the right search terms to turn it off. I could not think of a more useless “feature” and it’s been aggravating me for some time now. It’s funny that so many people haven’t had an issue but I am wondering if mouse sensitivity doesn’t play into this. Not only does it happen when I am NOT clicking but I’ve NEVER seen an outline to warn me it’s happening. It just does.
Anyway, I’m just so fucking happy to find your post. There’s no other way to put it!
I understand the positives of this feature, and why it is there, but wow, it is SO sensitive!! Glad I found this add-on; hoping it works as well as people are saying (just downloaded but can’t restart FF quite yet).
I actually just wish the “trigger” was just a little LESS sensitive, because I would like to be able to use this feature occasionally….by choice! But if the option is a flat ON vs OFF, then off it goes. :(
Cheers
i hate this feature. i loved being able to drag a tab into a messenger window and it copypasta’ing the url there for me :(
also i notice dragging and dropping a picture to my desktop is retarded and doesnt always save the picture correctly. this used to be awesome in the last iteration :/
I am having this same problem and I really think Mozilla needs to fix it. It makes me so mad when I am at work and it starts doing that!
The only solution I have so far is to drag it back to the previous window. This is what I do:
1. In the newly opened window drag the tab and hold the mouse.
2. Alt tab to the previous window and drag it up to the tabs.
3. You should see an arrow pointing where it goes.
Thats the best I can say so far.
@Andrew and Sarah:
USE THIS TO FIX IT.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12276
No more complaining – just use it.
Instead of Alt + Tab to get to the previous window you can also drag the tab to the location on the taskbar of the other window and it will bring it into focus, then drag it into position in the tabbar.
hate it hate it hate it so annoying FF needs to fix it
To everyone responding about how un-annoying this is or how slow we are with our mouses: STFU. You are of no use at all. Google, on the other-hand, is apparently the most useful tool ever. I typed in “clicking firefox tab creates new window” and this post was the first search result. Simpy stunning. Thanks to anyone who provided, or at least attempted to provide, an actual solution.
I sure hope more IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Netscape and AOL users can come share with us FF users how they don’t experience this problem with their browsers and that we should make the switch!