Re: Removing the close tab button when too many tabs are open (FF vs Chrome behavior)

Hi!

The tradeoff, I suppose, is in how much of the title you can still see. In
Firefox, the tabs are (arguably) more recognisable, as there's more of the
title text visible. You can also middle-click to close a tab in both Firefox
and Chrome; if you don't have a middle-click available (as you're on a Mac,
you probably don't!), there are myriad extensions to make closing tabs
easier -- for example, when it's double-clicked on.

Personally, I very rarely use the button on the tab itself -- when you
middle- (double-) click, the target size is the whole tab, not just the
close button. (On Windows, with the window maximised, you also get the
benefit of Fitts' law). I'd be interested to see if there's any Test Pilot
data on how users close tabs -- with keyboard shortcuts, middle-clicking,
the button itself, the context menu, or some other method that I'm not aware
of.

- barry

Barry van Oudtshoorn
http://barryvan.com.au/
[email protected]


On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 8:14 PM, Eddy Bruel <[email protected]> wrote:

> When I have too many open tabs, the close tab button disappears
> for every tab except the one currently being displayed. If I want to
> close another tab, I have to click on it first before I can close it.
> Obviously, it is kind of annoying to have to go through this extra
> step.
>
> Now, this behavior is the same in both Firefox and Chrome, except that
> in the latter I can have way more tabs open before the close tab button
> disappears (on my Macbook Pro, with 1680x1050 display resolution,
> and both browsers maximized, I can have about 11 open tabs in
> Firefox, and about 26 open tabs in Chrome).
>
> For smaller window sizes, the number of tabs I can have open is even
> smaller. It regularly happens to me that the close tab button
> disappears in Firefox with only 6 tabs open. In Chrome, on the other
> hand, I rarely, if ever, run into this problem.
>
> Wouldn't it be nice to raise the number of tabs that can be opened in
> Firefox before the close tab button disappeared?
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