Navigating Between Tabs

Tabbrowser Extensions gives you power. When you start with Firefox without Tabbrowser Extensions, you have simple tabbing, where you can create tabs and navigate between tabs using mouse clicks. You can also switch between tabs using Ctrl+Tab.

With Tabbrowser Extensions installed, you can change your tab navigation and make multiple pages much easier to use. Let's look at some of the options Tabbrowser Extensions gives you.

Navigation between tabs is controlled by some of the options that were described previously in Table 2.1. Switching between tabs can be accomplished either by hovering over the tab or by clicking. This option is set in the Gestures options, shown in Figure 2.6.

Figure 2.6. Tab navigation is controlled in the Miscellaneous section. There is also an Advanced button to display additional settings.

If the Switch Active Tab Only with Pointing box is checked, hovering the mouse over a tab causes the tab to become the active tab automatically. You won't have to click. This is most useful when you need to quickly switch between two pages to check information.

Caution

Some users find this behavior to be unsettling! It does lead one to believe that the computer is doing something it was not asked to do! However, I recommend you give it a chance it will grow on you!

Click the Advanced button to set the focus change delay. The default is 100 milliseconds. (That's just 1/10 of a second.) This delay enables you to pass over a tab for instance, to move the mouse to the menu or toolbar from the main browser

window without a tab change. I've found that 100 milliseconds is a bit fast for my liking and usually set it to a slightly higher number. Experiment with numbers between 50 and 1,000 (make changes by about 50 milliseconds at a time) and see what you like.

Automatic switching works well when you configure the tabs to be on the left (see Figure 2.7) or right of the browser window. There is less tendency to accidentally switch between tabs because you don't have to pass over the tab bar when going to the menu or toolbars.

Figure 2.7. With the tabs moved to the left side, the hover-to-switch feature works nicely.