Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Firefox 3.5.1 : )

I'm now a happy user of the very fast Firefox 3.5.1, having figured out that my 3.5 problems were the result of the extension Tab Mix Plus. How did I figure it out? I installed 3.5.1, started the browser in Safe Mode, with all extensions disabled, and found that all was well. I quit and restarted and, on a hunch, tried disabling Tab Mix Plus. My guess was that the problems I had encountered with 3.5 were likely caused by an extension that affected the browser's interface. Sure enough — with Tab Mix Plus disabled, everything was fine.

The download on the Mozilla page for Tab Mix Plus isn't compatible with Firefox 3.5.1. But developer Gary Reyes has posted there a link to a new version: Tab Mix Plus for Firefox 3.5.1.

As many Firefox users already know, Tab Mix Plus is an incredibly handy extension: it has close to ten million downloads. Thanks to Gary Reyes for keeping Tab Mix Plus compatible.

A related post
Firefox 3.5 : (

comments: 3

Asa Dotzler said...

Michael, what does Tab Mix Plus do for you that Firefox doesn't include by default. All of the features advertised on the add-ons page have since been incorporated into Firefox.

Not being a TMP user, I'm curious what it's still offering so many years after it was created to give more options to Firefox's then simpler tab implementation.

Michael Leddy said...

Asa, thanks for reading and commenting (and for all that you do for Firefox).

TMP adds many options: changing tab width, removing the New Tab button, removing the Close Tab button from tabs, changing mouse actions, changing the context menu, and so on. I guess that some of these things could be changed via userChrome.css, but I think others need TMP (or perhaps another extension).

asadotzler@gmail.com said...

OK. That makes sense. The big options that I remember from years ago and which are still advertised as TMP's top-line features, like tab drag and drop, tab to new window (and the inverse,) undo close tab and window, and session restore have all since been added to Firefox. But, as I also recall, there have always been about a million other options in TMP.