Firefox 3.6 has introduced a new tab behaviour, where new tabs are opened next to your currently selected tab, while Firefox 3.5 and older would open new tabs at the end of all your tabs.

If you don’t like this new behaviour, you can change it back to the way it was. Simply follow these steps:

  1. Go to about:config in the address bar
  2. Search for browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
  3. Double click the value to change it from true to false
  4. Done!

Enjoy surfing the way you are used too.

Tags: , , , , Categories: Firefox
4 Responses
  1. Avatar

    Thanks for the info!
    I used to see new tabs at end since early versions of Firefox and it’s very frustrating to see this new behaviour. By the way I don’t know why they changed it (due to Chrome?)

  2. Avatar

    Thank you – I just upgraded, and this was driving me crazy – I occasionally use Opera/Chrome, and one of those does this and it just drives me nuts – so glad there is an easy fix. Thanks.

  3. Avatar

    Thanks for this fix.

    This was a very annoying problem. I work with multiple tabs (usually more than 10) at any given time and found it very annoying having to scroll all they way to the end on the browsers panel.

    I don’t know why, but lately it seems many applications are making these types of changes that don’t add to usability. I think it would be wise for them to ask their users which features they prefer and find more usable before rolling out these types of features.

    You know that saying “if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it.”

    Thanks once again for the tip.

  4. Avatar

    Thanks a bunch, this also works in Firefox 4 Beta 7.

    Unfortunately, the “don’t fix it if it isn’t broken” maxim doesn’t get you very far as a developer (I suppose) – people expect new features constantly. I’ve been skipping Firefox 3 altogether and just recently switched to 4, because FF 2 (portable edition) is defenceless against CSS history snooping, even with Stanford’s SafeHistory and SafeCache installed. I’ve been grabbing extensions to restore as much of the old behavior, like “Oldbar” (restores FF 2 locationbar behavior) and “Status-4-Evar” (lets you put the statusbar text (link URL), download progress etc. back where it belongs, even though they’ve officially gotten rid of the status bar). With a bit of tuning, FF 4 is practically as fast as 2 used to be, and I’m coming to like the thing.