TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Now select the Tabs tab.

New pages should be opened in. This option specifies how Firefox opens new links. 2 options are available.

●      a new window. Selecting this option launches a new Firefox window to view the link. This would perhaps be the safest option to select (In that if you launch something questionable you may be able to end the process without affecting other windows).

●      a new tab. Selecting this option launches a new Firefox tab in the most recently active Firefox window to view the link. This would be recommended if you don’t wish launching such links to affect your most recently active webpage and you aren’t concerned about the links content.

Warn me when closing multiple tabs. Ticking this option forces Firefox to confirm closure of a window if it contains multiple tabs.

This may be useful as you may accidentally choose to close such windows, forgetting there were other active tabs you wished to finish viewing also. If you do wish to proceed closing the window select Close tabs, otherwise select Cancel. Ticking Warn me when I attempt to close multiple tabs leaves this confirmation request in place for the future.

Warn me when opening multiple tabs might slow down Firefox. Ticking this option specifies that Firefox should prompt for confirmation when attempting to open an excessive number of tabs (Over 15 by default);

Untick this option should you not feel such confirmation is required.

Always show the tab bar. Unticking this option enables Firefox to hide the tab bar when only a single page is open in Firefox, which makes perfect sense; if only 1 page is open then there’s no need for a tab in the first place – which would also decrease viewing area slightly (The tabs become visible only when you open a new tab in the window). Ticking this setting forces Firefox to display tabs even when only a single page is being viewed in a window.

As can be seen, Unticking this option allows for more site content to be visible (2 lines of text in this case) than otherwise would be when tabs are hidden for single page windows. This is noticeable when in non-maximised windows.

When I open a new tab, switch to it immediately. Ticking this option specifies that new tabs launched from links in pages are to be loaded in the foreground, i.e. middle clicking on a link launches the link in a new tab and switches you to that tab. Unticking this option launches new tabs in the background, i.e. middle clicking on a link launches the link in a new tab but you remain in the current one. While this is a matter of preference, for most it’s probably best to leave this Unticked as more often than not you’ll probably want to open more than 1 tab from a page.