Finally, I found something that lets me dump the notoriously buggy tabbrowser extension. TBE has been driving me up the wall as release after release fails to fix really annoying bugs, especially popup bugs.

But now the wait is over, TabMix Plus appears to be here to save the day. I just installed it, well, actually I installed the beta 0.3 version because the developer says that it fixes some bugs in 0.2 and is stable.

Everything seems good so far, you can control the tab width, tab rows, and pretty much everything else that had kept me tied to TBE for the last few years, but TBE's developer's stubborn refusal to stop adding stupid features while not fixing fairly serious bugs has made me give up on it, or at least I wanted to, but couldn't until I found a good replacement. Tabmix Plus seems to be that replacement.

The arrangement of the controls was also fairly intuitive, it only took me a few minutes to get it setup the way I like, which is more than I can say for any tab browser extension version I've ever installed. Those tend to take me an hour or so to figure out how to make it work due to its self-contradicting commands and settings.

You can check out the author's homepage here.

Missing Features
So far I've only found two major things absent:

1. View source in tab. You can use view source in tab, aka tabsource, but it's very incomplete. See author's homepage.
2. Prevent multiple blank tabs from being opened.

:: Installation Warnings ::
Please make sure to disable or uninstall all your tab related extensions before you install this one, then restart Firefox, then install TabMix Plus, for a complete list go to the author's site

The following cannot be run with tabmix plus:


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Hmm. I tried tabmix. Didn't like it. I've never had any bugs/problems with tabbrowser, works perfectly for me.... (again, I remind you that I also never have bugs in notoriously buggy games and other software....)
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check out the latest version, you can just disable tabbrowser extension while testing. TabMix Plus is apparently pretty different than the first TabMix, and beta 0.3 fixes some bugs. This is a very promising first taste so far I have to say.

There are two bugs I'm seeing with tabbrowser extension, both annoying.

1. Totally randomly, TBE changes between opening all requested popups in a tab and opening them in a new window without focus.

2. TBE is not letting me open new windows on request even though that option is selected [open new windows only when requested]. That's gotten pretty annoying since I tend to open a new Firefox when I talk to clients etc so we can follow each other.

These are both pretty significant technical issues, neither has been fixed in 2.x TBE, the failure to fix the pop up issue is sort of the last straw for me.

Since TME is pretty new, at 0.3 beta, I think most issues like the ones I mentioned will be fixed fairly soon, the code is already out there, it's just a matter of integrating it and debugging.

I'll have to see how TME works, TBE was really starting to annoy me. Plus TBE popup broke on a client's computer, and a fedex feature wouldn't work at all, although other popup blocking stuff keeps working. Obviously I can't subject clients to this type of instability, it's not right, so I've been looking for a practical solution that will resolve most issues but still give a very good level of tab control.

I'm going to test TME for a while, but I already find that it's controls are MUCH better designed than TBE controls. Even though this is the first time I've seen it, I had no problems figuring out what was where.

I'll keep my fingers crossed, hopefully no bugs will appear. Session stuff is the riskiest, in TBE if you had it remember your tab history, it never deleted the data, and after a while Firefox would be using huge resources to load and unload, because the tabbrowser tab history file just got bigger and bigger.

Not good design-wise, I'm really glad to see someone who is at least apparently taking this type of programming work seriously enough to be listed on mozilla extensions, unlike TBE, which has never been considered stable enough to put there.

Anyway, I really hope this one turns out to be more reliable, I like to have very simple packages I can install for clients and friends that I know will work with no technical issues, things like allinone mouse gestures, adblock, web developer tool bar, user agent switcher, and so on.
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0.3 (latest one I think) is the one I tried. Don't like it. Too much stuff, very little benefit to the too much stuff from my perspective.

I've never once had either problem you relate with tabbrowser. With me, y'know, it's always a case of "if it ain't broke, DON'T fix it!" Tabbrowser suits me, I'm not saying others won't have a better experience with other similar extensions, but I'm not moving to tabmix.
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that's interesting, something must have corrupted in mine, although I tried Firefox 1.5 and TBE 2.x with more or less the same problems.

I tend to agree, definitely if something works, don't leave it, I'm kind of stuck though, TBE isn't working for me consistently, and TME is missing a few key components.

I'd say option-wise they either have the same number of configuration options, or TBE has quite a few more [that's actually the problem, it's possible I've activated some feature or option that destabilized it, while you haven't, it would be interesting to know which tbe feature has broken it for me].

Always good to see other input on this stuff too, sadly, unlike you, if a piece of software can be crashed, I'll tend to find a way to do that, LOL...

However, carefully disabling TBE or TME, restarting firefox, then switching to the other one, seems to be working so far, so I can compare them and see how it goes.
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Yeah, we ALL know I'm the original anomaly.... I literally NEVER have bugginess in stuff that others are ready to absolutely KILL.

In fact, the last seriously buggy program I dealt with was win3.0 - in about 1985....
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that's funny, in 2000 I found a way to make Windows server 2000 fail on install, before I even got it running, installing it for a server class.... just did something most people never would do, but it made sense to me at the time... or the very first machine I had, I didn't really get what exec.bat stuff did, way back when, but I managed to just instinctively find the exact thing to do that put the hard drive reading head down on the hard drive, totalling the computer.

Also found a natural way to crack a web image digital watermarking scheme, this really annoyed the guy who wrote it, since he said it couldn't be removed by normal means.

And so on. I've almost completely destroyed windows 2000 professional, bad modem drivers usually, norton other times, I just seem to have a nose for this stuff, obviously it can get annoying, like when I have to spend 48 hours fixing the problem, that's not fun.
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Hmmm. You need to advertise as "joe bftspzltkz" (can't remember how really spelled, the little guy with the black cloud over his head, L'il Abner or Superman comic, about 45 years ago) - hire me, I guarantee I can crash your *insert whatever here*. Prime bug testing etc etc....

Got to be companies out there who would pay to have you find all the holes....

[[Here we are, the two faces of the coin: you, the "if it lives I can kill it"; me, the "bugs? what me worry? you've GOT to be kidding"....]]
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Heavy sigh... starting finding the tabmix plus bugs too, some of those in the beta 0.3 release are too serious for me, so I decided to just go back to tabbrowser extension.

I uninstalled the version I had, physically deleted all the tab browser extension configuration files and folders, there's a couple, then removed all the prefs.js references to browser.tabs.extension.*, then reinstalled tabbrowser extension, reconfigured it.

At this point, the new browser window on user request only works again, I'll have to see if the popup opening in new tab stays set, before it randomly just sets to open in a new window without focus.

It's unfortunate that the mozilla group doesn't take over the tab stuff completely and just make an extension that does everything tab browser extension does, except with better option dialogue, and more stable.

The lack of 'view source in tab' option in tab mix makes it a no go for me, plus the new bugs I found, those are pretty serious, makes it unuseable for me, open in new tab from external application totally broke the extension's functioning in the latest nightly beta, killed ability to close tabs at all, plus other glitches.

I told you have a knack for finding bugs...
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Yup - I believe you....

You need to register as the "bugfinder" with getafreelancer or someone....
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