I need my tabs to stay put. And I want new tabs to always open to the far right. When my tabs keep changing location due to my opening a new one, it is frustrating to hunt down the tab I need. Any way around this? Replies to rharlow2@gmail.com would be appreciated. Thank you!

While TMP does a good job...

I would like to see the functions in separate addons.
I suggest the following groups ...

Links
- what happens when you click on a link, open new tab, open new window ...

Tab/Tab bar appearance
- close button, scroll arrows, multi row, highlight unread/read ...

Tab protect/lock/reload every/duplicate

Closed tabs - a menu/button that shows closed tabs ...

Session manager - add a selective restore (list a session (by date and time) and select what tabs to restore).

There needs to be the ability to add buttons to the tab bar - FF why is this not possible in customize ?!

The ability to set your own domain colours in Colourful Tabs is nice... but it's very time consuming, and if you don't do it you have different random colours for every page on the same domain.

As such I believe Chroma Tabs Plus ( https://addons.mozilla.o...n-US/firefox/addon/8004 )is the best tab colour plugin, as it hashes the URL and intelligently colours domains for you from the start.

malware :)

not completely, but it has become a bloatware... someone should do a TMP Lite version with the 2 functions (out of 100s avaiable) which are needed for firefox 3, or better put, firefox lacks.

convention over configuration, anyone?

since when does BetaNews concern itself with extensions? What next? Fonts?

Yeah... the nerve of them covering a newly-released piece of beta software. I mean, they have simply gone too far. As soon as they started discussing the new features, I almost puked in my soup!

It makes much more sense for them to stick with political coverage and the recent financial crisis. *sigh*

I imagine we'll see an article soon about another release of Firefox... how dare they! ;)

LMAO!

@ yountmj: I think it's stretching it more than just a little bit to call an extension - software. I think the point about reviewing fonts next is well made and a good analogy.

I have colorful tabs but what i would really like to see is if they did it like Vistas switch between windows.

it's 0.3.7.3 ... come on folks, that's really sloppy.

You know it's very funny:

While I'm not denying the necessity for this plugin (Lord knows the browser needs it), I took a look - today - at what it requires to make Firefox be as versatile and fast as IE7 + IE7Pro. It requires a minimum of seven plugins, including Tab Mix Plus. Seven. Versus one add-on for IE7. And that wasn't for full IE7Pro functionality - just the pieces I use the most.

IMNSHO, I can see why people bother. On a coldly rational level, the effort of finding what is required and the hassle of keeping it current with each and every revision of the browser outweighs any gain.

I'm sure there will be much religious fervor railing against the above but experience is hard to argue against.

IE7 faster than Firefox? LMAO. Have you ever run both on old hardware to test - an old PIII or something? IE7 is almost unusable, FF is quick.

New hardware just disguises bad bloated code, it doesn't eliminate it.

That best feature of IE is that there's a switch to stop IE for checking it is the default, other than that there's nothing interesting about it.

When you would take the risk to surf 2 days using IE, your system would be filled with spying crap, malware, crappy plug-ins, and become as slow as a snake.

IE7 can best be compared to FF1.0 alpha 1.

"When you would take the risk to surf 2 days using IE, your system would be filled with spying crap, malware, crappy plug-ins, and become as slow as a snake."

I'm a security specialist by profession.

What you've stated is pure and utter rubbish.

If you take the time to ensure your security is set right or even just ONLY include an add-on like IE7Pro, your argument is moot.

Unfortunately it's used as a panacea by all the Firefox flag wavers; heck, some of them probably even believe it.

I've been using IE7 since it was released. Never had malware. Never had a virus. Never executed any javascript filth. Never got nailed by a malicious ActiveX applet.

There's rhetoric and then there's reality.

If you're still running a PIII in this day and age, you have bigger problems than I can help you with. I can honestly say that I haven't tried Firefox on that platform, mostly because I haven't seen a PIII in several years. Furthermore, in head to head tests on moderately semi-modern hardware (an Athlon64 4400+), the oft claimed speed advantage of Firefox in rendering sites is somehow nowhere in evidence. If you add IE7Pro with FasterIE turned on, Firefox becomes embarassingly slow in comparison.

So, another moot argument.

I mean, if you prefer the browser for whatever reason - usually religious - that's perfectly fine. However don't try to obfuscate the situation with whatever popularisms pass for so-called "fact".

That's pretty hard to sell.

Both in my home and work capacities, I run a variety of workstation hardware from PIIIs to the latest C2Ds, and in terms of basic Windows responsiveness, for example, a properly maintained 1400mhz Tualatin PIII is vastly superior to most PIV at twice the clock speed, with their awful netburst architecture. Just goes to show that you can't take things at face value.

If your'e sold with the idea that people other than gamers and high-end busniness users need to keep updating their hardware to use Windows, browse the web, use P2P and read or write the odd document (i.e. the core activities of the vast majority of users), then your brainwashed by the corporations who's only intent is to continually make people upgrade, so there's no point arguing with you. I use the PIII mentioned above to do many of those core activities, and it's responsiveness is almost as good as the C2D E6600 I use for doing heavy duty stuff that most users wouldn't even consider.

As for the IE vs FF debate, I'm unbiased. Until IE7 there was no debate, IE was featureless. Now IE7 is a good feature-wise as FF, and on new hardware runs as well if not sometiems faster. However, my point is that testing on very old hardware - whether you intend to us it on there or not - is a good way of seeing how well software is really written - how streamlined it is; and IE7 does really badly.

Actually. I'm not a bleeding edge kind of guy but let's face it: the PIII is more than a few generations of CPU back. The weakest machine in my house is an AthlonXP 2600+. It's my oldest daughter's machine and she's WAY overdue for an upgrade but since she's spending ever dollar she earns on University tuition to avoid student loans, she can be excused. Both of her younger siblings saved their money and upgraded to Athlon64 4800+ machines a year ago. My wife has a HP dual core laptop (two years old) and I run an AM2 6000+ (I bought mine a year ago this month). None of this is bleeding edge and we typically replace machines every three years or so. That being said, no PIIIs have been here for at least four years. The server is another AthlonXP 2600+ - my old machine. Multimedia software (and even burning DVDs - everyone has a burner) requires more horsepower than a PIII can deliver and music and movies are a VERY big deal in this household. The only gamer is my son and he bought his own BFG 8800 OC2 last Christmas. I don't think that's an unreasonable upgrade plan so you'll excuse me when I chuckle at someone still running a PIII as a primary workstation.

On IE vs. FF, it's mostly religion with little real substance, other than one is a hell of a lot more hassle to maintain than the other due to its half-assed plugin architecture (FF). I used 'em head to head and IE6 + Maxthon easily equaled the earlier generation of FF that it had to compete with. As far as any reasonable user was concerned, using Maxthon was the equivalent of installing the plethora of plugins that were (and still are) absolutely required to make FF usable. That's why MS tapped the makers of Maxthon for help with IE7.

I'll agree on the "testing on old hardware" principle (I've railed against poorly written software and code bloat - can you say "Vista"? - many a time in this forum) but it also requires that the maxim be applied in an intelligent and reasonable fashion (as all maxims should be to have any value). Testing on a generation of hardware that was big a decade ago simply does not qualify as either intelligent or reasonable.

Not all PIIIs are equal. The Tualatins were the good ones, produced when the first PIVs came out, and outperformed them by a mile. Intel kept it a big secret and pretty much buried them in the desktop market, eventually slapping the PIII-S moniker to pretend they could only be used in server boards - an outright lie. The 1400mhz model I have was the fastest PIII built, became the Pentium M platform, and the successor to it's architecture is now in use again in the C2Ds. Only with the advent of them did I even consider upgrading or buying a new PC. I wouldn't touch a PIV with a bargepole over my PIII: CPU runs at about 29 degrees, even overclocked to 1.5ghz like mine. A PROPER processor that is, before they started trying to dredge every last mhz out for the marketing men.

As for multimedia - it runs great if you use decent unbloated software like Media Player Classic HC. If you try to run bloated crap on it, like WMP or iTunes, it may struggle - but that's the fault of the software makers, who are in league with the chip manufacturers. A media player should play media, and that requires hardly any processing power, so instead they bloat each version up so it runs like a dog, and they can convince people they need a hardware upgrade.

I used to be a Maxthon user too, if fact, a MyIE2 user before they changed the name, and agree with what you say, when I changed to FF I had to hunt for the extensions to get the functionality. The main ones were superdragngo (now superceded by Quickdrag), Tabmixplus, and Add Bookmark Here. Yes, some of that functionality should be in the core - I'll agree with that 100%.

That said, I'm not sure I'd ever return to a Microsoft product on principle, they make so much crap - and yeah, that's religious fervour, not for FF, but against MS. ;-)

Fastest and potentially best browser I've ever used: K-Meleon based on Mozilla. Only it's buggy and underdeveloped. What FF could have been.

Are you named after Roj Blake by the way???

Um, you're talking to someone who recognized intel's technologically bankrupt architecture for what it was a wile back and never looked back. :)

The staples for multimedia in this house are Media Player Classic Homecinema Edition (love the remote control functions on my wife's laptop) and Foobar / XMPlay. Do NOT speak the words Winamp / Windows media Player / iTunes (especially iTunes - Apple makes wonderfully marketed dreck IMNSHO) in my presence - they are anathema.

It's sad what happened to Maxthon. The instability (being dumped unceremoniously to the desktop is NOT my idea of a good time) finally drove me away from it when IE7 was released. I was glad to see IE7pro come along which has all the meaningful features of Maxthon but is lighter and more stable. That's what prompted my post. On this Thursday and Friday past, I decided to revisit the whole FF 3.x thing and see what had changed, if anything. I found that it still needed a plethora of plugins to make it usable (no surprise), it still had a half-assed plugin architecture with no commonality of configuration interface and poor sustainability (no surprise) and it still required several of those plugins to make it worth my while versus a single add-on for IE7. Even after all that tweaking, it was still slower than IE7 + IE7Pro. So, after all those minuses just to achieve parity - almost - I then came to the justifiable conclusion that, incorrect and irrelevant superstition about "security" aside (pure FUD if ever I heard it), it was largely a waste of my time.

If someone wants to go through all that trouble just to be anti-MS (and I certainly am not pro-MS although in times past I used to be), then fine but admit that up front instead of cloaking it in shrill rhetoric that is easily disproved.

You want religious fervor? Get me into a conversation on that misbegotten retroactive abortion known as Vista. The only deal with my "religion" is that I can back up everything I say and in fact have access to MS kernel engineers. The fact that MS has tacitly admitted Vista is a dog and Windows 7 will cure a lot of what ails it (what, no more denial MS?) makes my statements all the more damning. :) :) ;)

No, I'm not named for Roj Blake, although that would be really cool. :) I'm actually named after another Brit, Roger Bannister, who did the four minute mile.

Cheers!

If all of those extensions were offered as a single suite of multiple add-ons like IE7Pro, would that make you happy? ;)

Come to think of it, I wonder if there is a way to install multiple extensions at the same time instead of one at a time. That would make setting up and configuring Firefox on the first run so much easier.

So, what you're saying is that a person has to be a security specialist in order to use IE safely?

OLE2/ActiveX is still the biggest security hole ever designed.

It's obvious that the very careful can get along without picking up all of the malware, but the average user will enjoy quite a mix, I'm sure.

"The staples for multimedia in this house are Media Player Classic Homecinema Edition (love the remote control functions on my wife's laptop) and Foobar / XMPlay. Do NOT speak the words Winamp / Windows media Player / iTunes (especially iTunes - Apple makes wonderfully marketed dreck IMNSHO) in my presence - they are anathema."

Heh... good stuff. :)

I'm glad that K-Lite started including MPC HC in the packages now... it's just not the default media player yet until it becomes more stable. I haven't had any problems with it though, and I definitely prefer it over any other video player. About the only thing I use XMPlay for is SID and MOD tunes (Winamp's MOD plugin has come a long way, but there is still no decent SID plugin yet... XMP SID surpasses it by a mile). Even though XMPlay's MP3 playback sound quality is superior, I still prefer Winamp's interface and library for MP3 playback. ASIO output plugin serves its purpose for the time being.

Dude, my big beef with Winamp (apart form the whopping memory footprint and slow response) is that the ASIO plugin is essentially s***e. No volume control if it's installed? Wha???? Also Winamp STILL has no WASAPI support my wife uses Vista64 Enterprise on her multimedia laptop) and the devs instead did an OpenAL plugin which is neither open nor in anywhere near the same league as ASIO and WASAPI for audio quality. Basically it was done to appease the lil' fanboi gamerz still stupid enough to buy Creative Labs junk hardware. Both Foobar and XMPlay have ASIO and WASAPI.

I was very active in the XMPLay forum during the last couple of versions of the player. I was the one forever harping on seamless / gapless playback until Ian finally included it (in the anouncement, he said "happy now, Roj?"). You're right though - the interface seriously needs an overhaul.

you don't even need to try it on old hardware, just check out some benchmark tools like sunspider.

Believe me, I share your same disappointments with Winamp. I guess I've simply become too accustomed to it over the past decade to easily change completely to a different media player... for audio, at least. I've never used Winamp for video. MPC with AC3Filter is perfect for my needs.

Perhaps the best add-on that there is. This thing ROCKS the house and is the closest thing to Maxthon 1.6.x for IE that you can get.

It makes Firefox useful. I'd probably go with Sea Monkey instead of Firefox if this extension was not available.

I'd say that Adblock Plus is the best add-on for Firefox... NoScript a close second. But yes, this extension is one of those must-haves, and definitely one of my favorites.

sigh. noscript really oughta be named "tin-foil hat".

True. However, this "tin-foil hat" actually works. ;)

What's wrong with No Script?

Neither AdBlockPlus or NoScript are neccessary if you use the Proxomitron or Privoxy standalone proxies. Admittedly, the FF add-ons are easier for the average user, but both the above are way more versatile, and work with any browser.

With proxomitron installed and Grypen's filter set, I've hardly seen a popup or advertisement on the web for about 10 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxomitron

http://www.castlecops.co...Grypen_Proxomitron.html

It Lives ™

And use Nightly Tester Tools and it will work perfectly on Firefox 3.1 Beta 1.

The session manager in TMP is very good too. I find it to be a mandatory addition to Firefox, just like AdblockPlus, DownThemAll and ErrorZilla Plus.

Find the official website and download a nightly build of TMP. There's native 3.1b1 support, including the new Firefox 3.1b1 "new tab" button, which looks a lot better than the 3.0 TMP one.

None that I have seen, and I've used their dev builds for a long while too.

http://tmp.garyr.net/dev-builds/