Making Your Firefox Tabs Open at End Again

Starting with newly released Firefox Version 3.6, new tabs are opened in the tab adjacent to the one you are in, not at the end like they used to. This behavior is rather annoying to many who are visiting multiple sites for clicking purposes (Adgitize, CMFads, Entrecard).

Good News: There is a FF setting that you can change to restore the previous behavior of having Tabs open at the end. Below are two methods that you can perform to get Firefox to work as before.

Note: This information only applies if you are using Firefox Version 3.6 or later.

Method 1 - The Easiest and Safest

Visit the Firefox add-on page:

New Tabs at the End 1.0

then press the green "+ Add to Firefox" button as shown in the screen shot at right. A little window will pop up, and press the "Install Now" button. The add-on will be installed, then click the "Restart Firefox" button in the next window that pops-up because Firefox needs to be restarted for the change to take affect.

The advantage of this method is that if you later want to go back to the new FF tab setting, you simply remove the add-on.


Method 2 - By Hand (Requires Caution)

The second method does not require an add-on extension, but you will have to be careful not to screw up your other Firefox browser settings. To do this,

1. Open a new browser instance (so that you can follow these instructions).
2. Enter the string about:config in the address bar (I can't make this a link).
3. You then may get a gray warning screen like the one on the right. Press the  “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
4. In the next screen that displays, type in: tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent in the filter box (upper left).
5. Lastly, Right-click the Value entry, and select “Toggle” (that will change the setting from true to false and vice-versa)
6. Then close that brower window and you're done!

Hopefully, Firefox will create an entry in the "Tools/Options/Tabs" control box in later releases to make this setting change easier.