28 August 2010

Disable tab animation in Firefox 4

One of the areas where the new version of Firefox seeks to improve and evolve is the user experience. As previously showcased on the blog of Stephen Horlander, a long time contributor to Firefox interface design, one of the projects aims to introduce animations to tab interactions. The latest beta of the upcoming Firefox 4 already added these changes: when you create a tab, it “grows” out of the URL bar until it reaches the standard size; the same effect is applied to closing tabs in reverse, they shrink back into the neighboring tabs.

The idea behind these animations is to make browsing feel faster, adding visual affordances that makes tasks more understandable and to make the browser more visually appealing. I’m not going to get into the debate whether you should be focusing on looking faster versus actually being faster; I simply noticed the new behavior after the browser updated and it has the exact opposite effect, for me at least. Tab opening and closing feels slower, because the browser is emphasizing the action every time, instead of just showing the end-result. It could be helpful for new users discovering the browser features for the first time, but I think the novelty will wear off quickly.

Fortunately the feature comes with an off-switch: the preference called browser.tabs.animate. Open the Firefox advanced preferences through about:config, search for this option with the filter box and double-click it to toggle the value to false. It doesn’t even require a browser restart, the change is instant. Now tabs will open and close without delay or unnecessary ‘eye-candy’; it might be a personal preference – after all, I have disabled most of the animations and effects in Windows as well – but I rather like it this way.

Disable tab animation in Firefox 4

23 comments:

  1. ha! one good thing about Firefox and you want to disable it...

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    Replies
    1. Hmmm... whether it is good or not depends on your preferences and tastes. When one is used to the old ways, the new "improvement" is a heavy distraction and productivity loss, with nothing to gain.

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  2. It also can create problems where the tab doesn't get completely deleted. I'm hoping disabling animation will fix this.

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  3. Thanks a lot for this. Because of my slow graphics card, the animation is rather jerky and does seem to take rather long. Besides, it's not quite like the whip-action tab-opening and closing of earlier versions. When I open something, I expect it to open immediately.

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  4. Thanks for the tip. Useful for me.
    I'm not really care the performance issue. I just feel it's a distraction.

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  5. Thank you!

    Tab animation is retarded.

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  6. Thanks so much! I had to get rid of those animations after only 10 minutes of use. I like to open a bunch of links one after another (like when selecting news articles to read). Those animations were way too distracting!

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  7. A video for this is completely unnecessary. For those who don't want to watch the video, just do this:

    1. Go to "about:config"
    2. search for "browser.tabs.animate"
    3. right click it and select "toggle" to disable it

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  8. Thanks, great tip! Animation is stupid, just like the Office paper clip. But some people are obviously easily entertained...

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  9. Thank you. Just what I needed. I agree with you entirely !

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  10. I've had firefox4 running for less than an hour and the first tweak I applied was this one as the tab animation annoyed me!

    I also turn off as nearly all the animation whether running windows or linux (kde) unless it provides useful feedback.

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  11. Thanks... I find animations, particularly those directly in line of sight to be very distracting.

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  12. Thanks for the tip. Unnecessary, distracting and useless.

    This should be one of the choices in: Tools->Options->tabs.

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  13. Thank you for the tip! I find the tab animation so annoying.

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  14. After having seen the video, as an Opera user who is always interested in watching the competition, I find the tab animations in FF4 awfully jerky. In Opera the animation is very smooth, fluid and fast and not at all distracting. I guess it doesn't feel laggy because you have an animated tab, but rather because the animation is a sluggish one.

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  15. Thanks a lot for the tip, the growth/shrink animation distracted me heavily, its nice to have the option to switch it off.

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  16. Thanks for the info on how to do this.

    I agree with others that my browser looks faster without the animation, since a window open or close is now instant, rather than taking a significant fraction of a second to do the tab animation.

    In addition, it's well known that movement of any sort attracts the eye, which is why many people (myself included) find these extremely distracting.

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  17. Thank you very much for this fix. I rapidly middle click to close loads of tabs- the animation means that there is a gap between tabs as they animate, meaning I am middle clicking on the tab bar and opening even more... not fun on my netbook!

    This is awesome, thanks a lot. I can now rapidfire middle click close with no issues =)

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  18. Thank you!
    The animated tabs were very frustrating. I am very happy you took the time to let us know how to turn off tab animation.

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  19. Thanks very much! I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox 7 and this performance issue was annoying me no end.

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  20. THANK YOU! Those animations are very distracting. Especially the delayed animations on closing tabs (sometimes several seconds after you close a tab, they all move and resize -- very strange behaviour).

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  21. Thanks a lot for the tip! The toolbar animations, along with anothe r"improvement" -- tabs on the top -- were such an impediment and productivity loss that I had to go all the pains and revert to back Firefox 3.0... Now, with this issue fixed (and the tabps returned to their original place by unticking "View|Toolbars|Tabs on top", on Ubuntu 10.04), I can finally start working with FF4 :).

    I agree with AnonymousMar 26, 2011 12:04 PM, the "animations off" tick should be directly in the options.

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  22. Great, thanks so much for this. These animations give me a headache believe it or not. It's the same for Windows and its sliding taskbar entries - gives me a headache.

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