How To Disable Windows 7 Taskbar Tab Preview in Firefox 3.6
If you have used Firefox the Firefox 3.6 beta, you have probably noticed that Mozilla has introduced support for Windows 7 taskbar thumbnails. Firefox 3.6 allows you to directly select a tab from the taskbar. This is similar to how Internet Explorer 8 behaves in Windows 7. Some people love this behaviour while others find it annoying. I happen to belong to the latter group. I am a heavy multi-tasker and often have dozens of open tabs organised into multiple windows. Taskbar tab previews doesn’t make any distinction between tabs from different windows and is a major productivity bump.
If you find taskbar tab previews irritating, here is a quick way to get rid of them.
- Type about:config in the awesome bar (address bar). Ignore the caution message and proceed.
- Type browser.taskbar.previews.enable in the filter bar.
- Now, you will be displayed a single entry whose current value is True. Double click on the entry to change its value to False.
That’s it. Firefox should instantly stop displaying tab previews in the taskbar.
Ricky
Ujjwal Kanth
Amalaki Juice
G Web | Google Talk
kapil.khaneja
La Digue
Sitaram Chamarty
Chinmoy Kanjilal
November 15th, 2009 at 10:35 pm #
I have disabled it from the very first day. It does not do me any good anyway.
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Jack
November 16th, 2009 at 9:00 am #
Yes, I’m in the latter group as well. Thankfully, your tip showed up on the first page of my search.
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Max Johnson
November 18th, 2009 at 6:54 am #
Cheers! Works like a charm.
I'm in the exact same boat as the author of this tip!
When you've got (for example) 3 Firefox windows open with multiple tabs in each, way too much crap pops up when you mouseover the icon on the taskbar in Windows 7, when all you want to do is change windows quickly. I'm surprised the setting is tucked away in about:config. It'd want to have it's own checkbox in the options page by the final build of 3.6… Annoying!
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Richard Yauman
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 am #
Thanks for the tip, even though I needed it to go the opposite direction. My install had the task bar previews disabled and I was searching for a way to turn them on and by doing the tip backwards it solved the issue.
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4walls Reply:
January 1st, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I was also looking for a way to turn them back on and this helped me do that. Thanks.
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