New to Firefox 3.6, when you are on a page, and you want to open a link in a new tab – rather than opening the link in the far right of the tab bar, Firefox will now open the link right next to the tab you are in.  Now, while this might be convenient for some, it is a feature I don’t really need.  So here is how you can disable the new “Insert Related Tab After Current” tweak in Firefox 3.6.

Make New Tab Pages Open in the Far Right of the Tab Bar

• Type about:config in the address bar. Then, if needed click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.
• Next, in the filter box – type in:
  • tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
• Right-click that about:config entry, and select “Toggle”

This will convert Firefox back to loading opening a new tab from a web page on the far right of the tab bar, rather than right next to the tab you opened it from.

To switch back, follow these same steps and toggle the “false” back to “true”.

This should help those of you out there who do not like this new feature to Firefox 3.6, or are just not ready to switch how you open a page in a new tab just yet.

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Here are some of the important files you might seen in your profile folder and what they are used for.

• search.sqlite and the searchplugins folder – The first file, search.sqlite stores the order that your search engines (for the search box) are sorted. Inside of the searchplugins folder you can find all the extra search engines you have installed.
• mimeTypes.rdf – your preferences with respect to what Firefox does when it comes across known file types.
• formhistory.sqlite - this is where information that you have searched for or entered into forms on web sites (think autocomplete) is stored.
• places.sqlite – this is the file that contains your bookmarks and previously visited web sites.
• cert8.db – all your security certificate settings and any SSL certificates you have imported are stored here.
• permissions.sqlite – the file here stores site specific preferences, such as if you allow it to install add-ons, show images, display popups or any special orders you have allowed for that domain.
• key3.db and signons3.txt – these are the files that store your password information you have saved.
• persdict.dat – this file will hold your words you have personally put into Firefox’s built in spellchecker.
• cookies.sqlite – your web site cookies are stored here.

Now, I do know there are more files – however, these are the files that are most important for you to know about, just in case something bad might happen.  Hopefully, this additional documentation will come in handy when troubleshooting your own Firefox issues or problems.

When add-on authors publish their add-on they declare the compatibility range for an add-on. It typically looks like “2.0 to 3.0.*” – meaning that at minimum, this add-on requires Firefox 2.0 and works with any maintenance release of Firefox 3.0. (End of the compatibility range is also called the maxVersion).

Some add-on authors have erroneously used “3.0″ as their maxVersion so when users with these add-ons upgrade from Firefox 3.0 to Firefox 3.0.1, the add-on gets disabled. We encourage these add-on authors to use “3.0.*” as their maxVersion.

So shoot your favorite extension authors an e-mail and ask them to get this fixed, or check to see if this might be the problem.  Another suggestion for people with lots of problems would be to try running Firefox with a new profile or Safe Mode.  In Safe Mode, you can reset some settings or disable extensions and themes that might be the source of the issue. By comparing Firefox behavior in normal mode to its behavior in Safe Mode with various items disabled, you may be able to diagnose issues.