Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple
Firefox 2 feature: Recently Closed Tabs

We know (at least we are pretty sure) that one of Firefox's best features, confirmation before quitting with multiple tabs open, is coming to Safari 3 but the stealing shouldn't stop there (or is it borrowing when Apple does it?). The recently introduced version 2.0 of Firefox has a very nice little feature lurking in the 'History' menu. You'll notice a 'Recently Closed Tabs' option is now available. This lists tabs that you have recently closed (wacky, huh?).
Now, this might not seem mindblowing but if you are like me you often have many, many tabs open and every once in a great while you close the wrong one. Opening up that wrongly closed tab is now much simpler. Apple, are you paying attention?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
bangersandmash said 7:19AM on 10-31-2006
I hate to be the fanboy here, but Opera's had this feature for a while.
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Sean said 7:37AM on 10-31-2006
This feature has been in Safari 3 since the first Leopard beta. Undo Close Tab in the Edit menu.
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Russell said 7:58AM on 10-31-2006
Another awesome amazing thing that I discovered with Firefox 2.0 is something that is much much better than finding a wrongly closed tab, although that feature is a great one. I normally also have many tabs open at once. Yesterday I had about 10+ tabs open and a couple of downloads from Firefox going on, when all of a sudden everything just froze. I had to force a shut down on my mac. Now normally when this happens I am annoyed because I am losing all of the sites I had up and the downloads, to get it back will be a lot of busy work for myself. But when I restarted and opened Firefox again, it said that it had closed down unexpectedly, and asked if I wanted to restore my last session. WTF, of course I do. And then the gods spoke and everything was restored as it was before it froze. All the websites were opened (in tabs of course) and the downloads resumed. Talk about NICE!
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Niklas said 8:16AM on 10-31-2006
"the stealing shouldn't stop there (or is it borrowing when Apple does it?). "
So just because one developer does something good does that mean that when another developer does something similar it becomes stealing or borrowing? And how can that be a negative thing?
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south said 8:19AM on 10-31-2006
great... yet one more way for my wife to find all the porn i've been looking at.
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tr said 8:28AM on 10-31-2006
south, dude, you gotta use the "porn mode" if you're gonna be looking at porn ;)
http://www.tuaw.com/2005/05/02/porn-mode/
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Andres said 8:38AM on 10-31-2006
If you accidentally closed a tab you can Undo it. COMMAND, Z. It works like a charm, but that feature might be nice also.
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Jason said 9:00AM on 10-31-2006
Some companies, like MS, won't admit to "borrowing" features. It frustrates some users, but I say whatever is good and is implemented in similar software is only better for the end user, so why complain? It's not stealing unless they say they invented it IMO.
I like that the Firefox team has thought to include things like this (even if it was done in Opera first)
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Mr Lizard said 9:09AM on 10-31-2006
It has been available as an extension for Firefox for some time now. It's good to see it integrated by default.
It would be better if the original extension authour could be credited however.
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Andrew Eller said 9:41AM on 10-31-2006
Check out Saft if you want this functionality in Safari.
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Scott Stevenson said 6:00PM on 10-31-2006
Seeing as David Hyatt works on Safari/WebKit, I think the "stealing" is probably ok.
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Sam said 8:59AM on 11-01-2006
I wish they'd steal the fact that Opera (who had tabs before Firefox or Safari) just always saves all the tabs. So you quit the app, and next time you start it, your tabs are back the way they were. That's how it should be!
Firefox does this if it quit unexpectedly, so why it doesn't always do this is beyond me.
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Owen said 11:40AM on 11-01-2006
It would be nice if they'd do the same thing for recently closed windows as well.
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