FireFox 3.1 beta has just been released (portable version available here), and the "Ctrl+Tab" (for switching between browser tabs) has been changed to work and look more like "Alt+Tab" in Windows... showing you a picture of each tab you have open and allowing you to switch between them. Or as they put it "A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to" - gee, thanks.

Personally, I HATE this new functionality - hasn't anyone ever heard of that say "if it aint broke, don't fix it"? I'm all for adding new functionality and allowing people to choose if they want to use it, but don't change how a person interacts with a program (though personally I would've preferred it was a separate addon). I use Ctrl+Tab all the time, and the way it works now does not suit me. You can still scroll between tabs the "old way" using "Ctrl+PageUp" and "Ctrl+PageDown" - so now a one-handed action requires two hands... thanks alot. Clearly people are more concerned with things looking pretty than being functional.

Anyway, the point of this post is to tell you how to disable this new functionality, so it works like it used to. Go to "about:config" and type "ctrltab" in the filter bar, then set:

1. "browser.ctrlTab.mostRecentlyUsed" to "false"
2. "browser.ctrlTab.recentlyUsedLimit" to "0"
3. "browser.ctrlTab.smoothScroll" to "false"

You might need to restart FireFox for the changes to take effect.

I'm left wondering how much time was spent coding this nice new little "feature", and how much it increased the filesize and memory usage of FireFox. Bad Mozilla. Maybe one day I'll have to switch to "Links" (which looks like this). How about you spend more time worrying about standards compliance, CSS3, and passing that Acid test, and less time on making thing looks pretty, huh? Just a thought.