LastTab 3.0t3 released

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Bleary-eyed, but it's released. Truth be told I'd rather not release it right now, but, since Mozilla went ahead and released Firefox 4 I felt I had no choice. Version 3.0t3 is, at this point, more or less the successor to LastTab 2.2 so I'll be releasing it on Mozilla's Add-ons site shortly. I seriously didn't get anywhere near the time I would rather have to dogfood the new features, but such is life and a promised release on the weekend. Hey, it's still technically the weekend, lol. I unexpectedly ran into issues that just had to be corrected before release.

Aside from the gripes I actually am happy with the new Enhanced Menu popup. I had always planned on adding this popup, but as I got into creating it I realized I really miss the binding features of WPF. So I included a primitive version of a data binding engine. Some parts of the Enhanced Menu are bound to each other so it simplifies the coding some. I didn't have time to fully flesh it out the way I want for this release, but I eventually plan on using it for the options dialog and other parts of the extension as appropriate. Might even see about releasing it as a separate download.

Something new to LastTab is what I'm calling content detection for the previews. Like the data binding engine this was a completely unplanned feature. Now that I have a widescreen monitor I noticed how much space I was staring at in the previews and got curious about getting rid of it. Starting investigating the DOM and how to spot the real content on a page. Over a few weekends -- when I had time to work on LastTab -- it became my little obsession as I saw how neat it was. Perfect it ain't, which is the prime reason I included an option to turn it off, but I think over time it'll get better. Overall I much prefer it to the standard "show everything" previews. It'll really come into play with the planned all previews popup and help give each tab more distinctiveness, since the previews will be different dimensions.

Content Detection Comparison

On	Off

One other new thing about previews in LastTab is how the size of the previews are specified. Previously you would specify an integer width. I decided to eliminate this in favor of a monitor resolution dependent scale. I thought this would be more user friendly in the sense that you can use a slider to specify the preview size.

Okay, time for sleep.

Posted: Mon, Mar 28 2011 1:01 AM by Humpty | with 6 comment(s)

Filed under: LastTab

Comments

Nicky said:

First, thanks a million for this wonderful extension! But how do I save my preferences under OS X (10.6.7, Fx 4.0)? There's a 'Defaults' button, but neither 'Save' nor 'Cancel' buttons.

# March 27, 2011 8:57 PM

Humpty said:

It's still the standard options dialog, do you not see the OK and Cancel buttons? I would recommend posting this to my forums, it's a better place than comments here. You could post screenshots for instance.

# March 28, 2011 4:18 AM

Brian said:

Hello, I've been a happy user of LastTab for a long while, so thanks for your efforts. Also, let me preface my comments by saying that I realize you don't owe me nor anyone else anything, and you likely create LastTab to satisfy your own desires.

That being said, I have some criticism of the 3.0 update: 1) The default theme's choice of color scheme and font is just garish. I'd recommend you go with a style that more closely matches Firefox's default appearance. 2) Is that a marijuana leaf in the options screenshots? I'm not anti-marijuana, but its presence really screams "amateur-hour". 3) What's up with the tab counter in the status bar? I'm sorry but I don't see why anyone would need a running count of open tabs. At the very least I don't think it's a common need and shouldn't be enabled by default.

Hope you find my comments constructive. I'm not here to put down you or your app, just giving my two cents. Thanks!

# April 12, 2011 11:18 AM

Humpty said:

Hey, no problem about the criticisms. If it's honestly felt, and not just mean spirited, then it's a good thing to me. I do work on LastTab primarily for myself, but I do want it to be a useful tool for others. So feel free to offer any kind of criticism, comments, suggestions, etc.

1. Like I mentioned in the blog post version 3.0t3 wasn't released when I would've liked. I felt rushed into it because of the release of Firefox 4 and the need to have a compatible version of LastTab for it, plus I had a vacation planned around the same time. The theme I released for the Enhanced Menu popup is subjective, and not one I'd probably choose as the default. But, pressed for time, it was what I released. I'm not an artist so I did the best I could. Ideally I'd rather have released version 3.0t3 with more color themes, something I'll do with the next version.

2. The leaf is just a stock shape from Photoshop. I didn't pick it for any marijuana purpose, just that it looked pretty. Software is fun for me so I try to inject some humor in my software products where possible. So I'm actually okay if people think less of LastTab because of the leaf's presence. It's subjective. :)

3. The tab count has been available before, but I decided to move it with version 3.0. Previously it was available as an option in the header for the tab list and it also appeared in the tooltip for the all tabs button. (Before Firefox gained its own all tabs button LastTab provided its own, hence the origin of the tab count.) But since it wasn't enabled by default in the header for the tab list I may do the same and not make it enabled by default.

# April 12, 2011 5:17 PM

Dan The Man said:

Hi,

I am running Last Tab since Firefox 3 with no problems.

Now with Firefox 9, Last Tab seems to be broken:

If I close or click on the tab in focus, it does not switch to the last selected tab.

Those two actions were the main reason why I installed "Last Tab".

Is there a workaround? Are you planning to fix this issue?

Best regards,

Dan

# December 29, 2011 5:25 AM

Steve Granat said:

Just a thanks for a terrific extension. It was exactly what I needed. One suggestion for a new feature, if you get around to updating it. I work a lot with Firefox 9's "Groups" feature, and I usually have three or four groups of tabs going at once, with a different subject for each. On your "Focusing" options, would it be possible to also choose to limit the scope to the current group, as well as the current window? That way, when I close a tab, I won't be thrown back to another group.

Thanks again for a great add-on,

Steve G.

# February 7, 2012 1:10 PM

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