Firefox 3.5, what motion am I making that keeps popping tabs into new windows?

Question

I updated to Firefox 3.5, (and the 3.5.1 update) on WinXP SP3 and so far like it quite a bit. Not much different, but seems faster and better.

One thing that is driving me nuts is that when I switch back to my main window, with three tabs open (Two mail accounts, and a page I check regularly) and I click on a tab, it pops out into a new window.

I cannot figure out what I am doing to cause it. I think and intend to just click on the tab, which I must do thousands of times a day. But usually when I switch back from another window this causes a pop out.

Good news is, with 3.5 it is pretty easy to drag it back, but it is really annoying, and I cannot seem to figure out what I am doing to cause it.

Anyone else seen this issue?

Answer 1

You are probably clicking a little too slowly (between mousdown and mouseup) with a little too much velocity, initiating a "drag" operation, pulling the tab out into its own window. This happens to me sometimes with Google Chrome.

It looks like this addon is the only way to manipulate this behavior, for now.

Answer 2

Instead of just clicking, you might be drag-and-dropping, even slightly, the tab into the main canvas: This causes the tab to open in a new window.

So maybe you're not clicking fast enough, or some kind of event tells firefox that the mouse button is still hold when you've "un-clicked" the button. Performance Issues?

Answer 3

I get this with Chrome all the time. Even though I'm sure I'm doing a normal click, sometimes it thinks I'm dragging the tabs halfway across the screen. This is usually associated with heavy CPU load from flash movies on the tab.