All modern day browsers support multiple tabs and it is certainly a big convenience. But there is an annoyance that comes with it as well. The Close Tab button. The Close Tab button is visible on all tabs to, obviously, close those tabs when not needed. The placement of this Close Tab button is such awkward that it gets hit accidentally when you try to switch between tabs with your mouse.

If you are using Firefox then you can customize the Close Tab button so that you can either completely hide it to not display on any tabs, or to display on only the active tab, or to display at the corner of the tab strip.

Follow these simple steps to configure the behavior of the Close Tab button on Firefox,

Step-1: Firefox Configuration

Launch Firefox and type-in “about:config” on the address bar (without the quotes, of course).

Step-2: Voiding the Warranty

Firefox will threaten you with a warranty message. Just click on the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button.

Step-3: Browser.Tabs.CloseButtons item

Type-in “browser.tabs.closebuttons” (without the quotes) at the Filter box and Firefox will filter the long list down to browser.tabs.closebuttons item. You should be able to see a default value of “1”.

Double click the entry to change to one of these values,

• 0 – display close button only on the active tab
• 1 – display close button on all the tabs – default
• 2 – don’t display any close buttons
• 3 – display a single close button at the end of the tab strip

Display Close Tab button only on the active tab

Setting the value to 0 and restarting the browser will make the Close Tab button to only appear on the Active Tab.

Display Close Tab button on all tabs

Setting the value to 1 and restarting the browser will make the Close Tab button to appear on all the tabs. This is the default behavior.

Display Close Tab button at the corner of the tab strip

Setting the value to 2 and restarting the browser will make the Close Tab button to only appear on the corner of the Tab Strip.

Don’t display the Close Tab button at all

Setting the value to 3 and restarting the browser will make the Close Tab button to not appear on any of the tabs. You have to use the right-click menu on the tab to close the tabs.

I hope you find this trick helpful to customize the Close Tab button behavior to your convenience. If you have any questions/comments regarding this please let us know in comments.