Firefox 53: Tab title improvement

Mozilla plans to launch a change to the display of tab titles in the Firefox 53 web browser that gives title more room than it is currently the case.

I like Firefox's tab behavior better than that of Chrome. The core reasons are that Firefox won't reduce tabs to an unidentifiable mess when you reach a certain threshold, and that Firefox allows me to customize the display of tabs.

I have set a custom minimum width value for open tabs in the browser, and changed the general layout as well for instance in Firefox.

Firefox cuts off page titles if the tab width is not wide enough to display the full title text. The web browser does not just cut it off though, as it adds three dots to the end of the visible title to indicate that the title is not displayed in full.

The change in Firefox 53 sees the three dots removed from Firefox in favor of displaying a couple more characters of the page's title.

Check out the following two screenshots to see the difference. Please note that the width of the tabs in both screenshots is not identical.

The first screenshot highlights how too long page titles are displayed currently in tabs in the Firefox web browser. As you can see when you look at the first tab, three dots are displayed in this case that take up space.

The three dots are removed in Firefox 53 so that additional characters are displayed if a page title is too long to be displayed directly.

Fun fact: The bug suggesting the change was filed back in 2011:

Ala Chrome, using fadeout for text will probably give 1-2 more characters visible to the user, and just looks smoother.

It took this long because platform changes needed to be implemented first before it could be realized.

Firefox display tab titles like Google Chrome does when it reaches version 53.

Closing Words

Since most browsers display page titles no longer in title bars, tabs are the only visible browser UI source when it comes to the vital information. More information in tabs is always welcome, even if it means only one or two additional characters per tab.

The change benefits users the most who work with a medium or high number of open tabs at any point in time. 

Now You: What's your take on the change?