While the second beta is still weeks a way, Mozilla continues to preview many of the enhancements and new features set to arrive in Firefox 3.1 in the project's nightly builds. One of the latest additions is the ability to "tear" off browser tabs and create new windows without sitting through a page reload.
We've seen similar features in Google's Chrome browser and Firefox's implementation works roughly the same way -- grab a tab and drag it out the the window to create a new window. As you drag there's a preview of the page, and when you release the tab will be in its own window, no page reload required.
The reverse works as well. To join a window to an existing one, just grab the tab and drag it over to window you want to attach it to.
Google's Chrome browser is a bit slicker with its instant full window preview and of course Chrome's tabs are independent processes, while Firefox's are not. But, for Firefox fans jealous of Chrome's new tab features, rest assured Mozilla is hard at work bringing the ideas to Firefox.
For the dozen or so of you that still drag tabs from a browser window to the background to create desktop shortcuts, that feature is still available, you'll just need to grab the page's menu bar icon rather than the individual tab.
The tab tearing feature joins other new Firefox 3.1 tab features like the preview panel, the improved tab switcher and the ability to move tabs between windows without a page reload to make for a significant tab-browsing makeover from the browser that popularized the idea.
[via Mozilla Links]
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