Mozilla, which is absolutely not shy of widespread changes to its browser, will be removing the popup Options window from version 32 onwards in favor of an inline tab instead.
This is already possible by opening a tab and navigating to about:preferences
As you can see above this is already possible, it was added two months ago as an option beginning with the Nightly version. Firefox 29 users are in luck too, as well as those in the beta channel who can also view the above.
To enable it as default follow the steps below:
- Type about:config in the browser"s address bar and hit enter.
- Confirm you will be careful.
- Search for browser.preferences.inContent and double-click it to set it to true.
Once enabled, the option displays all menu items on the left in a sidebar and the settings for the selected item on the right. To not have it as default, but check it out anyway, simply navigate to about:preferences.
What will be from Firefox 32 onward by default.
Above you can see that the option has since seen a bit of an overhaul, no longer aligning with the style of the extensions and plugin pages, to check this out you"ll need to install the nightly version of Firefox, which has the updated setting page by default.
Some changes include, ability to zoom settings pages, and fonts also change up or down accordingly, this most likely due to the fact that the settings pages also take up much more room on the screen which also makes scrolling possible in that scenario.
Of course, this isn"t going to be everyones cup of tea, some people may prefer the old fashioned way of a popup, which is also still possible.
To revert to the old style options window, follow the steps below:
- Type about:config into the address bar and hit enter.
- Confirm you will be careful.
- Search for browser.preferences.inContent
- Double-click the entry.
This is just one of many sweeping changes to Firefox in recent months. Hopefully they will also get around to synchronizing the name for Options, which presently has three different ones, depending on where you look; in the Firefox "Start Page" it"s called Settings, in the drop down menu it"s called Options and to get it through a tab, it"s about:preferences. Yep!
Source & top image: GHacks