Annoying new behavior when closing tabs.

[radorn]

This may not have a thing to do with Palemoon itself, and rather be due to some addon I installed, but as hard as I tried I can't find what it is, and before I tear my Palemoon profile apart, or do some other drastic thing, I'd like to request some help here, so, please, bear with me.

For the longest time, and until not too long ago, when I closed a tab, the browser would send me to either the parent tab or the nearest ACTIVE tab (with a preference for those to the right). This seemed to me like a sane and well calibrated behavior.
But now, when I close a tab, unless there's a parent tab from which I came (and I haven't been jumping from tab to tab, losing that "context"), the browser will send me invariably, regardless of anything else, to the next tab to the right and will even reload/reactivate it if it is unloaded. It will ignore other active/loaded tabs in that window, even ones just to the left of the closed tab. I find this rather irritating, and I can't seem to find how to revert to the previous behavior.

Is this necesarily from an addon or is it a change in the browser itself. Anyone knows how I could revert this?

[Thehandyman1957]

What add on's are you using? PM version? Operating system? Blood type????

Seriously, are you using any type of tab add on like Tab mix plus?

[Kerebron]

Open your about:config and check what value is assigned to browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose. It should be set to true.

[radorn]

I was writting a long answer and then it danwed on me that I should try something before going deeper:
I started palemoon with "palemoon -p --new-instance --no-remote" and started a new profile. opened a handful of tabs, set palemoon to keep tabs between sessions and restarted so that I had some unloaded tabs to play with. I loaded some and left the rest unloaded. Then, having the focus on an active tab with an unloaded tab to it's right, with other loaded tabs peppered arround it, including one next to it to the left, it still focused the unloaded tab to the right, forcing it to load. It seems this is the new default.

Maybe the behavior I was enjoying before was the result of some addon, then? and they changed it or I managed to screw it?

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Here's the answer I was writing before I did the test above
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Windows 7 64bit, PM fully updated (28.4.0 right now), but this started some months ago.
I do have tab related addons, but I don't think me noticing this change in behavior coincided in time with any installation, update or uninstallation of addons. I'm not sure though. In any case, I've been working arround the new behavior modifying my own to try to avoid the ill effects of it and from time to time diving into all the configs and trying to identify the culprit addon or option. I've also poked arround about:config, with care of always returning everything to how it was. Nothing has worked so far.

I didn't have Tab Mix Plus in particular before this started, but I installed it some days ago hoping it might have some configuration option for this, but no dice.

When I install addons, the first thing I do is go through all the config menus to see what it has and ensure I put everything the way I want. I don't usually settle for the defaults in anything. That gets me in trouble some times, but I usually get arround it. This time, though, I may have screwed something up, but, as I said before, I can't pin this change in behavior down on any installation or uninstallation of anything, as far as I can remember. It's as if it just happened by itself.

In the config dialog for Tab Mix Plus, which I recently installed, there's this config item for what should be focused when closing the current tab

When closing the current tab, focus (select one):

First tab
Left tab
Right tab
Last tab
Last selected tab
Opener/Right tab (the tab containing the link that opened this tab or the tab to the right)
Last opened tab

Surely enough, the option that was selected when I reached that section of the dialog was "Opener/Right tab". This seems to be the default, I suppose. Out of them, certainly the most satisfying, but, instead, following their nomenclature, my "dream option" would be something like "Opener/Closest active, preferring right", which is what used to be back when things made sense xD

Open your about:config and check what value is assigned to browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose. It should be set to true.

It should be and, indeed, it is. But that doesn't solve it: Lacking an owner it still opens the tab to the right, forcing it to load, instead of finding the closest unloaded one.

[Michaell]

I don't know if this could be relevant, but it sort of seems like it could be. A while back I was looking for a way to distinguish unloaded tabs so I didn't accidentally reload ones I didn't need after every restart (like when updating extensions). I found Tab Mix Lite would do this. Works fine in Basilisk. In PM, however, the unloaded tab labels initially show in red after a restart but are quickly reset to black. When I open a new tab in the background the label stays red. Apparently there's two properties involved, one for loaded and one for read (viewed). I have not dug into the extension code to see what functions it is calling related to this, since I can just use the List Tabs button to see which ones are loaded (I don't normally look there though). But there might be something in there that could be useful (easier than looking through the browser code).

[adesh]

Not too sure, but the behaviour probably changed with Pale Moon 28. I also noticed some change in tab loading process (on startup), I don't use tab add-ons.

[radorn]

Not too sure, but the behaviour probably changed with Pale Moon 28. I also noticed some change in tab loading process (on startup), I don't use tab add-ons.

That sounded like a plan, so I've just tested that with several 27.x versions from the archive, and nope, it was already like that in 27.0
I'm quite sure I was still enjoying this elusive behavior that I'm trying to recover arround half through last year, so it seems it was the result of some addon that I was using and they changed it, or I changed something, or it stopped being updated long ago (thanks mozilla) and browser updates broke it... I don't know.
I guess I'll have to put up with not having it anymore.