Kludge for putting a new browser tab where you want it on Firefox

June 30, 2024. 

I usually have a dozen or so tabs showing on my browser.  When I want to add a new one, I often want it to appear in a particular position among these; but the normal way of creating a new tab, by clicking on a URL in some file, makes the resulting tab appear at the very end of the row of links. 

However, I've just realized there is an easy way to place a new tab exactly where one wants it.  If you have a tab showing a site which I'll call  [address_A].html  and you want to open a tab for a site  [address_B].html  immediately to the right of it, then open the  [address_A].html  link, and, with your cursor on that page, hit  <command>U  if your computer has a "command" key, or  <CTR>U  otherwise.  What this does is to create a new tab to the right of the one you were in, named  view-source:[address_A].html,  which shows the underlying  html  file that [address_A].html  is the realization of.  You can then simply wipe out that URL and put  [address_B].html  in its place, and you have what you wanted: [address_B].html  immediately to the right of [address_A].html . 

There are a couple of cases that have to be handled a little differently: 

If the tab that you want to put the new tab next to is not an  html  file, but, say, a  jpg  file, then hitting  <command>U  or  <CTR>U  will have no effect.  In that case, you should, in the tab in question, go to some html  page, do the above process, and then at the end you can go back to that tab and return to the non-html page you wanted to be on. 

If the position that you want  [address_B].html  to show up in is the far left end of the row of tabs, to the left of what is presently the first tab, then, calling that first tab  [address_A].html,  start the process as above, but instead of writing in [address_B].html  to replace  view-source:[address_A].html,  enter  [address_A].html  there, and enter  [address_B].html  as a replacement for the original far-left  [address_A].html. 

I looked online to see whether there was any "standard" way to insert a tab in a non-final position in Firefox.  I found this page, but it doesn't seem very informative. 

I don't know whether the above kludge will work for many other browsers.  I tried it on Safari, and it didn't:  <command>U  and  <CTR>U  had no effect.