FireFox and Thunderbird on Taskbar

A very minor question, and one that I probably already know the answer to:

When FireFox is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
FireFox, it says the name of the tab that's currently focused on.

When Thunderbird is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
Thunderbrd, it say the name of the newsgroup that's open.

I'd prefer these to say FireFox and Thunderbird, or at least to start
with the program names--the tab or newsgroup could follow the program name.

As far as I know, that's the way they are and there's no way to change
them. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone here knows a way to change them.

If not, I can live with the way it is; as I said, it's a very minor
nuisance.

--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:

A very minor question, and one that I probably already know the answer to:

When FireFox is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
FireFox, it says the name of the tab that's currently focused on.

When Thunderbird is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
Thunderbrd, it say the name of the newsgroup that's open.

I'd prefer these to say FireFox and Thunderbird, or at least to start
with the program names--the tab or newsgroup could follow the program name.

As far as I know, that's the way they are and there's no way to change
them. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone here knows a way to change them.

If not, I can live with the way it is; as I said, it's a very minor
nuisance.

The taskbar button's name is that of the program's window title. Since
Firefox and Thunderbird, along with many other programs, will use a
window title of "document - program", you first see the document
string from the window's title as the taskbar button's label.

In Firefox, you'll notice the default is to hide the titlebar. The top
of the window shows the tabs with their names. To show the titlebar,
right-click on the toolbar, select Customize, and select the "Title Bar"
option, and click Done to save changes. Now you'll see the windows'
titlebar has the same string as the currently selected tab's name.

Mozilla removed the ability for extensions to directly modify the chrome
(little "c") of Firefox. It was a security thing where some extensions,
malicious or with unexpected behavior, would fake out the user as to
what the elements were for in the chrome. What you need to do is change
what shows as the name string for each tab, so when a tab is selected
then that string shows in the window's titlebar. There may be
extensions that let you configure what to show as tab names which in
turn would affect the string shown in the titlebar. For example:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...window-titler/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ppy-firetitle/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/tab-retitle/
and many more.

I don't use and never have used those extensions, so you'll have to
experiment with them, or others you find. I did find an old review of
FireTitle, but for the XUL version which won't work in Firefox as
version 57 (Quantum), and beyond; however, there is a WE (WebExtension)
version that will work in later versions of Firefox (although the author
says some features of the XUL version are not available in his WE
version). WE extensions cannot modify the chrome, so the best you can
do is modify the tab name.

However ...
If you have multiple tabs open in Firefox, seeing "Mozilla Firefox -
tabname" may become useless, because often the tab names (which comes
from the title HTML tag in a web page) is so long that the string gets
truncated. All you might see is "Mozilla Firefox - " for every tab that
is open in Firefox making it impossible to know which taskbar button is
for which tab. All tabs become "Mozilla Firefox" which no distinction
as to what is in each tab.

On 8/19/2020 3:11 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

A very minor question, and one that I probably already know the answer to:

When FireFox is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
FireFox, it says the name of the tab that's currently focused on.

When Thunderbird is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
Thunderbrd, it say the name of the newsgroup that's open.

I'd prefer these to say FireFox and Thunderbird, or at least to start
with the program names--the tab or newsgroup could follow the program name.

As far as I know, that's the way they are and there's no way to change
them. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone here knows a way to change them.

If not, I can live with the way it is; as I said, it's a very minor
nuisance.

The taskbar button's name is that of the program's window title. Since
Firefox and Thunderbird, along with many other programs, will use a
window title of "document - program", you first see the document
string from the window's title as the taskbar button's label.

In Firefox, you'll notice the default is to hide the titlebar. The top
of the window shows the tabs with their names. To show the titlebar,
right-click on the toolbar, select Customize, and select the "Title Bar"
option, and click Done to save changes. Now you'll see the windows'
titlebar has the same string as the currently selected tab's name.

Mozilla removed the ability for extensions to directly modify the chrome
(little "c") of Firefox. It was a security thing where some extensions,
malicious or with unexpected behavior, would fake out the user as to
what the elements were for in the chrome. What you need to do is change
what shows as the name string for each tab, so when a tab is selected
then that string shows in the window's titlebar. There may be
extensions that let you configure what to show as tab names which in
turn would affect the string shown in the titlebar. For example:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...window-titler/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ppy-firetitle/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/tab-retitle/
and many more.

I don't use and never have used those extensions, so you'll have to
experiment with them, or others you find. I did find an old review of
FireTitle, but for the XUL version which won't work in Firefox as
version 57 (Quantum), and beyond; however, there is a WE (WebExtension)
version that will work in later versions of Firefox (although the author
says some features of the XUL version are not available in his WE
version). WE extensions cannot modify the chrome, so the best you can
do is modify the tab name.

However ...
If you have multiple tabs open in Firefox, seeing "Mozilla Firefox -
tabname" may become useless, because often the tab names (which comes
from the title HTML tag in a web page) is so long that the string gets
truncated. All you might see is "Mozilla Firefox - " for every tab that
is open in Firefox making it impossible to know which taskbar button is
for which tab. All tabs become "Mozilla Firefox" which no distinction
as to what is in each tab.


Thanks. I was afraid the answer would be something like that. I'll live
with it.


--
Ken

On 2020-08-19, Ken Blake wrote:
On 8/19/2020 3:11 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:

A very minor question, and one that I probably already know the answer to:

When FireFox is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
FireFox, it says the name of the tab that's currently focused on.

When Thunderbird is open, on the task bar, instead of the text saying
Thunderbrd, it say the name of the newsgroup that's open.

I'd prefer these to say FireFox and Thunderbird, or at least to start
with the program names--the tab or newsgroup could follow the program name.

As far as I know, that's the way they are and there's no way to change
them. But I'm hoping I'm wrong and someone here knows a way to change them.

If not, I can live with the way it is; as I said, it's a very minor
nuisance.

The taskbar button's name is that of the program's window title. Since
Firefox and Thunderbird, along with many other programs, will use a
window title of "document - program", you first see the document
string from the window's title as the taskbar button's label.

In Firefox, you'll notice the default is to hide the titlebar. The top
of the window shows the tabs with their names. To show the titlebar,
right-click on the toolbar, select Customize, and select the "Title Bar"
option, and click Done to save changes. Now you'll see the windows'
titlebar has the same string as the currently selected tab's name.

Mozilla removed the ability for extensions to directly modify the chrome
(little "c") of Firefox. It was a security thing where some extensions,
malicious or with unexpected behavior, would fake out the user as to
what the elements were for in the chrome. What you need to do is change
what shows as the name string for each tab, so when a tab is selected
then that string shows in the window's titlebar. There may be
extensions that let you configure what to show as tab names which in
turn would affect the string shown in the titlebar. For example:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...window-titler/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...ppy-firetitle/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fir...n/tab-retitle/
and many more.

I don't use and never have used those extensions, so you'll have to
experiment with them, or others you find. I did find an old review of
FireTitle, but for the XUL version which won't work in Firefox as
version 57 (Quantum), and beyond; however, there is a WE (WebExtension)
version that will work in later versions of Firefox (although the author
says some features of the XUL version are not available in his WE
version). WE extensions cannot modify the chrome, so the best you can
do is modify the tab name.

However ...
If you have multiple tabs open in Firefox, seeing "Mozilla Firefox -
tabname" may become useless, because often the tab names (which comes
from the title HTML tag in a web page) is so long that the string gets
truncated. All you might see is "Mozilla Firefox - " for every tab that
is open in Firefox making it impossible to know which taskbar button is
for which tab. All tabs become "Mozilla Firefox" which no distinction
as to what is in each tab.


Thanks. I was afraid the answer would be something like that. I'll live
with it.


I did not have the taskbar icon include a text identifier & so do
not have anything showing showing what is open. It wasn't important
to me that the icons show a text identifier.

It may be important to others that have alot of icons?