tabbrowser

This element is used for holding a set of read-only views of Web documents. It is similar to the browser element, except that multiple documents can be displayed, each in a separate tab.

Attributes

autocompleteenabled, autocompletepopup, autoscroll, contentcontextmenu, contenttooltip, handleCtrlPageUpDown, onbookmarkgroup, onnewtab, tabmodalPromptShowing

Properties

browsers, canGoBack, canGoForward, contentDocument, contentTitle, contentViewerEdit, contentViewerFile, contentWindow, currentURI, docShell, documentCharsetInfo, homePage, markupDocumentViewer, securityUI, selectedBrowser, selectedTab, sessionHistory, tabContainer, tabs, visibleTabs, webBrowserFind, webNavigation, webProgress

Methods

addProgressListener, addTab, addTabsProgressListener,appendGroup, getBrowserAtIndex, getBrowserIndexForDocument, getBrowserForDocument, getBrowserForTab, getIcon, getNotificationBox, getTabForBrowser, getTabModalPromptBox, goBack, goBackGroup, goForward, goForwardGroup, goHome, gotoIndex, loadGroup, loadOneTab, loadTabs, loadURI, loadURIWithFlags, moveTabTo, pinTab, reload, reloadAllTabs, reloadTab, reloadWithFlags, removeAllTabsBut, removeCurrentTab, removeProgressListener, removeTab, removeTabsProgressListener,replaceGroup, selectTabAtIndex, setIcon, showOnlyTheseTabs, stop, unpinTab

Attributes

Properties

Methods

addProgressListener( listener )

Return type: no return value

Add a progress listener to the browser which will monitor loaded documents. The progress listener should implement the nsIWebProgressListener interface.

addTab( URL, referrerURI, charset, postData, owner, allowThirdPartyFixup )
addTab( URL, {referrerURI: ..., charset: ..., postData: ..., owner: ..., allowThirdPartyFixup: ..., relatedToCurrent: ... })

Return type: tab element

Opens a new tab that loads a page with the specified URL. The rest of the parameters are optional. The row of tabs will appear if needed.

Firefox 3.6 note

The second form of this method was added in Firefox 3.6; it allows you to specify the parameters by name, in any order. It also adds the relatedToCurrent parameter; Firefox uses this to decide whether the new tab should be inserted next to the current tab.

See Code snippets:Tabbed browser for examples.

See Preprocessing POST Data for preparing postData out of a string.

addTabsProgressListener( listener )

Return type: no return value

Add a progress listener to the browser which will monitor loaded documents in all tabs in the tabbed browser. The progress listener should be based on the nsIWebProgressListener interface with an additional "browser" argument as the first argument of every method, which is the browser (not <tabbrowser> = gBrowser) where the event occurred. See Listening to events on all tabs for details.

appendGroup( group )

Return type: no return value

Not in Firefox

Add several new tabs to the end of the existing tabs. The argument should be an array of objects, one for each document to load. The objects may be defined in script and contain a URI property for the URL of the page to load. A referrerURI property may also be optionally used to set the referrer page.

getBrowserAtIndex( index )

Return type: browser element

Returns a browser at the specified tab index.

getBrowserIndexForDocument( document )

Return type: integer

Returns the index of the browser for the specified document in the tabbrowser the method was invoked on. The returned index is dependent on the tabs in the tabbrowser and is invalidated when the tab ordering changes. It should not be used to track per-tab data during a session; the use of linkedpanel on the corresponding tab is preferred instead.

getBrowserForDocument( document )

Return type: browser element

Returns a browser for the specified document.

getBrowserForTab( tab )

Return type: browser element

Returns a browser for the specified tab element.

getIcon( aTab )

Return type: string

Returns the URL of the specified tab's favicon. If aTab is null, the current tab's icon is returned. See setIcon to set the icon.

getNotificationBox( browser )

Return type: notificationbox element

Returns a notificationbox for the specified browser element.

getTabForBrowser( browser ) Requires Gecko 35

Return type: tab

Returns the XUL tab which contains the specified browser.

getTabModalPromptBox( browser )

Return type: object

Returns an object that manages tab-modal prompts for the specified browser. Returns a promptBox object representing the new prompt.

goBack()

Return type: no return value

Go back one page in the history.

goBackGroup()

Not in Firefox

Return type: no return value

Returns to the previous group of tabs.

goForward()

Return type: no return value

Go forward one page in the history.

goForwardGroup()

Not in Firefox

Return type: no return value

Go forward to the next group of tabs.

goHome()

Return type: no return value

Load the user's home page into the browser.

gotoIndex( index )

Return type: no return value

Navigate to the page in the history with the given index. Use a positive number to go forward and a negative number to go back.

loadGroup( group )

Not in Firefox

Return type: the first tab

Loads a group of pages into multiple tabs. They are either appended or replaced depending on the state of the preference browser.tabs.loadGroup. The argument should be an array of objects, one for each document to load. The objects may be defined in script and contain a URI property for the URL of the page to load. A referrerURI property may also be optionally used to set the referrer page. This function returns a reference to the first tab loaded.

loadOneTab( URL, referrerURI, charset, postData, loadInBackground, allowThirdPartyFixup )
loadOneTab( URL, { referrerURI: ..., charset: ..., postData: ..., inBackground: ..., allowThirdPartyFixup: ..., relatedToCurrent: ... })

Return type: tab element

Opens a new tab that loads a page with the specified URL. The rest of the parameters are optional. This method works the same as addTab except for the loadInBackground parameter which allows you to choose whether to open the new tab in foreground or background. There's also no owner parameter as the owner tab is specified automatically.

inBackground

if true the tab will be loaded in the background, if false the tab will be the newly selected tab. And if null or not specified, this parameter will default to the browser.tabs.loadInBackground preference.

Firefox 3.6 note

The second form of this method was added in Firefox 3.6; it adds the relatedToCurrent parameter, and allows the parameters to be specified by name, in any order.

loadTabs( uris, loadInBackground, replace )

Return type: no return value

Loads a set of URIs, specified by the array uris, into tabs. If loadInBackground is true, the tabs are loaded in the background, and if replace is true, the currently displayed tabs are replaced with the specified URIs instead of adding new tabs.

NOTE: This is the XUL method on <browser> / <tabbrowser>, not the global function in chrome://browser/content/browser.js. Please check which one you're documenting! (This one has no post data parameter, see loadURIWithFlags for a version that does)

loadURI( uri, referrer, charset )

Return type: no return value

Load a URL into the document, with the given referrer and character set.

The first argument should be a string, not a nsIURI object. To get a string from an nsIURI, use nsIURI.spec or nsIURI.asciiSpec

loadURIWithFlags( uri, flags, referrer, charset, postData )

Return type: no return value

Load a URL into the document, with the specified load flags, the given referrer, character set, and POST data. In addition to the flags allowed for the reloadWithFlags method, the following flags are also valid:

• LOAD_FLAGS_IS_REFRESH: This flag is used when the URL is loaded because of a meta tag refresh or redirect.
• LOAD_FLAGS_IS_LINK: This flag is used when the URL is loaded because a user clicked on a link. The HTTP Referer header is set accordingly.
• LOAD_FLAGS_BYPASS_HISTORY: Do not add the URL to the session history.
• LOAD_FLAGS_REPLACE_HISTORY: Replace the current URL in the session history with a new one. This flag might be used for a redirect.

(See nsIWebNavigation.loadURI() for details on the referrer and postData parameters.)

moveTabTo(tab, index)

Return type: tab element

Tries to moves an existing tab to a given index.

pinTab( tabElement )

Return type: no return value

Pins the specified tab element as an app tab.

reload()

Return type: no return value

Reloads the document in the browser element on which you call this method.

reloadAllTabs()

Return type: no return value

Reloads the contents of all the tabs.

reloadTab( tab )

Return type: no return value

Reloads the contents of a specific tab.

reloadWithFlags( flags )

Return type: no return value

Reloads the document in the browser with the given load flags. The flags listed below may be used, which are all constants of the webNavigation property (or the nsIWebNavigation interface). You may combine flags using a or symbol ( | ).

• LOAD_FLAGS_NONE: No special flags. The document is loaded normally.
• LOAD_FLAGS_BYPASS_CACHE: Reload the page, ignoring if it is already in the cache. This is the flag used when the reload button is pressed while the Shift key is held down.
• LOAD_FLAGS_BYPASS_PROXY: Reload the page, ignoring the proxy server.
• LOAD_FLAGS_CHARSET_CHANGE: This flag is used if the document needs to be reloaded because the character set changed.

removeAllTabsBut( tabElement )

Return type: no return value

Removes all of the tab panels except for the one corresponding to the specified tab. If only one tab page is displayed, this method does nothing.

removeCurrentTab()

Return type: tab element

Removes the currently displayed tab page. If it is the only displayed tab, this method does nothing.

removeProgressListener( listener )

Return type: no return value

Remove a nsIWebProgressListener from the browser.

removeTab( tabElement )

Return type: no return value

Removes a specific tabbed page corresponding to the given tab element. If only one tab is displayed, this method does nothing (unless the preference browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab is true, in which case the window containing the tab is closed). If browser.tabs.autoHide is true, the row of tabs will collapse if only one tab remains.

removeTabsProgressListener( listener )

Return type: no return value

Removes a progress listener to the browser which has been monitoring all tabs. The progress listener should implement the nsIWebProgressListener interface.

replaceGroup( group )

Not in Firefox

Return type: array of session history objects

Replaces existing tabs with a new set. If there were more tabs before, the additional ones are not removed. You can use the removeTab method to remove the existing tabs first if that is desired. The argument should be an array of objects, one for each document to load. The objects may be defined in script and contain a URI property for the URL of the page to load. A referrerURI property may also be optionally used to set the referrer page. This method returns an array of the session history objects for the tabs that were removed.

selectTabAtIndex( index, event )

Return type: no return value

Selects the tab at the given index. Index values may be positive or negative. If the event argument is supplied, the default event handling will be prevented and propagation stopped.

setIcon( aTab, aURI )

Return type: no return value

Sets the specified tab's favicon to the image specified by aURI. See getIcon to get the current icon.

showOnlyTheseTabs( aTabs )

Return type: no return value

Makes all tabs in the aTabs array visible, and all other tabs hidden.

stop()

Return type: no return value

Equivalent to pressing the Stop button, this method stops the currently loading document.

unpinTab( tabElement )

Return type: no return value

Unpins the specified tab element, making it no longer an app tab.

Related

• Code snippets:Tabbed browser