[userbinator]

Chrome realized that if it jumped ahead in version number, it could gain a huge PR advantage, and then Firefox was forced to follow that pattern or appear outdated.

Personal anecdote, but of all the non-technical people I know (which I define as those who may barely know what a browser is, and only use the computer for browsing a tiny fraction of the Internet), none of them like the constant change, especially when it breaks their workflow, and those who do pay attention to version numbers think the rapid "version explosion" (to quote one) is completely silly. Like a lot of other things in life, they just put up with it because they're powerless.

I really wonder who the browser makers are targeting with the "move fast and break things constantly" attitude, because it's definitely neither the technical nor non-technical users I know.

[Causality1]

Certainly isn't me. I'm still salty about Firefox 2 removing the "close current tab" button and putting an X on every tab instead. It was nice having that muscle memory instead of having to hunt down whichever tab you're currently focused on.

[userbinator]

I've never used Firefox 1.x so haven't used that UI, but it sounds like something they could've made configurable but didn't want to, for whatever reason.

However, in all the tabbed browsers I've used, Ctrl+F4 closes the current tab.

[pferde]

Ctrl+W also does that, and is much easier on the fingers (unless your hands are huge).

[jessaustin]

Surely there's an extension for that?

[teddyh]

I use this one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/close-tab-but...