Since I close my tabs with a middle click, I do not need the close buttons. So they only take precious space and also get accidentally hit. In Firefox it is a very often used Addon to remove those buttons too. I love dolphin! :-)
You can also switch tabs with Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn, and close them with Ctrl-W, and then you won't even need to use the mouse at all and won't risk hitting the close buttons. :) At a certain point I'm afraid we have to just say no to more options, and this is going to have to be one of those times. But thanks for the suggestion anyway! I'm glad you like Dolphin!
I am more the guy who only wants to use the mouse. ... and the keyboard not at all ... just a preference I guess. But thanks for your hints anyway! You write, that at some point you have to say no to more options. Why is that? Why limit the amount of options? The amount of possible entries to the service menu is also not limited. I like this philosophy of freedom. Firefox for example realizes this too. They don't limit the amount of addons. And Firefox has this specific addon for removing the close-button ... . Even the little Editor Geany has this option built in. Why not go for unlimited freedom?
The issue isn't freedom vs non-freedom. Everyone wants and likes freedom. What we are actually trading off is customizability vs usability. And that's a delicate balance. The more options you have, the more difficult the UI becomes to use, and the more ways there are for non-experts to confuse themselves and shoot themselves in the foot. But the more complicated the UI, the less expert any individual user becomes, because there are parts of it that they no longer understand. The result is a subtly worse user experience for everyone and vastly more bug reports from confused users (trust me on this, I screen all the bugs). It's possible that you can find or create an add-on that accomplishes what you want.
Ok, if you are the one who has to screen all the bugs, then I understand, that you want to keep dolphin rather simple. Couldn't a possible solution then be, that this option is hard to reach for the average user!? If I had to edit a config-file for example? A bit like what I have to do, to add my own entries to the context menu via a .desktop-file. You could still kind of shoot yourself in the foot, but at least you would be aware, that your are playing with a gun. ... it couldn't happen by accident. And one last question: you write: "It's possible that you can find or create an add-on that accomplishes what you want." Are there such add-ons for dolphin? Until now I was just aware of add-ons for the context-menu. Were can I find them?
Adding more options, even hidden in configuration files, will also slow down starting Dolphin. We already have several reports on Dolphin being slow to start. You could remove the line 'setTabsClosable(true);' from https://cgit.kde.org/dolphin.git/tree/src/dolphintabbar.cpp#n38 and recompile. Middle-click will still allow the tabs to be closed.
Thank you Christoph! I might just do that!