A better way of dealing with tabs

Do I understand that 'tabs on bottom' does not mean 'at the bottom of the screen' but 'below the address/status bars'? I didn't realise that 'above the address/status bars' was an option - it's seems a pretty stupid one to me - why would I want that?

I use either 'normal' aka: 'tabs on bottom' tabs or tree-style tabs. I typically have 200-odd pages open in 20-something browser windows of between 1 and 30 tabs each. I really miss the xterm feature of giving windows subject names which is what my browser windows actually are (is there a way to do that?). The tear-off tab is what made this way of working nice - before that things would get in the 'wrong' window and it was all crappy.

Will the 'tabs on top' concept break tree-style tabs? If so I am firmly in the 'this is anathema' camp. Presumably not as this 'ere firefox is 15.something and this seems to be a 3.6->4.0 change?. I'm certainly pretty unhappy about having horizontally-arranged tabs move further up the screen -that a load of extra mousing I could do without. However when I look at my browser on my laptop (Iceweasel 10.something, no tree-tabs there) I find it's already like this, and presumably has been for some time. As I had apparently not noticed I guess it's not that bad really, although now I think about it seems a very poor choice.

I suppose this is an interesting case of the natural conservative reaction. I start a moan about how terrible this new thing is, then find out halfway through that I've already had it for months and not even noticed...That must teach me something.