How can I disable/enable tabs at top (monobook), add history navigation to article pages, or otherwise move around functional components from page to page?
Under 1.5, to disable all view top tabs, create a new skin according to the instructions in MediaWiki look and feel#Skin and name this MonoBookNoViews. Set this as the default theme. Logged in users will need to change their default theme to see the tabs to edit pages, however. You will need to remove the section of code in the MonoBookNoViews.php file which generates the views (top tabs).