Your browser may look different this Tuesday/Wednesday

[Reply]

@brujaja

I’ll tell you what I don’t like about tabs-on-top: The stupid file-folder-tab shape at the top of the browser window takes up as much real estate as the location bar, and I never, ever use tabs. Although I have tabs turned off, there is no getting away from that tab-shaped window.

Honestly, I think when it’s time for a given software provider to spit out an update they sort of feel obligated to make design/function changes to make it seem like more of an event. You know, like you can’t announce the advent of “Browser 9.2” and then have it look and act exactly the same. Maybe they even do it so that they can tell at a glance whether a given machine is running the latest software.

But I certainly don’t think it’s because they asked a bunch of users what they want.

Mozilla is a ragtag bunch of random software developers with slight libertarian leanings. If you look at their Firefox open source project, a lot of issues are raised by users and then promptly marked “wontfix” and ignored.

The developers spend time coding things that excite them or that the foundation deems necessary, and “pleasing old-fashioned users” is almost never high on that priority list compared to HTML7/CSS10 support, UX redesigns based on some ivory tower research, racing Chrome in JavaScript benchmarks, and the usage data collected by their monitoring software over bazillions of users.

Also, you don’t pay for Firefox. You’re not their customer. Google is their sugardaddy, so they just have to get enough people to use the browser and use Google search and so they don’t really have to care what you think. They don’t care about backward compatibility and pleasing old users unless there’s enough of you making a fuss about something, and there almost always isn’t because most users are just so used to the suck-it-up mentality from browser makers.

The alternative, user-centric development, is arguably what a lot of the smaller players like Opera, NetCaptor, Maxthon, Iron, Dolphin, etc. tried to do. How many of them have you heard of? Pleasing your niche userbase doesn’t tend to engender massive growth.

That said, if you dislike rapid interface changes, I think Safari has been relatively stable for a while. Opera is still an option, and now it uses the same fast engine that Chrome uses. Even Internet Explorer tends to stay rather conservative, and the latest versions are pretty fast and pretty safe. There are options out there, just sayin’, but as usual you get what you pay for, and the devs won’t listen to you if you don’t represent a majority of their userbase. They’re way too busy chasing the big numbers.

Speaking of the new firefox, I started another thread a few days ago about the disappearing “forward” button. Fellow dopers there informed me that it disappears when there is no place to go “forward” to; I accepted this explanation because, after I tried a few back-and-forth functions, that seemed to be what was going on.

HOWEVER, in the days following it has happened several times now that the browser has simply forgotten some page I’ve been on, used the back button to click away from, and then wanted to go (forward) back to. This is really, really annoying. It never happened before, and I don’t understand why simply hiding a button instead of graying it out would result in this behavior.

This is probably better suited for the other thread, but if you can provide some example pages where that happens, it’d help a lot. In the other thread I also provided a way for you to keep the forward button always available if you so desire.

[Reply]

You can also use Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release), basically a slower-moving concurrent release that’s meant for corporations and, unofficially, people who don’t like rapid changes. ESR is updated with security fixes alongside bleeding-edge consumer Firefox, but it doesn’t get the interface and other non-security fixes until months or years later. For example, going the ESR route means you won’t have to use the new interface until this October. It might be a workable compromise if you want to stay with Firefox, still get the most important security updates, and not be subject to (as many) interface upsets.

[GuanoLad]

@brujaja

…and I never, ever use tabs.

That seems odd. Do you just open new instances each time?

[BigT]

@njtt

I still want my toolbar throbber back, though.

Talk to the developer of the Classic Theme addon (from the link). He was really nice when I requested features. That’s why you can have your bookmark toolbar in line with your navigation bar, for example, and why you can have that star button in the address bar.

Dude used to be a Firefox developer himself, but got dissatisfied.

[BigT]

The developer has been forced by Mozilla to make some changes in his code that will reset your customizations in the next official update.

So either prepare to have to move things back again, or disable automatic updates to his extension if you are satisified. The latter can be done by opening Addons, double clicking on the addon in question, and then scrolling down to the bottom of the description where you will see an option to disable updates. This should at least last you until Firefox 31 without having to fix things again.

For more information on why the developer is having to do this, check out the 1.2.0 entry on the addon’s changelog.