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Santosh83
needle0
"Unless we support alternatives we really shouldn't complain when they gradually die off in a space that is increasingly coming under the control of giant corporations with bottomless pockets." Exactly this. Sure Firefox sometimes isn't the absolute best in a given characteristic, but it's still a damn good browser overall, and the concern over the encroaching Chromium monoculture is more than enough to keep me using it.
weaksauce
I haven't found firefoxe's dev tools to be much different than chrome's... and you can use chrome for a particular debugging issue or development. I think firefox is a great daily driver.
LocalPCGuy
Been using Firefox daily as my development browser for the last 6 months. Started as an experiment, but stayed because I liked it.
The only thing I noticed is that sometimes Chrome's errors in the console are slightly better. I prefer Firefox's HTML/CSS panels, and the CSS Grid/Flex support is generally better. As anything, this comment is a point-of-time comment, they are both iterating rapidly, and when one adds something people like, the other usually pushes it in also.
matsemann
> The very commonly given reason that DevTools are better in Chrome
I don't find that to be true. At least not anymore. I use both Chrome and Fx bout 50/50 for developing, and they each have something the other misses.
For instance, "preserve log" in Chrome's network tab throws away all the actual response data when moving to a new page. In Firefox it's there. So when debugging through our micro-frontend flow I prefer Fx.
jniedrauer
I also massively prefer the request replay workflow in firefox. Using the chrome console with curl just feels clunky compared to firefox's "edit and resend."
viraptor
> reason that DevTools are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other general browsing
It doesn't even stop you from developing with FF. DevTools were completely usable for years and unless you need very specific functionality, FF is just fine.
Zardoz84
I personally think that FF dev tools are better that Chrome. Every time that I'm forced to use Chrome Dev tools, I get confused.
jvzr
I'm happy that I am not alone!
Quick example: event listeners in Firefox are visibly attached to their DOM element; in Chrome, I just can't find them. There's this Event Listeners list in a sidebar somewhere, but getting the function that attached it is a PITA.
mrweasel
When I used Chrome, years back, it was always despite the developer tools, which I always found to be worse that those in Firefox.
To me Chrome is the browser version of Windows. I can get by and it sort of does what I need. It’s just that somehow it feels a little half-baked, while being too much at the same time. It can as you say: be confusing but you are also left with the: why is this a feature and why is this in my browser.
Firefox has a few feature which only exists so I have something to turn off, but Chrome is starting to look like Emacs, all it needs is a good browser.
ancarda
Firefox's dev tools is a large part of why I switched back from Chrome. I just couldn't figure out how anyone is productive with Chrome's dev tools!
antihero
The FF console seizes up far less than the Chrome one in my experience. The only thing that is keeping Brave installed is the video playback seems slow/choppy as hell on MacOS.
Edit: Just tried a 60FP4k video on youtube and it was smooth as butter so that's interesting.
Cthulhu_
I've not used FF's dev tools but honestly Chrome's need an overhaul, its UX is far from ideal and I use it daily.
Disclaimer: I couldn't actually provide helpful advice on how to improve it, I'm not very imaginative :/
markandrewj
Chromes development tools are good, but Firefox has also been doing some interesting things in this area recently. In some regards Firefox pioneered modern web development with tools like Firebug. I think developers sometimes forget that for most users developer tools are not a selling feature though. There are a number of things, that both Firefox, and Safari, do better then Chrome, from a regular user perceptive. As an example, download and bookmark management. All that said, Chrome for mobile is really excellent compared to some of the other Android browsers I used in the past. I use both browsers daily, and find things I like and dislike about both.
irrational
I started using Firefox because of Firebug when it first came out. It made web development so much easier. I continued to use firebug until it was discontinued (I still feel that it was superior to the dev tools built into the browsers, at least as they were at the time it was discontinued - I remember the console was especially better). I’ve continued to use Firefox since then out of years of habit.
jeltz
Agreed, Firefox's dev tools have been really good for over 5 years now.
simion314
For my work project I feel like the debugger has got slower, like when you press Ctrl+P to load a js file(we are using source maps) in debugger it takes so much longer in present where it was instant in the past - does anyone feel this slowdown or is something on my side only.
SketchySeaBeast
There's even a special version - I've used Firefox developer edition for a while now - it supports web sockets while the normal Firefox didn't (I don't know if it now does). My only complaint is that clearing the cookies has a weird delay to it when compared to chrome.
wybiral
I used Firefox back when it was competing with IE and then switched to Chrome for a while because of the performance difference.
But I switched back to Firefox about 3-4 years ago because of the growing Chromium monoculture (which is even greater now that Edge is using Chromium) and because the performance difference isn't really there anymore.
Mozilla has done some great work keeping up with the giants. Lockwise is great. The "Send Tab to Device" feature is great. And they're working on offline voice recognition using DeepSpeech in future releases (Chrome sends all audio to Google for recognition).
hinkley
For a similar reason, I took some advice years ago (after the last mosaic virus scare) to eat multi-grain bread even though it's not entirely my favorite.
Without demand, supply dries up. Without supply, the knowledge base dries up. When the shit hits the fan you have to start over from first principles. And if the 'shit' is someone flexing their muscles, then the world looks like extortion while people scramble to play catch-up.
There are other forms of "charity" besides giving money to non-profits. You can buy from the store where the owner is pleasant instead of the one that is cheap. You can eat at your 5th most favorite restaurant so that you continue to have more than 4 choices. Use privacy software when your life is pretty boring. You can contrive 'hand-me-downs' for your kid's friend.
All of these keep society working, and none of them have a clear reward for you, so it's down to a matter of ethics.
danudey
I find multi-grain bread just awful to eat, but I'm at the point where I'm suspecting that, if I ate it exclusively for a while, I would forget that other bread is better and accept multi-grain as the new normal. It would certainly be healthier at least.
hinkley
Multigrain for a PB&J is kind of a weird experience, but at least in my mind is de rigeur for a deli-meat sandwich or even a better grilled cheese sandwich (Colby Jack. It is the way.)
If you haven't tried a PB&J on multigrain toast, it can be messy but a different flavor profile.
ETA: Also there's multi-grain and there's multi-grain. Some brands get their 'N-grain' by making wheat and X bread and then sprinkling N-2 grains on the crust, not unlike a poppy-seed bagel. I think my brain was more comfortable with the latter. Perhaps I expect the crust to get stuck in my teeth anyway, but chunky bits in the middle remind me of badly-made bread.
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buu700
That was one of my bigger reasons for a long time, but last I checked FF's dev tools were finally comparable to Chrome's.
At this point I'm just blocked on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042. I've seriously tried switching to Firefox a few times, and I really want to switch, but it's just not acceptable to have my CPU regularly pinned at 200%.
devit
You should also switch to Linux (or Windows with WSL if you insist on running a proprietary OS).
Shared404
Heaven forbid anyone use the software they like.
Neither you or I like macOS. However, people who do like it are welcome to use it. Being a jerk does nothing to get $YOUR_FAV_OS to gain population.
burtonator
Love that FF exists but one of the things that always strikes me is that if FF is successful in their mission they will cut off their major revenue channel.
Google is still the majority of their revenue is it not? The reason they're making that money is off the backs of other consumers who are NOT benefiting from the privacy features that you guys want to see everywhere.
Willing to be totally wrong here and would love to see more FF advocates speak out here but FF wouldn't be financially viable without Google and many FF advocates say Google is the problem...
Rusky
> if FF is successful in their mission they will cut off their major revenue channel.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Their mission isn't to break search engines, just to prevent privacy violations.
If Google Search is unsustainable with any less than Google's current level of tracking/etc, then I suppose a successful Firefox means an unsuccessful Google.
But Google didn't start out doing this much tracking, and there are other search engines out there that still don't. A paid default search engine that shows a few search-related ads on its results pages doesn't seem opposed to Firefox's mission?
coldpie
Yes, I wish there was a clear way to fund Firefox development. You can (and I do) donate to the Mozilla Foundation, although the funding relationship between the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox isn't clear. I believe that if Google's funding were to become insufficient, then the Foundation would step in to fund it if they have the funds, which is why I donate to them. But I don't know if this is actually the case.
cxr
> the funding relationship between the Mozilla Foundation and Firefox isn't clear
It's not really an unknown. Donations to Mozilla Foundation do not and cannot fund Firefox development.
> if Google's funding were to become insufficient, then the Foundation would step in to fund it if they have the funds
There are two assumptions here that are off. One is that the Foundation could come up with the kind of money that the Corporation spends on Firefox. The other is that the Corporation is somehow in a tight situation financially. Reality is opposite to both.
First, the Corporation is not strapped for cash. It brings in a lot of money. Like, in-the-neighborhood-of-half-a-billion-dollars-a-year a lot. It spent something like 29MM acquiring Pocket (which is still as closed source now as it was 3 years ago), and it manages to spend 50MM on its marketing campaigns that most people aren't even aware exist. Under the current arrangement the Corporation funds the Foundation, paying a percentage of its revenues to allow the Corporation to trade on Mozilla's name. (If that sounds like a weird way to put it, consider revisiting your other assumptions about Mozilla and Firefox.)
wongarsu
FF gets most of it's revenue from Google Search, a service that was extremely profitable long before Google started personalized ads. Sure, Google might not like losing browser market share or having fewer tracking opportunities, but none of those hurt nearly as much as losing search engine users. I expect them to pay Firefox for quite some time (and if they don't, their competition will).
wybiral
They've experimented with other forms of revenue. Things like Pocket and VPN [1]. I assume that if Google pulled the plug they could find another sponsor but Google may not want to do that anyway, otherwise they run the risk of being an obvious monopoly.
ferzul
many companies did targeted advertising in the pre-web days and made a profit. you can advertise without knowing anything about a consumer - except that they like reading this kind of article. so there is no tradeoff between privacy and profitable advertising; both are possible at the same time.
techntoke
Mozilla has continually put Linux last in nearly everything they do. Hardware acceleration on Linux has been absent but works on Chromium. Wayland support is broken with noticeable artifacts but works on Chromium. In their recent VPN announcement there is no support for Linux. In their password manager announcement revamp they don't support Linux. Why would I support a company that doesn't put open source first?
andreaorru
Hardware acceleration works just fine for me on Linux (granted, I had to flip a few values in about:config). And all the Wayland glitches have been fixed months ago.
techntoke
It wasn't even enabled until this release for video. It has been working on Chromium for over 2 years, if not longer.
The Wayland issues have improved after trying it out just now, but I still often get artifacts when resizing and switching between fullscreen and split screen.
noisy_boy
I am a pretty ardent Firefox supporter and prefer it over Chrome but some of the issues are still jarring and really affect the user experience. E.g. this 10 year old bug which I still have to deal with multiple times every month where if you have couple of windows open with one having pinned tabs and close the other one first, the pinned tabs are not restored upon restart: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=587400
Mozilla needs to shift focus, atleast briefly if not long term, to work on squashing such common issues instead of racing to add new features.
izolate
Agreed. I'm tracking a 7 year old bug to support `<input type="month" />` that's probably an easy win, given the foundation work is completed by supporting other date input formats.
clairity
yah, i would love it if mozilla focused on all kinds of form controls, bringing them to parity styling-wise, adding more hooks for things like validation/more complex interactions, adding common controls (like month), etc.
basically, they should look at the various web ui toolkits like bootstrap and integrate all the controls and behaviors common across all of them. it would be such a major win for developers and users.
agumonkey
Maybe Mozilla should stop the features and branding for a little while and make a revamp sprint ?
pjc50
I have a 20 year old feature request to support "if type is text/plain (maybe text/*) and firefox brings up the download box, add the option to just view it in the browser in the first place".
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57342
(this has become less relevant in recent years as "everyone" uses github to present source to the world, and websites in general vanish in favour of social media)
pabs3
There is an extension to do something better:
satori99
Oh wow, I hate this one so much.
I try to avoid opening multiple FF windows because I always close the wrong one last.
recursive
If you're closing all of them, you can just use Ctrl+Shift+Q.
matsemann
Try restore the other windows with ctrl+shift+n
infogulch
Yeah I now quit all FF windows at once with Ctrl+Shift+Q or Menu > Exit, or if I'm closing because Windows is restarting (not uncommon on Win10) I just let Windows close FF and it'll reopen after restart.
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I doubt it will happen. Fixing bugs is not sexy, so modern developers generally avoid it at all costs. Especially if there is a UI makeover they could be doing instead.
agurk
Of note for those using Wayland/Mutter Firefox 78 now has the option of Partial Present[0] and better supported VA-API for video playback.
Interestingly there was a recently discovered Mutter bug[1] where the Culling code to prevent rendering of windows that were not visible was not working. This fix will need to be deployed to see the biggest benefit of Partial Present.
[0] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1620076
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=GNOME-Br...
jiggawatts
Wow, they finally got around to fixing a certificate-handling issue. That must have closed a bunch of decade-old bugzilla issues.
Now if they could just get around to supporting intermediate CA certificates and all of the Windows certificate stores, not just a couple of randomly chosen ones, that would be swell.
Also, IPv6 support in PAC files would be nice.
If any Mozilla employees come to YC News: Unimportant-seeming stuff like this is why Chrome crushed Firefox in the Enterprise.
ocdtrekkie
> Unimportant-seeming stuff like this is why Chrome crushed Firefox in the Enterprise.
This isn't why. At work I deal with two different vendors who refuse to troubleshoot any issues with their products on anything but Chrome. To this day, the issue has never been a browser compatibility issue, but we have to actually temporarily give the user a Chromium-based browser just to get a modicum of decent support these days.
Both vendors, of course, tell us we should just use Chrome because it's the only browser they support. (Even though other browsers work fine.) And unfortunately, most IT staffers end up getting directed by superiors to follow said instructions.
acdha
> This isn't why. At work I deal with two different vendors who refuse to troubleshoot any issues with their products on anything but Chrome.
This is the case now but a decade ago, in the period the original poster was talking about, it was because of things like what they mentioned: Mozilla needed some attention to detail on those tickets, a robust MSI install package, and a polished policy deployment system. Lots of large shops deployed it but it wasn't loved because there was always some wart to work around.
hinkley
We got Firefox in the first place due to insubordination by developers, many of whom were told that we were only going to support IE.
But it was easier to debug on Mozilla so it got supported first because you could eliminate 90% of the bugs before ever having to touch IE.
monus
I have resisted using anything other than Firefox since the IE days but I have been literally forced to switch to Chrome because of this issue on my work Macs and every time I checked, I was surprised to see that’s not implemented. Finally. Thank you Mozilla!
akerro
Pocket is great and totally deserves more promotion. I know this will trigger a lot of people saying it's spyware, I used to think that too, but then I embraced it and it's great for bookmarking, syncthing tabs, reading news as podcasts on mobile etc. It's great.
emptysongglass
Pocket is great but people need to start holding their feet to the fire: it's been 3 years and Mozilla still hasn't open-sourced the codebase, as they promised they would. [1]
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...
dblohm7
The client is, FWIW.
pbhjpbhj
Something being spyware and you embracing it seem orthogonal. Are you saying it is spyware (not an argument I've seen before) but you choose to use it anyway?
whereistimbo
It was a third party app and the forced bundling feels like a bloatware. Now Mozilla Corporation owns it, it doesn't really a concern anymore.
JadeNB
I'm not sure about the claims about spyware—I suspect akerro was simply reporting on the general feeling of the complaints, rather than using precise language—but I know that there was a loud outcry from people unhappy that the proprietary service Pocket was integrated as a part of the core browser, rather than as an extension, which seemed not to be consonant with the stated Mozilla mission to openness and transparency; and that, at least initially, there were no switches to get rid of it. (I don't remember the exact situation now, but whatever it is is the result of Mozilla giving in in response to lots of user push-back against the forced integration.)
akerro
I said other people will call it spyware, because they don't understand how and it works and what it does.
blendergeek
I think the biggest complaint with Pocket is Mozilla's broken promise to open-source it. After that, we will all be able to check for ourselves whether Pocket is spyware. I look forward to that day, may it come soon.
octodog
I agree, pocket is awesome for mobile use and I would recommend it to anyone. My only complaint is not being able to turn off reader view by default in the browser.
lou1306
I also use Pocket a lot. Alas, I do wish that they had Kindle integration... As of now I use crofflr [1], which mostly works but is unfortunately no longer updated.
torvarun
I have a Kobo Touch e-reader which has Pocket integration built in and it's great. The reader lags at times because of its age, but until Kindle gets Pocket I won't give up on it.
krtkush
While there are no first party Kindle integrations, I find p2k.co perfect for my use case, i.e. push pocket articles to my Kindle.
mellosouls
Me too, p2k is perfect. Initial setup a couple of minutes, then it all happens automatically.
akerro
try this for kindle https://pushtokindle.fivefilters.org/send.php?url=https%3A%2...
codq
Pocket is great, but it's been a long time since it's seen any innovation, and far too often it clips only a portion of the article I've saved.
I can't completely rely on it to ingest an entire long-form article, which forces me to switch back to web-view to make sure Pocket caught the entire piece. It's frustrating.
driverdan
I like and use Pocket but one of the first things I do after installing Firefox is disable Pocket recommendations. It shouldn't be calling external services like that without the user explicitly opting in.
logeekal
Totally agreed. Pocket is amazing it has changed mobile reading for me.
hnu0847
Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I find that Pocket is unable to detect duplicate copies of the same article and prevent them from being added to my list unless they were added from Firefox's landing page, i.e. the "Sponsored by Firefox" and "Recommended by Pocket" sections.
Is there something I can do to make Pocket prevent duplicates from being added on the basis of the article's URL alone?
jadbox
Just tested Firefox 79.0b1 with webrender.all and surprisingly it's performing leaps over Chrome on Win10 Intel GPU. In the below image, left side is Firefox Developer Edition and right is Chrome 83.0.4103.116 on Windows 10 on a Dell XPS.
Someone1234
If anyone at Mozilla is reading, your Security Fixes link 404s.
It will be here when it is released:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-2...
coldpie
I think this happens every release, although I don't know why. Probably just different teams pushing the button at different times.
caution
New in Firefox 78: DevTools improvements, new regex engine, and abundant web platform updates
Yizahi
Does it still have UglyBar from v77? Seems like that.
msclrhd
See https://www.userchrome.org/megabar-styling-firefox-address-b... for details on how to customize the new address bar, including userChrome css for keeping its size confined to the dropdown UI like other dropdown/combobox UI elements.
jamoes
Also see https://superuser.com/questions/540851/go-back-to-not-select... for details on how to disable the clickSelectsAll behavior.
This issue is frankly far more important than the style changes they made. It's a muscle-memory issue that drastically affects daily usage. I was so desperate to restore the sane behavior of not selecting everything on a single click that I was recompiling firefox prior to discovering this workaround.
vvillena
Is there any specific thing that makes it ugly? I'm curious because I don't see the ugliness.
Since I use Firefox 99% of the time, I just opened Chrome and Edge to check out their address bars. All three are extremely similar. In Chrome and Edge the borders are more rounded, while Firefox opts for a more square look. All three feature a "popup" effect that makes the bar slightly bigger when interacting with it: in Firefox this effect activates when clicking the bar, while the other two enlarge when inputting data.
msclrhd
I don't like the behaviour in Chrome or Slack either. I haven't tried the new Edge (Edgeium) -- the Trident/IE derived Edge only expands downward.
1. It is inconsistent with the behaviour of every other control, including other combobox/search/dropdown UI elements. The web search element on the new page/tab for both Firefox and Chrome only expand downward to show the results. (The one on Chrome adjusts the border radius slightly, but that is more to do with the way the border radius is calculated.)
2. I personally find it distracting, especially as it is moving in two directions at once. -- I don't like animated elements in the Windows start menu and YouTube's latest post section even more for the same reason (I notice the movement in the corner of my eye, then get distracted as it is drawing attention away from what I am doing).
3. It can happen when not user initiated, e.g. when switching to an already open tab where the focus then goes to the address bar. This further adds to the distracting "look at me!" nature of the new design, where you have to explicitly click away to get rid of. Couple that with reddit's behaviour of clicking outside a post navigating to the channels page and you have some fun times!
4. The dropdown of frequently visited pages can no longer be opened by the mouse only. You need to click on the address bar and then press the down arrow key.
zozbot234
It uses a non-native look for no good reason, and the "popup" thing obscures other parts of the browser UI.
deathanatos
I've seen numerous people discuss this, so I can only presume that there is some itch here, but I'm not getting it. Hasn't the location bar been non-native since pretty much forever, since it has to display icons and colors and all sorts of other stuff that I think most native drop down widgets just won't?
As for obscuring other parts of the UI … such as? (That it wasn't since the dawn of time; I mean, it drops down and obscures part of the browser window, sure? But it's done that since the idea of having it autocomplete was first added.)
The only recent change seems to be that it swells up by a few pixels when you focus it. (I'm not a fan, but it honestly doesn't seem to matter much. It has started to not show the carat, and that is definitely annoying, and I'd agree more with a native widget argument there, I just don't think one exists.)
ebg13
78 has checkboxes to disable the suggestions popup under the privacy/security preferences.
quacker
"in Firefox this effect activates when clicking the bar, while the other two enlarge when inputting data."
This difference is why Firefox receives mores complaints.
When opening a new tab in Firefox, the address bar is automatically focused. This actually makes the address bar larger than the bounds of the encapsulating toolbar. This combined with the drop shadows helps to partially obscure adjacent toolbar(s), like the bookmarks toolbar.
Yizahi
It hijacks focus at new tab open. It has ugly looking shadow when focused over bookmark bar. It removed "arrow down" button. It replaced history for static top sites in the drop down. It enlarges text font on focus making it harder to quickly select parts. And the last but not least - they had months of beta testing and then still enforced popout animation with ability to disable it, despite negative feedback of multiple users.
PS: I'm not disabling it on principle for now just to see like some people say if get used to it. So far it still annoys me after weeks of usage. It is just bad design and bad decision and FF team can't accept own mistakes, like small children.
robotmay
I hate the UglyBar so much. I've got a user style to fix it but my god, who thought it was a good idea? It's so much worse and it didn't need doing.
Yizahi
Personally what found even worse is the attitude of an arrogant Firefox developer (Marco), who came to /r/firefox and just outright dismissed any and all concerns, than closed all bugzilla tickets about it and just left subreddit (at least for several days).
It feels like some "genius" manager who brute forced his "brilliant" idea on the team.
recursive
> It's so much worse and it didn't need doing.
It's subjective. I like it.
tgv
It's not only ugly: whenever I click in it to edit a URL (pasting in different UUIDs for testing, things like that), the change of font size means I don't know where the selection is. That's so confusing.
StavrosK
I am always very confused by discussions about this bar. For me, when I press ctrl-L, the bar gets slightly bigger borders and the dropdown expands, and that's all that happens. I don't get a font size change or anything.
Is my experience not typical? Does anyone know why I don't get the new bar if not? I'm on 78.
Yizahi
I have font change on Win10, v77.0.1 latest. When focused URL text font is enlarged and if you were targeting specific symbol it will be shifted to side by several places.
PS: here is a proof - https://imgur.com/a/AYi99Ht
regularfry
Just checked for myself on FF77 on Gnome and on FF78 on Windows. I don't see a change of font size on either.
Is there something you need to opt in to?
tgv
Perhaps it's a macOS thing.
akerro
Unfortunately it still has this "megabar"
ProAm
This new bar is why I stopped upgrading FF. with 76 you could change it with about:firefox options, then in 77 you had to use userChrome.css I got tired of trying to find a workaround for a piece of utility software. I shouldnt have to relearn functionality every minor release of a browser. I love FF, but Im sticking with 76 for the foreseeable future.
amazing_stories
I agree, I got so aggravated I switched to Vivaldi. I went to school for UI/UX and in my opinion the MegaBar is bad, bad, bad.
jfk13
Sorry you don't like the new design. Personally, I found it really jarring at first, but by now I don't notice it unless I consciously look for it.
Hope you enjoy your unpatched security issues.
gnud
I don't mind the design - but the functionality of the bar annoys me to no end.
If you try to use a relative domain name (typing webtest01 instead of webtest01.mydomain.com, when your DNS resolves those two to the same address), for some reason Firefox thinks I want to search the web. I don't understand why.
Even worse, if you use a full domain name (web.test), and even if you specify a port (web.test:8080), Firefox thinks you want to search. Those are valid domains that resolve on my network.
ProAm
Patched but unusable still equal unusable. FF should really decouple security patches from redesign and functional changes. There is no reason to force both.
ChrisSD
Can I ask why it's considered "ugly" now but wasn't before? Isn't it just a few pixels bigger?
Yizahi
Plus shadow. And it steals focus on new tab. And it shifts text when selecting. And no history now. It is just dumber and uglier version of the old normal address bar which nobody asked to "improve" this way.
jeltz
No, it is smaller so that is not the issue. The old completions used to use up the full width of the browser window. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but I suspect that the proportions are just slightly off.
executesorder66
The dropdown takes up less horizontal space in the new version. But in the new version the URL bar itself becomes obese with unnecessary padding whenever you click in it. And that is was a lot of people hate about it.
No other input field becomes fat when you click on it. It is enough to just highlight the edges like the old version (And like every other input field) when you want to indicate that the input field is currently active.
foepys
You can just remove the flexible spacers.
Just go to the tab bar, right-click on an empty space or the "+" -> "Customize..." and remove them. I did so when Firefox upgraded to Quantum and the spacers never returned by themselves.
kleiba
OT: I would like to write an extension that restores the previous clicking behavior on the title and search bars but I have never written a Firefox extension before. Does anyone know if this kind of functionality change would even be possible with the current extension framework?
jraph
I would not expect this. One of the main points of removing the old way of doing extensions was to stop allowing extensions to arbitrarily modify the browser's UI, which was difficult to maintain.
interfixus
So ... "Close tabs to the right" and "Close other tabs" moved from top level context menu to submenu "Close Multiple Tabs".
This is the kind of ungraceful UI degradation which would send me packing if there was anywhere else decent to go.
mmphosis
Wow. Right-click on a tab. I didn't even know that menu existed.
abmobi
Firefox has slowly crawled back into my daily workflow of development as well as general browsing with the 67.0 release mid last year or so, that brought in major performance improvements.
Though there is one caveat that bothers me a lot. When auto restoring sessions after I've closed Firefox and launch it the next day, it restores the same tabs, but with the old data (for eg., youtube or twitch live channels / searches). Every tab needs to be refreshed manually to get the new data, which Chrome automatically does.
clairity
i prefer this behavior, as i often want to see the "old" version of pages that i had been looking at before and avoid a barrage of network requests at startup. in any case, i'm pretty sure there's an about:config setting to change it.
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Great. Unlike many, I walk my talk and have always used Firefox since more than a decade with no exceptions. The very commonly given reason that DevTools are better in Chrome still doesn't stop one from using Firefox for all other general browsing. Unless we support alternatives we really shouldn't complain when they gradually die off in a space that is increasingly coming under the control of giant corporations with bottomless pockets.