Firefox Upgrades Shenanigans Again!

Did an upgrade from Firefox 24 ESR to Firefox 31 ESR, because various websites (YouTube I am looking at you) keep nagging and nagging about this ... Again as with all of the latest Firefox upgrades .. huge, huge mistake.

All of the annoying updates and "innovations" like stripped down interfaces and hiding information, which may be suitable for mobile devices and such things, but for other users like the ordinary PC users are so infuriating ...


To name a few mishaps and misadventures reappearing are:

• Forced UI changes
• Reordering of menu bar entries
• Missing status bar (Link information in particular)
• Missing Download Manager functionality (no I don't want any mini-windows; I want a decent overview of what downloads are going on at the moment. Gosh ..

Regarding the UI changes, you may say, "OK, but you can change all that to your liking ..". But my answer is "Why, of why, do I have to do this over and over again after each FF upgrade???" This costs me a lot of time each and every time, because developers have found a new "optimal" arrangements of buttons and menu entries.

Again, I have to do a lot of stuff, to make the FF appear in fashion, that I can work comfortably with FF. Includes installing and/or updating:

1. Classic Theme Restorer
2. Status Bar Forever
3. Download Manager
4. Add-Blocker (OK, this one is not affected by FF upgrades, but you get the idea ...)

 Again, I am really, really close to ditching Firefox for good.

ESR To The Rescue

As it seems, yesterday's post seems to be only part of the truth .. another "great" feature was to remove the original download browser config option (and the old download browser entirely with Firefox 26 or so .. wtf .. again!

But what I learned is that something Firefox ESR, where ESR stand for Extended Service Release. Which offers security fixes etc., without this constant, nagging, freaking pushing towards upgrading and pointless, unnecessary, unwanted new "features".

So now it's downgrading to Firefox 24.5 ESR with the hope that next (more less) forced upgrade is in the future in a galaxy far, far away ...

Please Mozilla Foundation, do not force upon the users these changes to the user interface without some sort of reasonable fallback option. Even better, why do new UIs need to be mandatory. Why do it as theme/add-on/extension or whatever you wanna call it?!?! Currently all I am doing after upgrades is spending more and more time on restoring the old usability of Firefox.

The day is not far ahead ..

The day is not far ahead .. that I am going to quit using Firefox. Again with Firefox 29 and their new and "improved" Australis user interface. I just want to use the goddamn browser, not cope and learn a new interface every 6 months. Now after updating I always have to check if there's a proper way to order title bar, menu bar, bookmark bar, the way it used it be .. this is annoying as hell.

It's like when your bringing your car to an inspection and they'll tell you, OK we can do this, but we have to switch the gas and break pedals, the rear view mirror is now on the hood, and you have to keep pressing the button for the high beam seven times to make it work. Sure it'll work, and you'll find some guys liking it that way, but you're sure as hell annoying a lot of users as well ..

There two options, either stop adjusting the user interface in such radical ways or give the users at least option to stick (easily) with other/older default configurations. Oh wait, there's a third option .. I just quit using this quicksand of a browser and switch a to viable alternative like Sea Monkey.

P.S.: My thanks goes this time to the guys who programmed the "Classic Theme Restorer".

Also see Microsoft and their Windows 8 user interface fiasco.

Back to the Future: Firefox's Download Manager

Another unwanted, unrequested change in Firefox, was the change of the download manager in Firefox 20. All of a sudden, the downloads immediately stops if the internet connection stops, and of course cannot be resumed properly after the connection has been restored .. thanks for nothing. To get back the old UI and behaviour, change the configuration in Firefox (about:config):

• browser.download.useToolkitUI = true

Restart Firefox afterwards and you're good to go.

And of course I am still unhappy about the UI changes and the frequency of the updates, but that's another story.

Even more Firefox Shenanigans

Finally being able to upgrade to the latest Firefox version, since some genius finally upgraded Firefox 3 Theme for Firefox 4+. But oh my, new user "enhancements". When opening a new tab, some sort of suggestions page (where to go next) pop up. To remove this "feature", go the Firefox configuration (about:config) and then change the setting:

• browser.newtab.url to about:blank

Switch Status Bar (Status-4-Evar)

After Firefox/Mozilla in its infinite wisdom decided to drop the status bar, I had to resort to using Status-4-Evar. From time to time the status bar for no apparent reason disappears and fiddling with the options of the add-on doesn't change a thing. But .. using CTRL + / brings it back to the front.

Firefox Menu Editor

Another wasted two hours, after blindly updating from Firefox 10 to 13. Unfortunately, the Firefox 3 Theme for Firefox 4+ doesn't work currently for FF 13. The reason for the update where massive Adobe Flash problems (hangs & crashes), which sometimes even lead to slowing down the whole computer. So finding a Firefox 10.0.2 update was the task, which wasn't so easy since apparently it cannot be found on the Mozilla homepage (or it's hard to locate). The website "oldversion.com" saved the day.

At least I found some useful for Firefox in terms of add-ons. To remove annoying Firefox context menu entries (like "Send Link" or "Send Image"), I can recommend the Firefox Menu Editor. Instead of manually editing the configuration or some userchrome.css file, you can comfortably select the context menu entries you don't want to see any longer.

Another new annoying Firefox "feature" reversed

Remove those address bar shenanigans by changing

• browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled
• browser.urlbar.trimURLs

Update (Firefox 10)

• devtools.inspector.enabled

Die Autoscroll Die

To disable the most annoying autoscroll "feature" (should be quadruple quotation marks really) in Firefox, just open the "Options" dialog through "Tools --> Options". Then click on the "Advanced" tab, and uncheck the “Use autoscrolling” box.

Problem solved.

Firefox 6 Shenanigans

After upgrading from Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 6, I had to out quite some work into it in order to make Firefox usable for me again. I had postponed the upgrade from 3.6 for quite some time, because I didn't like the changes to the interface at all (as I had seen in Firefox 4 beta) ..

The major issues were:

• The tabs for the individual pages were on the tab. This is the area I use a lot, so why putting it on top of the program?
• Translucent menus/bars/... (as inherited from the Windows Vista settings). While translucent menus look cool on frame, it totally makes the menus less readable (if at all).
• Order of the buttons in the Navigation Bar. Total random change. Why it not make these buttons movable at all. --> Still needs to fix this
• Lack of status bar. First of all it separates Firefox more clearly from the Windows Status Bar, secondly, I like status information in one neat space (where links point to, how the download status is, etc.)

Steps to fix these issues:

• Right-Click on the Menu Bar to remove the "Tabs on Top" in the context menu there.
• Install an extension ("Status-4-Evar") to get the old menu bar back. An extension for this, Firefox developers. Really?
• The quickest to fix the translucent menus was to install a theme ("Firefox 3 Theme") which brings back the old Firefox 3.6 color schema/spacing/.. The new schema may look cool, but the old schema was just clean and neat.
  

A lot of work for a simple upgrade. Cost me about 2 hours of work.

Horrible, horrible. The Firefox developers should really consider not making such drastically changes to the interface without making sure that you can bring back the existing features/changes configuration. If there are these kind of drastic changes in one of the next versions again, then I am strongly considering switching the browser software. If I have to learn the interface overall again, I can switch to another browser altogether ...