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.

Winamp: Gracenote Services Terminated

Unfortunately the autodetection of (music) CDs in Winamp is no longer working, which means, that the automatic tagging is no longer .. automatic. DrO, member of the Winamp team, posted the following explanation in the Winamp forum on May 15th, 2014:

it looks like the access Winamp had to Gracenote's services has been terminated and is the reason why things have stopped working. this was going to happen anyway as a result of the sale of Winamp and SHOUTcast in January where the deal with them was not going to be renewed (and if Winamp and SHOUTcast hadn't been bought, what you're now seeing would have happened anyway), but we weren't at all sure when things were going to stop working (as all that was known is it might be sometime between the start of 2014 and early 2015). as such until a new Winamp client is released with a Musicbrainz based solution (as we're not aiming to have a new client out until the end of the year due to the mass of work required to remove / replace the AOL / Gracenote specific parts), there's not much i can really suggest at the time on what can be done as an alternative for the Gracenote powered features.

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

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 ...