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chachazz
Premium Member
join:2003-12-14

1 edit

chachazz to Davesnothere

Premium Member

to Davesnothere

Re: [FireFox] FireFox 29

said by Davesnothere:

said by anonomeX :

....There's nothing wrong with options, but I really do hate wasted space myself.

 
On these 2 points we agree.

However, I feel that there are better ways to achieve space conservation, and if the devs leave customization sufficiently flexible, I will/have figure(d) out what works best for me.



For max real estate, there is 'Less Chrome HD' - »mozillalabs.com/en-US/le ··· rome-hd/
(which works perfectly on Nightly, Aurora, Beta and Release)



anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
said by Davesnothere:

Still, I would be interested in finding a way to make the Title bar vanish, as I have already merged all of my Nav bar items into my Menu bar, and turned off the Nav bar.

Any ideas for how to do that, while not going higher than FF 28, or 24.x esr ?

Good news, bad news... with Fx29 Mozilla removed the lockstep for menubar and titlebar such that if you want the menubar then you have to take the titlebar, too. The nav-bar, however, has been locked down, so you can't use "Mozilla methods" to do that (as far as I know--not something I've looked at). However, CSS allows you to do just about anything you want; I'd suggest going over to userstyles.org and checking to see if someone hasn't already written a style to do what you want. If no such style(s) exists, then you could request it via the forum there--some author may find it interesting enough to work on. Or you could code it up yourself (CSS is easy).
said by Davesnothere:

And HOW did you manage to make DSLR put your text ABOVE the screen grab ???

»Site FAQ »Inline Images in Posts
anonomeX

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
(separately--somewhat off-topic)
said by Davesnothere:

OK, you have made the best of what you were dealt, including cramming more things onto less bars on a wide-profile screen, and opening the left-side panel for bookmarks.

I continue to choose to keep using a 1280x1024 (5x4) screen, so I can afford a wee bit more vertical overhead, but less horizontal.

My Windows task bar is on the left, though, and has been for over a decade, since before wide screens assaulted our intelligence and ergonomic convenience.

I've been using the sidebar for a long while, so it's not related to Fx29. Widescreens just make it easier to use sidebars and keep a "full-sized" window (viewport) with still more space left over on the desktop. Before moving to widescreen I'd be enabling and disabling the sidebar continually; now it's "always on" (well, almost always).

I like good cheap monitors. HD-TVs make for good cheap monitors with more vertical and horizontal pixels than 1280x1024. But I almost never use the fullscreen feature of any program--just because you can do a thing does not mean that you should do a thing. So, basically my content window looks about the same size as it did back in my 1280x1024 days of long ago (though in fact I do still have some of those older monitors in use--well, they're attached to machines I don't use much anymore). So I've found the widescreen to be more ergonomic and economical as a monitor.

JTM1051
MVM
join:2000-07-08
Terrell, TX

JTM1051 to anonomeX

MVM

to anonomeX
said by anonomeX :

... but I really do hate wasted space myself.

Me too


Anxiously awaiting for the Classic Compact Theme / Classic Compact Options to be updated for Fx 29.

Screen shot: Fx 28 & Win XP

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

4 edits

Davesnothere to anonomeX

Premium Member

to anonomeX
said by anonomeX :

said by Davesnothere:

Still, I would be interested in finding a way to make the Title bar vanish, as I have already merged all of my Nav bar items into my Menu bar, and turned off the Nav bar.

Any ideas for how to do that, while not going higher than FF 28, or 24.x esr ?

Good news, bad news... with Fx29 Mozilla removed the lockstep for menubar and titlebar such that if you want the menubar then you have to take the titlebar, too. The nav-bar, however, has been locked down, so you can't use "Mozilla methods" to do that (as far as I know--not something I've looked at)....

 
OK, so I decided to play with FF 29.0.1, to observe first-hand what you just explained.

In my 2nd PC, I backed up the FF14 profile base folder's files, asked FF14 to manually check for updates from the 'About' popup.

It grabbed something without asking me for permission to do so, did not tell me what it grabbed, and presented a button which beckoned me to apply this unknown version update (this particular behaviour of - ironically, the older FF versions - has been almost unanimously lamented in this and/or other DSLR threads).

I have never been a fan of the 'Glory Hole' software acquisition approach (same way that much malware creeps in), so did not click, and I exited FF14, and made a 2nd separate backup of my profile base folder's files.

Then, I launched FF again.

It installed whatever it had grabbed earlier, STILL did not tell me what version to expect, and dumped me at a hostile and unfamiliar UI which I guessed to be 29, from what I have already learned here, without even a 'Welcome to Your New Nightmare !' screen.

What a pile of fucking rubbish !

Shall I count the ways ? [lame paraphrase of a popular poem]

(1) FF 29.0.1 made changes to my default settings without asking me.
Tabs moved to the top (could not move them back), and the title bar got turned off (though I did find where to turn it back on).

(2) FF turned back on my previously disabled Nav bar, and elements of my previously merged Title and Nav bar were split into each area.

And as you predicted above, I could not disable the Nav bar, nor drag its contents to any other location, but I now could disable the Menu bar, and briefly encountered panic when figuring out how to put THAT back.

(3) Most of my 100 or so existing TABs became inaccessible - a single click on each would not access most of them - though it would let me CLOSE each.

(4) My 2 Add-ons were updated without consultation, though I believe that I had previously set them not to look.

(5) Tab Mix Plus was among the updated add-ons, and its right click menus on each tab had now vanished, even though its config suggested that they were still there, and it let me tweak their alleged contents.

If FF says that they can do an in-place upgrade, then it ought to work - not this kind of BS result !

Anyway, as you can tell by reading, this was FAR too much change for li'l ol' me, so I set about putting it all back.

I exited FF 29.0.1 and installed FF 14 over top of it, and let it start.

Things were mostly back to normal.

I then exited FF 14 and deleted all of files from the profile base folder, restored them from the 2nd backup which I mentioned making above, and restarted FF 14.

All was returned to normal, though my 2 add-ons seem to have remained updated, and that would likely have been a good idea anyway, even if for FF14.

Conclusion :

FireFox 29x is NOT worth the hassle of the many forced changes, and the having to integrate further add-ons to undo the results of these changes (which IMNSHO are driven by programmers' egos) is a waste of bother, one which may even cause instability, the more of them that we need to add, each time that the FF devs dictate what is best for us.

As has been said before, the VERY LEAST that they could do is to allow us user-accessible options to toggle the changes, and also to not force them on us as a new default setting.

Mozilla is alienating long-term loyal followers by this arrogant behaviour, and by the time that they realize it, it will likely be too late.

[Posted from my successfully rolled back to version 14 FireFox]
bbear2
Premium Member
join:2003-10-06
dot.earth

bbear2

Premium Member

said by Davesnothere... :

Based upon what I've read, that pretty much sums it up.

therube
join:2004-11-11
Randallstown, MD

therube to Davesnothere

Member

to Davesnothere
Have there been any threads extolling the benefits brought forth in 29?
Oh, wait, this one, err... no.

What about in the mozillazine forums?
Uh, err... no.

firefox.com (or wherever they have support) ???

What about in...
Maybe I shouldn't have asked.

You know what they say, silence is golden.
Or was it silence speaks volumes.

But then you do have to realize, most of what one is bound to hear are the complainers.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
OK. But if you're using Windows, then it would have been simpler to install the portable edition of Firefox 29 and start fresh first with defaults before trying to update in place a customized install. A default [settings] install of 29 doesn't look much different from Firefox 4 with defaults, excluding the tab shape, app menu button, and general button appearance--all of which have varied somewhat in subsequent releases (round buttons, square buttons, buttons that "glow", tabs that are more rounded or less rounded, etc. etc.). Mozilla removed some options that were natively part of Firefox before 29, but all of those options either can be restored by like-minded add-on devs or will be once those and other devs finish the stuff they're working on.

I have no doubt that either now or soon you'd be able to make it look and work just the way you have it looking and working now with 14. Granted it may take till 30 or even 31 is released but it'll get there--devs, as a rule, don't really hurry all that much ('cause they usually have real jobs). And, sorry, but most of the people using 28 and moving to 29 won't really care one way or the other; they'll just keep using the latest release regardless. They care about the sites and pages they visit, not the minor changes to the [default] chrome around the pages.

Mozilla still isn't that concerned with users who prefer to stay with releases that are a year or more old.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

Davesnothere to therube

Premium Member

to therube
said by therube:

....You know what they say, silence is golden.

Or was it silence speaks volumes....

 

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to therube

Anon

to therube
I don't remember when some group or other of Firefox users hasn't complained about something in every release of Firefox. It either is this or isn't that, one or the other being good or bad. (And I've certainly been one of those to find fault with Mozilla's choices now and then.)

Sorry, but I find much more to like about 29 than to dislike. So I'm quite happy with it. (Of course, as with almost every previous release I've applied my own custom CSS, which obviously has something to do with it. I simply make it look the way I want it to look.)

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

2 edits

Davesnothere to anonomeX

Premium Member

to anonomeX
said by anonomeX :

OK. But if you're using Windows, then it would have been simpler to install the portable edition of Firefox 29 and start fresh first with defaults before trying to update in place a customized install. A default [settings] install of 29 doesn't look much different from Firefox 4 with defaults, excluding the tab shape, app menu button, and general button appearance--all of which have varied somewhat in subsequent releases (round buttons, square buttons, buttons that "glow", tabs that are more rounded or less rounded, etc. etc.). Mozilla removed some options that were natively part of Firefox before 29, but all of those options either can be restored by like-minded add-on devs or will be once those and other devs finish the stuff they're working on.

I have no doubt that either now or soon you'd be able to make it look and work just the way you have it looking and working now with 14. Granted it may take till 30 or even 31 is released but it'll get there--devs, as a rule, don't really hurry all that much ('cause they usually have real jobs). And, sorry, but most of the people using 28 and moving to 29 won't really care one way or the other; they'll just keep using the latest release regardless. They care about the sites and pages they visit, not the minor changes to the [default] chrome around the pages.

Mozilla still isn't that concerned with users who prefer to stay with releases that are a year or more old.

 
IOW, they don't give a damn.

And as I see it, they don't care a whole lot MORE about users of even version 28, which is still one of the other options which I am considering, along with my current few add-ons, as mentioned earlier in the current and a couple of other threads here.

But yes, this portable version thing would have been easier (I HAD heard about it somewhere recently), though likely would not have shown me (as soon) the potential interactions with my current settings and add-ons.

I may still test it though.

And is there a portable version of FF 28, or of Pale Moon, or Sea Monkey ?

Bottom line is that I do not want to use more add-ons to have the UI and functionality which I already have now, with only a few add-ons.

BTW, I do have some custom CSS in test on an earlier PC with Win2K and FF 10, where I have cautious optimism of success with other folks' solutions in reversing some of the changes which were forced upon us between version 3.6.x and version 10 of FF.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX

Anon

Yeah, there's a very recent topic/thread with the link to all of the portable releases (since 2.0.0.8) at SourceForge.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

1 edit

Davesnothere to anonomeX

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to anonomeX
said by anonomeX :

....I find much more to like about 29 than to dislike. So I'm quite happy with it.

(Of course, as with almost every previous release I've applied my own custom CSS, which obviously has something to do with it. I simply make it look the way I want it to look.)

 
I appreciate programming and I still do a bit here and there.

But what about the average user ?

They cannot do much more than grin and bear it when s/w devs artbitrarily change things.

And when I don my 'average user hat', I don't want to do that any more than I do now.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
said by Davesnothere:

IOW, they don't give a damn.

I'm pretty sure that Mozilla has never cared that much about the users who don't share their "vision" of what Firefox should be or not be. (I tend to not care right back at 'em.)

Firefox isn't everything I want it to be, but it's more of what I want than any other browser, so I'll keep using it. Still it's just a browser--Mozilla's browser. If I chose to really care, then I'd have to code my own... Who has time for that?
bbear2
Premium Member
join:2003-10-06
dot.earth

bbear2 to anonomeX

Premium Member

to anonomeX
said by anonomeX :

I don't remember when some group or other of Firefox users hasn't complained about something in every release of Firefox. It either is this or isn't that, one or the other being good or bad. (And I've certainly been one of those to find fault with Mozilla's choices now and then.)
...

Perhaps, but I don't recall any other FF release with as many posts like rel 29 has so far. And I'm not reading outstanding praise from most of them.
said by anonomeX :

...
Sorry, but I find much more to like about 29 than to dislike. So I'm quite happy with it. (Of course, as with almost every previous release I've applied my own custom CSS, which obviously has something to do with it. I simply make it look the way I want it to look.)

Have you listed what you like yet? I'm curious about the benefits of 29.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX

Anon

said by bbear2:

Have you listed what you like yet?

Yes--included among my previous comments here and elsewhere (which is to say, other topics here).

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

2 edits

Davesnothere

Premium Member

said by anonomeX :

said by bbear2:

Have you listed what you like yet?

Yes--included among my previous comments here and elsewhere (which is to say, other topics here).

 
Whether or not you or anyone else has heaped praise on FF 29, for the life of me, I cannot fathom how less flexibility and more forced changed defaults can EVER be a good thing about ANY piece of software.

It is simply NOT POSSIBLE for those kinds of changes to be good for the public, even if the software is free.

And in all of this, there is still a cost for such free software :

(1) to us, in our our collective loss of sanity, and

(2) to the author of the app, in our cumulative bad will toward them

And with that tone, I am also speaking about Microsoft's arrogance regarding the redesign of their UI for Windows 8 (from all previous versions), and about that of Yahoo regarding their WebMail UI, twice enduring forced major makeovers during 2013, once with ZERO advance notice nor pre-consultation.

therube
join:2004-11-11
Randallstown, MD

therube

Member

> And with that tone, I am also speaking about Microsoft ... Yahoo

Right.
I see it just that way too, often forgetting just who I'm speaking (complaining ) about.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

1 edit

Davesnothere

Premium Member

 
Yes, it IS getting to be SUCH a blur these daze, the authoritarian attitudes of the various tech companies' s/w developers and/or executives.

nwrickert
Mod
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL

nwrickert

Mod

Old fashioned way of doing things:

Rule 1: the customer is always right.
Rule 2: if the customer is wrong, reread rule 1.

Newfangled way of doing things:

Rule 1: the customer is always wrong.
Rule 2: if the customer is right, reread rule 1.

And on Yahoo -- when I visit the home page it tells me the temperature at my current location of Sunnyvale, CA. The trouble is, that I am seeing this while sitting in Geneva, IL. It seems that the imaginary gps device that does not exist on my desktop is giving bad imaginary readings.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
The actual defaults have changed very little since Fx4 was introduced about 3 years ago. The biggest change I see regarding Fx29 is that Mozilla is less inclined to natively support users who want to customize the UI to continue making it look like releases prior to Fx4. These users will now have to install add-ons if they want the "classic" look, which the large majority of them have done.

As someone who has mostly left the defaults alone, I mostly like the UI changes--what there are of them. The tab shape is mostly irrelevant, but fading the inactive tabs into the background still seems dumb to me. The wart of an app button is now simply a toolbar button (good) that's locked on the right (meh) instead of the top left corner. The add-on/status bar has been hidden (to be removed ultimately), which seems really dumb to me--but since I don't really need it for anything, I can't really claim to care; nevertheless, it's an imminently useful UI element, so it's dumb to remove it. On the one hand, the new customizing mode is the best I've seen anywhere; on the other hand, there's little left in the native UI to customize (so I guess they had add-ons in mind?).

Everyone has the right to want/like what they want/like and to not want/like what they don't want/like. But, then, so does Mozilla and their collective talking heads, and since it's their browser, they "win".

Frankly, though, the changes introduced with Firefox 29 and Australis have had very little impact on my usage. I barely notice the difference. I still move the Home button over next to the Back button. I move the Star button over next to the Reload+Stop+Go button (close enough to where it's always been). I apply my custom CSS, and I install a few add-ons for the additional functions they provide. Life goes on. It's the content that I pay attention to, not the chrome.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

3 edits

Davesnothere

Premium Member

said by anonomeX :

....Everyone has the right to want/like what they want/like and to not want/like what they don't want/like. But, then, so does Mozilla and their collective talking heads, and since it's their browser, they 'win'....

 
No, Mozilla LOSES.

I don't care WHOSE browser it is, and it being free is irrelevant.

Flexibility matters, and if they decree that to be untrue, then it will be THEIR loss of userbase.

That same judgement call is most of why most folks left Internet Explorer as IT changed and limited the new defaults.

Folks LIKED the then-flexible UI of FireFox.

Already, Pale Moon devs recognized what is up, and recently adjusted their mission statement to promise in bold that they will never change to the UI of FF 29, but will only take the FF security changes as they come.

Also, parts of what I and many like about FF is the stuff from BEFORE 4.x , and they keep chipping away at what is left of THAT.

They are driving people away, and in fact are almost offering them a ride out of town.

FF has already dropped to 3rd place in 'market' share, and much of the current change is to desperately mimic Chrome's look and function.

It is already too late to do THAT.

BTW, Chrome itself has some inflexibilities too (such as no traditional menu bar), and that is why I will never go there.

So watch the numbers, as this all plays out.

Soon, some of the newer browsers will show up individually in the pie chart.
AZinOH
join:2007-04-25
Swanton, OH

AZinOH

Member

said by Davesnothere:

 
No, Mozilla LOSES.

I don't care WHOSE browser it is, and it being free is irrelevant.

Flexibility matters, and if they decree that to be untrue, then it will be THEIR loss of userbase.

That same judgement call is most of why most folks left Internet Explorer as IT changed and limited the new defaults.

Folks LIKED the then-flexible UI of FireFox.

Already, Pale Moon devs recognized what is up, and recently adjusted their mission statement to promise in bold that they will never change to the UI of FF 29, but will only take the FF security changes as they come.

Also, parts of what I and many like about FF is the stuff from BEFORE 4.x , and they keep chipping away at what is left of THAT.

They are driving people away, and in fact are almost offering them a ride out of town.

FF has already dropped to 3rd place in 'market' share, and much of the current change is to desperately mimic Chrome's look and function.

It is already too late to do THAT.

BTW, Chrome itself has some inflexibilities too (such as no traditional menu bar), and that is why I will never go there.

So watch the numbers, as this all plays out.

Soon, some of the newer browsers will show up individually in the pie chart.

You don't like FF29? Great!!!...don't use it.
Change is a fact of life...DEAL WITH IT!!!
Why do you care if Mozilla wins or loses? Are you a stockholder?
It's just a browser, and if you're going to worry and fret yourself over why the devs do what they do, you're wasting your time.
If Mozilla does a crash n burn, feel free to say you told us so. Until then, find something else to use that makes you happy and have some cheese with your whine. Meanwhile, those of us who can deal with the changes will just go on with our business.

AZ

darcilicious
Cyber Librarian
Premium Member
join:2001-01-02
Forest Grove, OR
·Ziply Fiber

darcilicious to nwrickert

Premium Member

to nwrickert
said by nwrickert:

It seems that the imaginary gps device that does not exist on my desktop is giving bad imaginary readings.

This is not Yahoo's fault, it's using your IP address and apparently that has not been set up properly for geo-location. No imaginary GPS device involved.

So yes, in this case, the customer apparently is wrong

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to Davesnothere

Anon

to Davesnothere
Well, yeah, that's why I put "win" in quotes. (However, I don't actually agree with anything else you just said where you mention other browsers.)

Use it or don't use it--Firefox 29 is still the best browser out there.

therube
join:2004-11-11
Randallstown, MD

therube

Member

> Firefox 29 is still the best browser out there

I'd beg to differ, but then that's why we have choices .

nwrickert
Mod
join:2004-09-04
Geneva, IL

nwrickert to darcilicious

Mod

to darcilicious
said by darcilicious:

said by nwrickert:

It seems that the imaginary gps device that does not exist on my desktop is giving bad imaginary readings.

This is not Yahoo's fault, it's using your IP address and apparently that has not been set up properly for geo-location. No imaginary GPS device involved.

So yes, in this case, the customer apparently is wrong

Er, no. This really is a Yahoo problem.

If they had been using my IP address, that locates me as in either Geneva or Batavia (an adjacent town), depending on which geolocation service is asked. And even crude IP based geolocation would put me somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago (or Cicero, the suburb through which I am connected). Instead, until recently, I was being shown as in "Current Location Illinois", and with temperature readings suggesting that as Southern Illinois.

The "relocation" to Sunnyvale, CA is possibly related to my finally getting IPv6 transport, and perhaps geolocation is messed up for that. However, the Yahoo news page was showing the local temperature for Sunnyvale well before I got IPv6.

If I click the Yahoo link to set my current location, it shows Geneva, IL. So they are using something to override that. When I click the link to tell Yahoo what my location is, I get a permission page to permit them to read my non-existent "gps". This would probably work, if I visited the Yahoo page with my cell phone, but it does not work from a typical desktop.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX to therube

Anon

to therube
"Choices" ...something else that Firefox still provides more of than any other browser. And for those who choose not to take advantage of the available add-ons for Firefox to expand their choices, they're certainly welcome to limit their options by choosing to use other browsers.

Davesnothere
Change is NOT Necessarily Progress
Premium Member
join:2009-06-15
Canada

1 edit

Davesnothere to therube

Premium Member

to therube
said by therube:

> Firefox 29 is still the best browser out there

I'd beg to differ, but then that's why we have choices .

 
And this thread and a few others here simply showcase my running commentary on deciding which of the choices to try, and reporting back as I do, such as with FF29.0.1 last night, which irked some folks, evidently.

anonomeX
@71.207.157.x

anonomeX

Anon

said by Davesnothere:

which irked some folks

Not me... just trying to help you find a way to get past Fx14.