171–180 of 274 posts
The current firefox sync where they are probably the only folks who can host it is not that good. (there's an old sync server but it requires a non-local account)
Also, I wish firefox would stop uncontrollably phoning home.
Great, now please give me back the option to set my new tab page without resorting to extensions.
Does setting it in about:config do it for you? I see what you mean though, since the option right above that in the menu lets you set custom url(s) for your start page.
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The dumbing down of applications, including FF, is incredibly annoying and off-putting. I get it, though. FF probably wants to be friendly and approachable to the average non-techie person. I just wish that it (and other applications) would at least have an "expert mode" that isn't aimed just at the casual user.
I'm also for user choice but this consistent notion that uncluttered UIs are only for non-techie people is very annoying. I'm a software developer by trade but that doesn't mean I want every UI to look like the inside of an airplane cockpit or a 90s teletext. The trend in UIs to use space and reduce interface actions to the most important actions is both aesthetically more pleasing and more functional. I do not look…
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> removing about:config about:config is right where it's always been, unless I've missed something?
They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years. Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it). https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/21276
From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics:
- There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts.
- There are many preferences that …do nothing.
- There are preferences …which breaks interacting with some websites.
- There are platform preferences that …result in startup crashes …and reinstalling results in the deleting of data like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc.
Look, it’s not like we’re insensitive to the desire for configuration; it’s that we know that on Android there are footguns that don’t exist on desktop!
We want to figure out a way to do this in a way that makes it difficult to break GeckoView. I’m sorry that this isn’t good enough for many of you, but with all due respect, you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing!
Kinda reasonable, honestly? It sounds like more than just "page may render funny" types of footguns. Unknown quantities of unlabelled "Lose All My Data" buttons are probably what this site would call an antipattern.
> They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years.
On the above Reddit link, they also explain the extensions thing was because they were "literally not done implementing the APIs yet" and focused on the "highest priority extensions". So, the "big wtf decision" might be why they released it in that state, rather than "getting rid of most extensions".
> More streamlined menus that reduce visual clutter and prioritize top user actions so you can get to the important things quicker Oh no, more of this. What about less used options? How much slower? How much less discoverable? Desktop applications are already for power users almost by definition, let’s not slow them down for the sake of reducing “clutter”. Absolutely annoying trend of the last 15 years or so.
Meanwhile monitors and their resolutions have grown tremendously, so there's a lot more space for things. Yet they'd rather you give up control and argue that the tiny extra amount of space you get is a good idea.
> We’ve been listening to your feedback, and we’re prioritizing the features you want most. > Tab Grouping, Vertical Tabs, and our handy Sidebar will help you stay organized no matter how many tabs you have open — whether it’s 7 or 7,500. > Plus, our new Profile Management system will help keep your school, work, and personal browsing separate but easily accessible. Wow, that ... actually is what users have been aski…
I've been using multiple profiles in Chrome for years for keeping things separate… right up until my company started using Google's centralized browser/device management which infects the entire browser not just the single profile that is tied to my corporate Google account. Specifically, they forced a homepage setting browser-wide that can not be changed on a per-profile basis. So multiple profiles are seemingly dif…
> I hope Firefox doesn't have similar limitations.
I hope Firefox doesn't implement MDM at all, or at least provides a non-negotiable way for the user to opt out of it on a per-profile basis.
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Firefox does have profiles and has had for as long as I’ve needed them. For some reason they’ve always been hidden away and needed different args on start to change the profile being started, or the use of an extension to allow profile switching. I don’t use them anymore but from what I remember they worked well and were very isolated. Hopefully they’re using the current implementation and just making it more user fr…
As of a recent update, the Profile Manager is available as a startup option if you right click the ff icon (on gnome at least, i assume this was implemented cross platform)
Holding the "option" key is even somewhat of an UI convention on macOS to allow opening an alternative media library (e.g. for Photos, Music aka iTunes etc.), yet Firefox maps it to "startup in safe mode".
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honestly, container tabs are way more useful to me than profiles every were. I can have 3 different Gmail accounts and a bunch of AWS accounts open in the same browser, with different colours for each so that I can figure out which is which. How about it they continued to iterate on container tabs and make it possible to pattern match urls to containers without a 3rd party addon.
Oh yes, native matching would be faster and remove plenty of glitching opportunities if done right - you can often see the tab being reloaded into a proper container and taking twice as long to load as it should, and sometimes the tab ends up being duplicated. You also lose the tab's history when it switches between containers at the moment.