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Firefox 29

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Re: Firefox 29

#491

Post by sedatk »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #79
dilap wrote: post #63

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pr…

Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. Exactly how I like it, I HATE getting search results when I make a type-o, or try to go to an internal site and forget to specify http://

it happens only when you omit or mistype the gTLD (the smallest part of the address). otherwise chrome shows "website not found" page.

unless you make more gTLD typos than your search queries, the mechanism works great.

Re: Firefox 29

#492

Post by rb12345 »

azakai wrote: post #411
CyberShadow wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, Mozilla is working on it: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis You can track the E10s team's progress through their weekly meeting notes: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/E10s-meeting-notes

You can also try it right now on Nightly builds. There's even a menu option ("open new e10s window").

You can enable it in Firefox 29 if you like (about:config, browser.tabs.remote=true, restart). I noticed though that navigating to live bookmarks crashed the browser, so ended up disabling it.

Re: Firefox 29

#493

Post by insky »

dilap wrote: post #63

I love Firefox -- for what it's done, what it represents, and what it helps guard against. I have fond memories of those early versions of Firefox (nee Firebird) that busted open the IE monopoly, and where hands-down the best browser going at the time. But it's never felt very good on the Mac to me, and it still doesn't. Here's a few early thoughts on this release, from the perspective of a happy Safari user, w/ a pr…

On Nightly on Linux that fade in and out isn't there on the hamburger menu. Unless that's because my GFX setup doesn't support it. Perhaps it has been addressed in a further release.

Re: Firefox 29

#494

Post by insky »

NotOscarWilde wrote: post #371
ExpiredLink wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't "stop breaking everything" because they feel the irresistible urge to constantly "improve" and "reinvent" the UI until it becomes unusable (a.k.a. the Linux desktop syndrome). BTW, the refresh button is in the 'menu config', you can drag it to the old place. The stop button and other 'classic' buttons are gone. Meaningless 'browser.tabs.onTop' prepares you for your transition to Chrome. FF is so frustratin…

> "improve" and "reinvent" I don't remember any change in the UI in the last two years that was not copying what Chrome does. So "improve" may be right, but hardly "reinvent".

That's pretty much how I feel.

I was thinking for a second the whole UI might get a shake up, or rather, there would be innovative useful functions, that would set the browser apart.

The bookmark and history managers are still pretty aweful. Some of the UI has been polished, but certainly not all.

The refresh button irritates me, because for some reason it feels smaller.

I feel the whole tab placement is a little moot, as it should follow the OSs style. Quite why we haven't good tab management/redesign/overhaul in modern window managers/desktops yet is beyond me.

Personally I'd rather a tool menu. And a location/search bar, a bookmark manager, and a browser pane. All pretty much separate.

Text input would be a nice centralised overlay/popup as and when needed, which I could make huge or small. In other words help with web forms. Android's Chrome browser kind of does that. In opera I used to be able to float the address bar, but it lost it's 'awesome' qualities - autocomplete etc.

It's OS/UX territory, why reinvent controls and the way we interact with each application? The overall UX ends up feeling like a right hodge-podge.

Re: Firefox 29

#495

Post by DSMan195276 »

shmerl wrote: post #208
DSMan195276 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same. I recommend you grab Classic Theme Restorer. I'm not sure how to modify the URL bar (Which is the issue with the bookmarks and reload button), but the add-on will allow you to move the menu and adjust other various settings.

Thanks, that's much better. Now I just need to figure out how to reduce space between toolbar buttons (it's way too wide). Startup time with this add-on is pretty long though.

I didn't notice any start-time issues, but I only have Firefox 29 currently installed on a higher-end laptop so that might be part of it. I'll be interested to see how this fairs when I put 29 on a netbook that I have (Intel Atom, single core).

I had the same gripe you did, if you grab 'classic toolbar buttons', it'll give you the smaller layout with the 'enable small buttons' option on.

Re: Firefox 29

#496

Post by limpangel »

tagawa wrote: post #454
habosa wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not too many critical extensions, but a few: Motorola Connect, Google Hangouts, and Hacker News Enhancement Suite. The real reason I stick with Chrome is because it works so well with my Google accounts and syncs everything I do to my phone. I could partially move to Firefox if I could find a good way to do bi-directional bookmarks sync between the browsers. I tried XMarks but it would totally fuck up all of my Chrom…

Thanks. I'm also looking into bookmark sync. They have Firefox Sync ( https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/sync/ ) but I haven't tried it out yet.

I have been using Sync ever since it was introduced in FF(4 I think?!?) and I have to say it worked really well for me.

Not only does it sync your usual suspects bookmarks/passwords/history, but it also syncs your installed addons and their settings (if supported). For example it syncs AdBlockPlus's list of whitelisted websites.

Another neat Sync feature is the possibility of seeing the open tabs on all your synced devices. For example I am looking right now on my phone and I can see the add HN comment tab in the mobile version of FF (Android).

On top of that the Sync server is open source so basically you could deploy it yourself if you have privacy concerns, although your data is encrypted before it is uploaded to the server anyway.

Re: Firefox 29

#497

Post by abus »

yaeger wrote: post #476
abus wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way as you but try putting them in the "bookmarks toolbar". It works similarly and it's quite nice to have everything at the top of the screen after a while.

The bookmarks toolbar is already used by... bookmarks. Who would have known? We shouldn't have to find new places for things that display status just because Mozilla takes away their designated space. "No more status bar. Hey, why don't you stick that in the bookmark bar. You don't use that for bookmarks, do you?"

It's a workaround.

Re: Firefox 29

#498

Post by spingsprong »

CompuHacker wrote: post #207

Where the hell is my forward button? Why does browser.tabs.onTop not mean anything anymore? Where's my refresh button? On the... right side, inside the Awesome Bar? Why isn't a separate button? Why can't I put the Home button back beside the Back button? Why is the back button permanently part of the Awesome Bar? Why does the Awesome Bar change shape and size to allow the forward button to exist? Why isn't the forwar…

There's an add-on called "Classic theme restorer". If you install that and fiddle about with its settings, you can get Firefox 99% of the way to how it was.

Re: Firefox 29

#499

Post by spingsprong »

Siecje wrote: post #434
CompuHacker wrote: post #207

Where the hell is my forward button? Why does browser.tabs.onTop not mean anything anymore? Where's my refresh button? On the... right side, inside the Awesome Bar? Why isn't a separate button? Why can't I put the Home button back beside the Back button? Why is the back button permanently part of the Awesome Bar? Why does the Awesome Bar change shape and size to allow the forward button to exist? Why isn't the forwar…

I didn't know browser.tabs.onTop still worked up to FF28. I wish I had been using it since they removed the setting for it.

Install the "Classic theme restorer" add-on and fiddle about with its settings, and you can pretty easily get your tabs back where they belong.

Re: Firefox 29

#500

Post by nailer »

chc wrote: post #276
nailer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Separate address and search bars is old-fashioned. As a user, I don't want to have to make this distinction, and it's hard to imagine most users-on-street wouldn't find this confusing > Use the customizer. Most users-on-street don't want to customise either. Edit: The moderation on this is baffling. Does anyone genuinely believe users want to customise to achieve reasonable defaults? HN should ban new users from m…

> Most users-on-street don't want to customise either. Since we're talking about one person's preference rather than the results of a user study, that hardly seems relevant.

I suspect the 'people find a single entry field for both search and URLs to be a simpler' could be proved by a study.
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