I've since switched to UnGoogled Chromium but might have to give this a shot just get TreeStyle Tabs back.
Firefox 57.0 Released
601–610 of 836 posts
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tree Style Tabs was the only blocker for me, and I was amazed that it was possible to recreate under the new API. I use both Firefox and Chrome, but for very different purposes. In Chrome, I have 20-50 tabs spread across two windows. In Firefox, 400+. Tree Style Tabs is necessary for how I use Firefox. My backup plan was staying on an older version, possibly indefinitely.
You're probably better off not updating yet. I'm unable to open my old session after the 57.0 update. 1283 tabs open in the session that I'm trying to open. FF56.0 the session opens in around 20 seconds. FF57.0 I let it try to open the session for 40 minutes and still wasn't finished. Not sure how it would perform if it would manage to open all the tabs but currently it's pretty much unusable for tab-heavy user. When…
Caveat: Of course your tabs should just open up in FF57.
But seriously, save all tabs as bookmarks. You're surely not using 97% of these tabs anyway.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it looks and feels much better than before.
I think the new design is absolutely horrible.
I actually agree with you on a few fronts.
1) by default tabs are now white on a white background, with the active tab only being a slightly darker grey.
2) Everything is much more crammed together (tabs and bookmarks toolbar especially) which makes sense on a small laptop monitor, but on my desktop is just annoying.
3) Dialog boxes to confirm closing of multiple tabs have white text on grey background. (?!)
4) Folder icons in bookmarks toolbar now have this retro black and grey design.
5) Tabs are at the top of the window with no gap, even when not maximized, making window dragging more difficult.
In many ways it feels like a throwback to much older designs.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#604Without Tab Mix Plus Firefox 57 is not an option for me. Does anyone know of an extension that allows multiple tab rows? Tab Trees and like extensions don't cut it. This is the main reason I never switched to Chrome. It's too bad FF had to abandon it's massive library of legacy extensions for this upgrade. The myriad of extensions is one of FF's main benefits over other browsers. I've happily accepted lower performan…
The toolbar API still lacks the required features to allow multirow. According to bugzilla discussions they might add it somewhere in 2018 :( You can also find contradictory statements from different developers like "this should be handled by addons" vs. "addons should manipulate only the web content not the browser itself" etc. It's a mess so maybe if we users push enough they might understand. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246706
From my point of view they should also provide mouse gestures because the WebExtensions work only after DOM is loaded and not having gestures on internal pages is a huge discomfort and user experience dissonance to put it mildly.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#605Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#606I use a dark theme on my Gnome desktop and in Firefox default form input elements follow the theme settings. The textarea I'm typing in here on HN is barely readable with this colors.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#607On first glance, it's got some pretty annoying loading animations for tabs.
Yes, even after disabling UI animations, the blue bar above tabs does not go away. Still looking for a way to disable this.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#608I just updated - WOW! What an improvement! Compared startup time and scrolling around some over-monetized sites; Behaves just as well as Chrome. Time for a switch again, I've missed FireFox since I started having Chrome as my default browser back in ~2011
Firefox is pretty similar looking as Chrome now. I liked FF before cause it looked different, now everyone just copies Chrome look.
Does it? As a matter of fact, it's much more similar to MS Edge. With dark theme it's super close in terms of look. Rectangular, beefy tabs.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree with this. I think it was a mistake on Mozilla's part not to put more effort into extension parity before the switch-over. But I'm relatively optimistic for the future.
Have you seen the Firefox backlog? If they'd gone for 100% API parity before the switch, we'd have had to wait another three years for e10s, and I don't know if that would have been survivable. I'm not happy about the situation as it stands, and I don't expect anyone else to be. I would be a lot more not happy about having to switch to Chrome because Firefox had become unusably slow - which it had already more or les…
> I have a hard time seeing how any of that would be preferable.
Not to you. But not everyone cares about the same things. I have used Firefox as my main browser ever since it split off from Mozilla Suite. Personally, I have never, in the whole history of Firefox had a problem with its speed. At various points I might have had some problems with stability, some problems with compatibility and some problems with memory usage. But speed is just not an issue for me. Even in the "slowest" browsers most of the time is spent on network latency anyway. But I have, over the years, customized my Firefox experience to some degree. I do not do anything crazy, I don't have a zillion of extensions, but I am really used to the few I do have. And this release broke those with no sufficient replacement. And the release was distributed as automatic upgrade, so I was not even asked if I want to upgrade. A warning of some sort would be nice before breaking so much functionality. And now that the upgrade happened, there is no clear way on how to revert it. A quick google search tells me that downgrading runs a chance of corrupting my profile. I might have to risk it anyway, since after using FF57 for a day at work, I feel that my productivity and workflow are seriously impaired. At this point I am not sure whether I should stay with the LTR version of FF, switch to an FF derivative like Waterfox or change browsers altogether. The FF57 experience is so vastly different from my pre-57 workflow that I might as well be using a different browser already. There were important features to FF that kept me a loyal user through many years. Those features are gone now.
Re: Firefox 57.0 Released
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope time will prove you right. FWIW, Firefox 57 is currently looking like a net loss in terms of security and privacy. A significant number of the extensions people have previously used for blocking or restricting potentially intrusive or dangerous behaviours seem to have been lost, in some cases without equivalent WebExtension alternatives being available. If you're arguing that 57 is now more secure and better f…
> FWIW, Firefox 57 is currently looking like a net loss in terms of security and privacy. A significant number of the extensions people have previously used for blocking or restricting potentially intrusive or dangerous behaviours seem to have been lost, in some cases without equivalent WebExtension alternatives being available. First, I'd like to put things in context. When you write "Firefox 57 is currently looking…
I find it interesting that your instinctive view of privacy seems to be about restricting add-ons. That's certainly a useful thing to do, as we can see from some of the recent sell-outs that have meant once-trusted extensions silently became privacy loopholes. Even so, personally I'm more worried about the privacy implications of tracking and other covert behaviours by web sites/apps, and that's where the extensions you could run with Firefox really came into their own.
Someone has helpfully made a spreadsheet showing many old extensions and possible 57-compatible replacements, with notes on where things are a full replacement, there is limited functionality, there are known privacy issues, etc. I can't immediately find it again, so apologies for the lack of link, but have been references posted in some of the major online forums today, so perhaps you'll come across it. One of the things that was striking was that a lot of the extensions relating to blocking content or selectively toggling behaviours like running JS seem to have broken and not to have full replacements. I know that NoScript was a big one (though I've seen reports this evening that a 57-friendly version has just been released in that particular case). Quite a few ad-blockers and similar tools also seemed to have been affected, along with extensions like Greasemonkey that allow running customised JS and some analogous stylesheet customisers, and a few aimed at controlling the use of cookies and other data storage mechanisms.
For completeness, let me also say that the internal security improvements are all welcome, as is the continued separation of search from address bar and general lack of trying to spy on everything happening in the browser that seems to be ever-increasing in certain other quarters.