For those of you who have upgraded to Firefox 23, you may find that there is now no option to disable the tab bar when you only have one tab open. To fix this problem, you can install this extension: Hide Tab Bar with One Tab So, anyone else get their upgrade? To be honest, I'm not yet noticing much of a difference aside from the tabs issue. Why would Mozilla remove that anyway?
Is disabling the tab bar important? I'm using Firefox 22.0, and the tab bar takes up less than one-quarter inch of vertical space at the top of my screen.
Different users have different tastes. If it makes him happy to eliminate that tab bar, what's the big deal? I'll keep it as I have five or six open at any given time anyways and it's convenient.
In my case, it's a feature that I used that was removed without preamble, and yes, I want as much screen real estate devoted to the webpage as possible. I don't need a tab in the way when I'm not using a tab. Bingo! I'm sure with other extensions things are fine, but if you didn't have any kind of tab extension before, it's noticeable. So I have this for people who didn't have a tab extension of any kind before, including myself.
It is beyond me why would anyone use a piece of crap like Firefox any more. I just upgraded to Firefox 17 and now the address bar no longer works. I type an URL, press enter, and it opens something completely different just like Chrome does. I think I am smart enough to know where I am going to, if I thought I was stupid I'd use Chrome which thinks for me. I chose a different browser for a reason, but now that Firegnome 3 is the same, I see no reason not to use Chrome instead. Of course, I can spend several hours of searching to figure out I have to disable browser.urlbar.autoFill in about:config, but I am an end user, not a hacker, why should I have to use about:config to use my browser?
Firefox is still a decent browser. It's still stable, and it's still fast. Chrome is okay, but I don't like how it's setup, it doesn't have some of the extensions I use, and it can be buggy just as often as Firefox. If I'm going to choose between browsers that will still give me occasional headaches, it's going to be the browser that offers me the best fit for my browsing style, and that's Firefox. Then there's the whole "Google is watching everything I do, and everywhere I go in this browser." Granted, anywhere you go on the internet can be tracked by Google, but I'd still rather not just hand over the keys. It takes you several hours to do a ten second search?
That is true, pardon my hyperbole. But it is sometimes incredibly annoying that they continue to copy Chrome's behaviour, and do so without even leaving setting in preferences to go back. So far, to use the Firefox I am used to, I've installed several extensions and edited numerous settings in about:config just to reset new features added, and some of those require to know what you're looking for (i.e. how they called the setting). Chrome's tracking can be disabled by editing three settings, at least on the Chromium builds, so you're safe from Google watching you (I should hope). So with these changes, the difference between the browsers gets smaller and smaller. And there is a portion of the users who chose Firefox not because they don't want to be watched, but because they like it better, and by not leaving easily accessible settings, those users are kinda left out. If I know what to search for, no. But how would I guess I have to search for inline autocomplete? Or that the address bar is not called a location bar, an address bar, but an URL bar (despite that it no longer speaks URL)? I crawled about:config for all other combinations, and didn't even think to search for "urlbar"
I do agree that Mozilla just seems to be winging the hell out of whatever they're doing (starting with the fast track updates), and I wish they'd stop doing it. What I'd like to see is another major competitor hit the browser market. We have Chrome, and Firefox. Opera isn't even close to being a contender, and Internet Explorer is a joke. There's a bunch of little guys, but they don't have a chance at the moment, and most of them only fill a niche that the bigger boys don't.
Some of the little guys are actually doing pretty well if you ask me. Konqueror and Midori come to mind. Konqueror has always been solid. I have particularly fond memories of using it before they even called it that. It used to be the only usable browser for me on *nix. The early Mozilla builds were still crashing and Netscape broke on Cyrillic input, so I was shocked to discover this little program which worked just fine. And they've kept it decent since. There's a good reason why Apple took it and made a browser out of it. I might still use it if it weren't for the lack of certain extensions I need and some quirks I can't get used to in the interface. And there's SeaMonkey which is a decent browser, and not a little guy by any chance. Opera should not be discounted based in its popularity either, I mostly don't use it because I tend to go for FLOSS programs, but that aside, I've always been pleased using it.
I thought for a oment this thread was about having 23 tabs open simultanenously and was going to tactfully suggest that you can only look at so much porn at once. Then I remembered oh yeah the firefox guys went crazy with their version numbering for some reason.
Indeed they did, and I think it's silly on their part. YellowSubmarine, I installed SeaMonkey, and it works just fine, though it's also a Mozilla product, which means they can just apply the same standards to it that they have to Firefox. I tried Midori, and it's okay, but it's a rather "rough" browser. I'm trying to warm myself up to Chrome again, doing a profile transfer so I have all of my bookmarks, saved data, and such. I may go over to Chrome as a primary solution. I've said it before, Chrome's not a bad browser, at all, it's just going to take a little getting used to if I make the switch. I've been using Firefox for 10 years, now. You get used to that after a while.
These rapid releases of Firefox are really pissing me off. From 21 to 22, they changed how clearing your history is done. With 21 & earlier, I hit Shift+Ctrl+H, "today" is highlighted and I hit the delete button. Ctrl+W and that window is closed. 22 has that window come up and the individual sites visited are now in the right -hand pane. Those idiots are running out of silly reasons to have a new version number every 3 weeks, so now they're changing shit just for the sake of changing shit. I downgraded back to 21 and I'm staying there. All that security risk stuff is bullshit anyway. I have ESET Smart Security/Anti-Virus plus Windows Defender. I tried a few other browsers a while back. Most were OK, but didn't have the behavior I have gotten used to in Firefox.
^ See, I'm the same way. I have things working smoothly just the way I like them, but Mozilla's just changing for change's sake. I say they put out a press release that says "Hey, we're in the version 20s now, we can feel like we're just as good as Chrome, so let's go ahead and stop this rapid release bullshit," to which I imagine there would be much cheering.
I miss the days when upgrading to version X felt like something. Minor updates should left to version y as in X.y . IE is on what version 10 and has been around a lot longer than firefox. And if you want maximum screen space just F11 and go full screen and the tabs will disapper off the top of the screen,