8 ms·

I love the new Firefox, but the fact that it killed my favourite tabtree plugin, and the alternative is less nice + plus you have to do weird css hacks to make

I love the new Firefox, but the fact that it killed my favourite tabtree plugin, and the alternative is less nice + plus you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing. I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one?

Fnoord 9y ago
> I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one? For security reasons, yes. For people who don't want to say bye to old extensions which are not (or cannot) be ported to 57+ there is the option to stick with 52 ESR version (Extended Support Release). According to Mozilla FAQ [1] this version gets obselete in march 8 by Firefox 59 ESR. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/
- baby 9y ago
  Do you know how to install Tree Style Tabs for that version though? It looks like the plugin page only offer the last version.
  - shabble 9y ago
    There's a 'Version History - See all versions' link further down the page that points at the previous releases. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... and look through teh list til you find something that supports FF52+ I'm a little concerned that any bugs/holes in extensions will be left open though, since it's very unlikely the extension devs are going to be backporting features/fixes.
- thg 9y ago
  Waterfox[0] is another option. It's based on Firefox, integrates patches from upstream and will continue to support the old extension system. [0]: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
- lizzard 9y ago
  52 ESR will still be supported until mid-June. It is supported for two release cycles after the release of 59 ESR.
jchw 9y ago
It's been covered to death, but it's a vastly different approach that is closer to what other browsers provide, allowing many extensions to share the vast majority of their code across Edge, Firefox and Chrome (and descendants.) It also is highly asynchronous, which has become more important as Firefox has become multi-process and multi-threaded, and more secure, both from a usability standpoint (users have more control over add-ons) and from a low level standpoint (extensions are more 'sandboxed' than before.) There's more advantages but needless to say there's no turning back, so hopefully the missing features needed to implement what people want will arrive with time. As for me, I'm just happy to be running Firefox as a daily driver again.
DiThi 9y ago
The css hack is probably temporary, and for me it was easy to add works very well (it looks exactly the same as before to me). Other than that, what else is "less nice"?
scrollaway 9y ago
I think part of the problem is that Firefox doesn't have flexible, high quality tabs. Vertical tabs, tab trees etc were really popular extensions. Personally I'd be happy to see Firefox have tab feature chrome natively has: - Scroll wheel to move between tabs (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812) - Ctrl+1 (2, 3, ...) to jump to a tab. Ctrl+0 to jump to the last tab. [Edit: This works with Alt, nvm!] - Multi-select tab management (Ctrl+Click, Shift+Click to select, drag, snap and move multiple tabs) Back when Firefox initially got a lot of market share, its killer feature was tabs. It almost feels like they forgot that :(
- glandium 9y ago
  Alt+1, Alt+2, etc. jump to a tab in Firefox. Alt+9 is the last tab.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - scrollaway 9y ago
    Thanks!
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- noisem4ker 9y ago
  Chrome parity would be good, but I think that with little effort Mozilla could make a tremendous improvement: - Multiple-row tab bar. Such an obvious improvement over tabs scrolling off the screen sides or squashing them like Chrome does, I don't know why it's not being considered. It's already been done by Tab Mix Plus (or was it Classic Theme Restorer?). They only need to copy it and polish it a little.
  - baby 9y ago
    It's not been considered because Tree Style Tab just is just the best solution to all these problems.
DCKing 9y ago
Reading these recurring discussions, there is a bunch of Firefox users that used FF's extensions to change everything about the browser. You could change Firefox to be a different user experience entirely. But this has become way more limited. For users that are okay with the common way browsers work, all this new stuff is great though. Firefox Quantum is so fast and it still delivers all of the mainstream add-on functionality. I'm firmly in the second camp. Give me any browser that I can install uBlock in (and hide most buttons except back and forward), and I'm good to go. With Quantum, I switched over all my browsing to Firefox. Including on Android, which hasn't even had most the Quantum improvements yet (its UI has just gotten a much needed update).
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  There's at least a third camp. Those who used extensions and have a degraded performance now too - I'm wondering if all the speed increases people are talking about are only available on the most modern hardware? It takes 12s after launch for my newtab to populate with icons -- which incidentally I dislike compared to the previous page thumbnails -- there's regular stalling when it fails to respond. I'm prepared to give some space to get acclimated to new versions, there were font problems on lots of pages (including newtab) for me which I've worked through. But I'm failing to see any benefit yet - even then turning the icon super bright has annoyed me ...
  - Sean1708 9y ago
    > only available on the most modern hardware? Obviously there's something slowing down your Firefox, but it's definitely not to do with how modern your hardware is because 57 is noticeably faster than the previous version on my 2011 MacBook.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      There is something slowing it down, but it wasn't under 56. Might be a localised issue, that's always possible.
aldanor 9y ago
TreeStyleTab? The new (2.*) version works quite ok though? Ditto re: weird css hacks to hide the top bar.
baby 9y ago
Tree Style Tab has been awfuly slow for me :( Why doesn't it get prime support?
atomicfiredoll 9y ago
I had previously gone back to Firefox for Panorama (Tab Groups.) But, the feature has seemed to live in a state of such flux that I eventually found myself falling back on my habit of using Chrome. Iirc, they decided to move it out of the browser and in to an add-on, which is frustrating in light of the recent changes. Don't get me wrong, I'm for the migration to WebExtensions, but it's annoying that there wasn't a better path for a feature that used to be a part of the browser. Here's hoping most of this will be resolved in the upcoming months.
nachtigall 9y ago
> you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing Firefox plans to add an API for dynamically hiding the tabbar. You can follow progress here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447

Fnoord 9y ago

> I'm guessing the new extension system is a lot less flexible than the old one? For security reasons, yes. For people who don't want to say bye to old extensions which are not (or cannot) be ported to 57+ there is the option to stick with 52 ESR version (Extended Support Release). According to Mozilla FAQ [1] this version gets obselete in march 8 by Firefox 59 ESR. [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

baby 9y ago
Do you know how to install Tree Style Tabs for that version though? It looks like the plugin page only offer the last version.
- shabble 9y ago
  There's a 'Version History - See all versions' link further down the page that points at the previous releases. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... and look through teh list til you find something that supports FF52+ I'm a little concerned that any bugs/holes in extensions will be left open though, since it's very unlikely the extension devs are going to be backporting features/fixes.
thg 9y ago
Waterfox[0] is another option. It's based on Firefox, integrates patches from upstream and will continue to support the old extension system. [0]: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/ https://www.waterfoxproject.org/
lizzard 9y ago
52 ESR will still be supported until mid-June. It is supported for two release cycles after the release of 59 ESR.

jchw 9y ago

It's been covered to death, but it's a vastly different approach that is closer to what other browsers provide, allowing many extensions to share the vast majority of their code across Edge, Firefox and Chrome (and descendants.) It also is highly asynchronous, which has become more important as Firefox has become multi-process and multi-threaded, and more secure, both from a usability standpoint (users have more control over add-ons) and from a low level standpoint (extensions are more 'sandboxed' than before.) There's more advantages but needless to say there's no turning back, so hopefully the missing features needed to implement what people want will arrive with time. As for me, I'm just happy to be running Firefox as a daily driver again.

DiThi 9y ago

The css hack is probably temporary, and for me it was easy to add works very well (it looks exactly the same as before to me). Other than that, what else is "less nice"?

scrollaway 9y ago

I think part of the problem is that Firefox doesn't have flexible, high quality tabs. Vertical tabs, tab trees etc were really popular extensions. Personally I'd be happy to see Firefox have tab feature chrome natively has: - Scroll wheel to move between tabs (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1285812) - Ctrl+1 (2, 3, ...) to jump to a tab. Ctrl+0 to jump to the last tab. [Edit: This works with Alt, nvm!] - Multi-select tab management (Ctrl+Click, Shift+Click to select, drag, snap and move multiple tabs) Back when Firefox initially got a lot of market share, its killer feature was tabs. It almost feels like they forgot that :(

glandium 9y ago
Alt+1, Alt+2, etc. jump to a tab in Firefox. Alt+9 is the last tab.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- scrollaway 9y ago
  Thanks!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
noisem4ker 9y ago
Chrome parity would be good, but I think that with little effort Mozilla could make a tremendous improvement: - Multiple-row tab bar. Such an obvious improvement over tabs scrolling off the screen sides or squashing them like Chrome does, I don't know why it's not being considered. It's already been done by Tab Mix Plus (or was it Classic Theme Restorer?). They only need to copy it and polish it a little.
- baby 9y ago
  It's not been considered because Tree Style Tab just is just the best solution to all these problems.

DCKing 9y ago

Reading these recurring discussions, there is a bunch of Firefox users that used FF's extensions to change everything about the browser. You could change Firefox to be a different user experience entirely. But this has become way more limited. For users that are okay with the common way browsers work, all this new stuff is great though. Firefox Quantum is so fast and it still delivers all of the mainstream add-on functionality. I'm firmly in the second camp. Give me any browser that I can install uBlock in (and hide most buttons except back and forward), and I'm good to go. With Quantum, I switched over all my browsing to Firefox. Including on Android, which hasn't even had most the Quantum improvements yet (its UI has just gotten a much needed update).

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
There's at least a third camp. Those who used extensions and have a degraded performance now too - I'm wondering if all the speed increases people are talking about are only available on the most modern hardware? It takes 12s after launch for my newtab to populate with icons -- which incidentally I dislike compared to the previous page thumbnails -- there's regular stalling when it fails to respond. I'm prepared to give some space to get acclimated to new versions, there were font problems on lots of pages (including newtab) for me which I've worked through. But I'm failing to see any benefit yet - even then turning the icon super bright has annoyed me ...
- Sean1708 9y ago
  > only available on the most modern hardware? Obviously there's something slowing down your Firefox, but it's definitely not to do with how modern your hardware is because 57 is noticeably faster than the previous version on my 2011 MacBook.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    There is something slowing it down, but it wasn't under 56. Might be a localised issue, that's always possible.

aldanor 9y ago

TreeStyleTab? The new (2.*) version works quite ok though? Ditto re: weird css hacks to hide the top bar.

baby 9y ago

Tree Style Tab has been awfuly slow for me :( Why doesn't it get prime support?

atomicfiredoll 9y ago

I had previously gone back to Firefox for Panorama (Tab Groups.) But, the feature has seemed to live in a state of such flux that I eventually found myself falling back on my habit of using Chrome. Iirc, they decided to move it out of the browser and in to an add-on, which is frustrating in light of the recent changes. Don't get me wrong, I'm for the migration to WebExtensions, but it's annoying that there wasn't a better path for a feature that used to be a part of the browser. Here's hoping most of this will be resolved in the upcoming months.

nachtigall 9y ago

> you have to do weird css hacks to make it look seemless and hide the top tab bar is very disappointing Firefox plans to add an API for dynamically hiding the tabbar. You can follow progress here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447