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> I still use Firefox, but I'm getting more and more irritated against it. I had to search the web in order to change the tile of empty tabs (no buttons, no con

by lkbm 7y ago

> I still use Firefox, but I'm getting more and more irritated against it. I had to search the web in order to change the tile of empty tabs (no buttons, no context menu, only drag-n-drop from bookmarks). Who designed such an unguessable interface? Whenever I hear people complain about the settings being impossible to figure out, I always open them up and try. So I opened settings, which has a search input at the top, and search "new tab". It has an option to choose "Firefox Home (Default)" or "Blank page" for new tabs, in the section titled "New Windows and Tabs". (With windows, you can choose "Custom URLs" as well). But you don't want blank. Hmmm. So I open a new tab. Every section has a dropdown menu with a "Remove Section" option (it also has "Manage Settings" links that takes me to the preference page I was on initially.) Drag-and-drop from bookmarks, though, is stumping me. For what it's worth, it's also stumping me in Chrome. I don't think I've ever tried Vivaldi. For the most part, basic customization seems intuitive and straightforward. If there is a way to customize by dragging your bookmarks onto the page, though, it isn't intuitive and straightforward. Not sure if that should fall under edge-case customizations (which I expect to be hidden). It is annoying when things I consider obviously the correct design are treated as obscure things few would want, but I recognize that some of them truly are. EDIT: I will say, though, that it seems really strange that "New window" has a custom URL option, but new tab doesn't. I guess they're concerned about people setting slow new tab URLs and then being frustrated.

ken 7y ago
I tried Firefox here just now to see if it's gotten any better since I last tried. I open the preferences window. Well, not quite. Instead of a preferences window like every other application I've ever used, it's some sort of webpage which opens in a new tab in the same window as the webpage I'm browsing. The controls are all completely custom, and the layout looks nothing like any preferences window I've seen since Netscape. Also, the Firefox UI doesn't use the same language as the rest of the OS (which is English), or even the webpage content displayed by Firefox (also English). It's all displayed in the language I tried to learn last year, for some reason. In the search box at top, typing "language" finds nothing, and typing the word for language in the language I'm seeing shows a fancy control with "English (United States)" at the top. There's nothing I see which would indicate why the UI is not English. I google for "how to change firefox ui language", and all the pages I find say to set it here, and restart. Thus ends another adventure in attempting to use Firefox, and it ends the same way all my adventures do: nothing is standard, everything is custom, and so it doesn't work right. This time, I didn't even get far enough along to complain that all the keyboard shortcuts are broken. Dear Mozilla: for Firefox to win me back, it has to be a good web browser. Stop trying to be an operating system. I already have one of those. "Look/act like every other application" is the correct answer in every case.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > Well, not quite. Instead of a preferences window like every other application I've ever used, it's some sort of webpage which opens in a new tab in the same window as the webpage I'm browsing. Well, I can think of one other program that puts its settings in a web page and a tab: Chrome. Hope you're not using that...
- yoasif_ 7y ago
  > In the search box at top, typing "language" finds nothing, and typing the word for language in the language I'm seeing shows a fancy control with "English (United States)" at the top. There's nothing I see which would indicate why the UI is not English. I google for "how to change firefox ui language", and all the pages I find say to set it here, and restart. At least for now, you should download the correct language from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/
idoubtit 7y ago
Firefox must have realized that their UI for handling "top sites" was bad. In ESR v60.7, the Tiles/topSites block has a menu where the first entry is "+ Add Top Site". This was missing before. In fact, this problem was not directly mine, it was a request from my parents. I made my parents (nearly 70 years old) use Firefox. After an upgrade of their FF, they lost their usual homepage. In empty tabs their custom links were replaced by the dynamical list of their most visited sites. At the time of change, most tiles were not even relevant because their recent activity was not representative. They were annoyed, tried to fix it, and failed. There was no contextual help, and searching technical info is hard for non technical persons, especially if they don't understand English. So my parents called me for help. On my next visit to them, I tried to do it myself, but did not manage to guess how it worked. DDG helped. After this episode, I wondered if FF was the right browser for them. It seems that Chromium's UI is more stable, and that is important for ageing people.

by lkbm 7y ago

ken 7y ago

I tried Firefox here just now to see if it's gotten any better since I last tried. I open the preferences window. Well, not quite. Instead of a preferences window like every other application I've ever used, it's some sort of webpage which opens in a new tab in the same window as the webpage I'm browsing. The controls are all completely custom, and the layout looks nothing like any preferences window I've seen since Netscape. Also, the Firefox UI doesn't use the same language as the rest of the OS (which is English), or even the webpage content displayed by Firefox (also English). It's all displayed in the language I tried to learn last year, for some reason. In the search box at top, typing "language" finds nothing, and typing the word for language in the language I'm seeing shows a fancy control with "English (United States)" at the top. There's nothing I see which would indicate why the UI is not English. I google for "how to change firefox ui language", and all the pages I find say to set it here, and restart. Thus ends another adventure in attempting to use Firefox, and it ends the same way all my adventures do: nothing is standard, everything is custom, and so it doesn't work right. This time, I didn't even get far enough along to complain that all the keyboard shortcuts are broken. Dear Mozilla: for Firefox to win me back, it has to be a good web browser. Stop trying to be an operating system. I already have one of those. "Look/act like every other application" is the correct answer in every case.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> Well, not quite. Instead of a preferences window like every other application I've ever used, it's some sort of webpage which opens in a new tab in the same window as the webpage I'm browsing. Well, I can think of one other program that puts its settings in a web page and a tab: Chrome. Hope you're not using that...
yoasif_ 7y ago
> In the search box at top, typing "language" finds nothing, and typing the word for language in the language I'm seeing shows a fancy control with "English (United States)" at the top. There's nothing I see which would indicate why the UI is not English. I google for "how to change firefox ui language", and all the pages I find say to set it here, and restart. At least for now, you should download the correct language from https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

idoubtit 7y ago

Firefox must have realized that their UI for handling "top sites" was bad. In ESR v60.7, the Tiles/topSites block has a menu where the first entry is "+ Add Top Site". This was missing before. In fact, this problem was not directly mine, it was a request from my parents. I made my parents (nearly 70 years old) use Firefox. After an upgrade of their FF, they lost their usual homepage. In empty tabs their custom links were replaced by the dynamical list of their most visited sites. At the time of change, most tiles were not even relevant because their recent activity was not representative. They were annoyed, tried to fix it, and failed. There was no contextual help, and searching technical info is hard for non technical persons, especially if they don't understand English. So my parents called me for help. On my next visit to them, I tried to do it myself, but did not manage to guess how it worked. DDG helped. After this episode, I wondered if FF was the right browser for them. It seems that Chromium's UI is more stable, and that is important for ageing people.