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For me it's the weird new way of handling custom search engines that annoys me. Old workflow: tap the address bar, start typing your search term and then either

For me it's the weird new way of handling custom search engines that annoys me. Old workflow: tap the address bar, start typing your search term and then either press return to search with default search engine, or 2) tap one of the custom search engine buttons. In both cases, the search was executed directly. New Firefox: (go to settings to enable non-default search engines to be displayed) Best case: tap the address bar, enter your search term, press return or one of the non-default search engines and then return. The problem is that after adding a custom search engine, it ends up at the bottom of the list, meaning that in order to select it after typing my search terms, I have to scroll down, causing the keyboard to collapse. After selecting the right search engine firefox doesn't search automatically but rather I have to tap the address bar again and then press return. So, where in the past I had a "tap, type, tap, (search results)" experience, now it is "tap, type, scroll, tap (bottom of screen to select SE), tap (top of screen into the address bar to get the keyboard back), tap (bottom of screen [return key on keyboard]), search results" I very much would like to go back to the old behavior.

MaxikCZ 6y ago
The longer I use new firefox the more hatred I harbour for it. Opening new tab before: Tap tabs icon on top. Tap open new tab icon that appears in the same place(essentially slow doubletap) Now:tap tabs icon on top. Tap new tab thats on the other side of display (I tried getting used to having navigation bar down, but the pageload progress bar should have stayed top. When arriving to page and looking at the top its completely out of my peripheral vision) Opening certain links in app. Not only was outrageous that mozzila said "nah" to ability to always open certain links in app (in the name of seamless web experience), so when opening a reddit link on slow and highly datalimited connection I had to wait until page starts loading, then stop load to not consume data (but not too soon, or open in app icon doesnt show), and then click the icon to open link in app. Now I have to tap the menu first to get access to open in app icon. Forcing me to add another tap (or three if I want to stop the pageload too) everytime I want to do something that should be user settable in the first place. Also, can anyone explain me why closing the tab view now requires two swipes down instead of one? (Or one rly long one, granted, but still...) And the fact that the thubnail (main visual cue as to what tab it is) is now smaller is also getting on my nerves Some pages are super jitery when I try to zoom them as a main big image loads (and few seconds after). Wasnt issue before. There are more things that annoy me, but cant remember them in the heat of the moment, might edit this later. And ofcourse, cant use old version because they know best whats good for me. Im about to start looking for another browser soon, would welcome suggestions! (Ability to run ublock is neccesity)
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  you can scroll the tab list down but because it's a drawer UX once it hit bottom it auto closes for some reason the automatically most used link don't work, I've to pin websites to the new tab area, but then they're static, and have to be maintained it a page timeouts the description text is so long the retry button is out of screen, and that test doesn't scroll itself, and your stuck going into the hamburger menu because something as common as drag down from top too reload isn't supported here oh and the update also forgot all my settings about min and max font sizes
- gnomewascool 6y ago
  > Now:tap tabs icon on top. Tap new tab thats on the other side of display You can long-press the tabs icon on top, which is slightly more convenient. (No, it's not obvious.) > Im about to start looking for another browser soon, would welcome suggestions! (Ability to run ublock is neccesity) AFAICT the only other open-source android browser that supports ublock origin is Kiwi Browser.[0] It used to heavily lag behind upstream chromium, though — I don't know if that's changed. [0] https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  You can side-load Fennec using f-droid. I have it on my phone and it works well, though I've personally been pretty happy using preview.
kikokikokiko 6y ago
I'm pretty sure Mozilla screwed this process deliberately. At the end of the day, their only real source of income is Google paying to be the default search engine. So screw the users, this little annoying thing between them and their overlords... I even developed some addons for the old Firefox of the early 2000s, and nowadays I would NEVER, ever do anything to help the Mozilla foundation, such is the hate I feel towards their attitude from around 2015 on.
ars 6y ago
I get angry at Mozilla every single day for that horrible search behavior. It's virtually impossible to search for anything without sending your search string to google. Yah right Mozilla is "privacy focused". How are you supposed to use search autocomplete with any other search engine except your default?
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  In the nightly there's a setting called "Use New Search Behaviour" (in the secret settings menu, tab the Firefox logo five times in the about screen to enable it) that solves a lot of UI annoyances for me. It seems they're not done tweaking the search behaviour yet. Autocomplete works for me in the nightly (at least for DDG) so if it doesn't right now, it'll be fixed eventually.
  - solstice 6y ago
    There's a secret settings menu? Wow. In my non-nightly version it's totally empty though
    - jeroenhd 6y ago
      True, currently only nightly has settings there but Beta had some as well in a previous version I think.
- diminish 6y ago
  I totally deleted search engines in mobile firefox settings and finally added the duckduckgo to home page. I understand mozilla wants a spike of search revenue with settings reset, making address bar unusable.
- aasasd 6y ago
  > How are you supposed to use search autocomplete with any other search engine except your default? It's possible though exceedingly cumbersome. You select the search engine first, then type the query. If that doesn't work with the default settings of displaying the engines right away, it certainly does if you turn off ‘Show search engines’ in settings and go via the button. Wikipedia auto-completion finally works for me. However, I can't say that this UI is better than the old one for the default case of not caring about non-default-engine completion.
josteink 6y ago
> For me it's the weird new way of handling custom search engines that annoys me. It's like we used to have a "search bar" and when you wanted to "search" for something you used the "bar" designated for that purpose... And since this "bar" had a designated purpose, it was also super-easy to configure, at will, for that express purpose without things getting confusing, cumbersome or complex. It really was pretty damn good. But nonono. Chrome wanted to leak every single thing you typed into the location-bar straight to Google anyway, so clearly we should get rid of the search-bar and do that too. What on earth was the FF-team thinking?

MaxikCZ 6y ago

The longer I use new firefox the more hatred I harbour for it. Opening new tab before: Tap tabs icon on top. Tap open new tab icon that appears in the same place(essentially slow doubletap) Now:tap tabs icon on top. Tap new tab thats on the other side of display (I tried getting used to having navigation bar down, but the pageload progress bar should have stayed top. When arriving to page and looking at the top its completely out of my peripheral vision) Opening certain links in app. Not only was outrageous that mozzila said "nah" to ability to always open certain links in app (in the name of seamless web experience), so when opening a reddit link on slow and highly datalimited connection I had to wait until page starts loading, then stop load to not consume data (but not too soon, or open in app icon doesnt show), and then click the icon to open link in app. Now I have to tap the menu first to get access to open in app icon. Forcing me to add another tap (or three if I want to stop the pageload too) everytime I want to do something that should be user settable in the first place. Also, can anyone explain me why closing the tab view now requires two swipes down instead of one? (Or one rly long one, granted, but still...) And the fact that the thubnail (main visual cue as to what tab it is) is now smaller is also getting on my nerves Some pages are super jitery when I try to zoom them as a main big image loads (and few seconds after). Wasnt issue before. There are more things that annoy me, but cant remember them in the heat of the moment, might edit this later. And ofcourse, cant use old version because they know best whats good for me. Im about to start looking for another browser soon, would welcome suggestions! (Ability to run ublock is neccesity)

LoSboccacc 6y ago
you can scroll the tab list down but because it's a drawer UX once it hit bottom it auto closes for some reason the automatically most used link don't work, I've to pin websites to the new tab area, but then they're static, and have to be maintained it a page timeouts the description text is so long the retry button is out of screen, and that test doesn't scroll itself, and your stuck going into the hamburger menu because something as common as drag down from top too reload isn't supported here oh and the update also forgot all my settings about min and max font sizes
gnomewascool 6y ago
> Now:tap tabs icon on top. Tap new tab thats on the other side of display You can long-press the tabs icon on top, which is slightly more convenient. (No, it's not obvious.) > Im about to start looking for another browser soon, would welcome suggestions! (Ability to run ublock is neccesity) AFAICT the only other open-source android browser that supports ublock origin is Kiwi Browser.[0] It used to heavily lag behind upstream chromium, though — I don't know if that's changed. [0] https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src
DangitBobby 6y ago
You can side-load Fennec using f-droid. I have it on my phone and it works well, though I've personally been pretty happy using preview.

kikokikokiko 6y ago

I'm pretty sure Mozilla screwed this process deliberately. At the end of the day, their only real source of income is Google paying to be the default search engine. So screw the users, this little annoying thing between them and their overlords... I even developed some addons for the old Firefox of the early 2000s, and nowadays I would NEVER, ever do anything to help the Mozilla foundation, such is the hate I feel towards their attitude from around 2015 on.

ars 6y ago

I get angry at Mozilla every single day for that horrible search behavior. It's virtually impossible to search for anything without sending your search string to google. Yah right Mozilla is "privacy focused". How are you supposed to use search autocomplete with any other search engine except your default?

jeroenhd 6y ago
In the nightly there's a setting called "Use New Search Behaviour" (in the secret settings menu, tab the Firefox logo five times in the about screen to enable it) that solves a lot of UI annoyances for me. It seems they're not done tweaking the search behaviour yet. Autocomplete works for me in the nightly (at least for DDG) so if it doesn't right now, it'll be fixed eventually.
- solstice 6y ago
  There's a secret settings menu? Wow. In my non-nightly version it's totally empty though
  - jeroenhd 6y ago
    True, currently only nightly has settings there but Beta had some as well in a previous version I think.
diminish 6y ago
I totally deleted search engines in mobile firefox settings and finally added the duckduckgo to home page. I understand mozilla wants a spike of search revenue with settings reset, making address bar unusable.
aasasd 6y ago
> How are you supposed to use search autocomplete with any other search engine except your default? It's possible though exceedingly cumbersome. You select the search engine first, then type the query. If that doesn't work with the default settings of displaying the engines right away, it certainly does if you turn off ‘Show search engines’ in settings and go via the button. Wikipedia auto-completion finally works for me. However, I can't say that this UI is better than the old one for the default case of not caring about non-default-engine completion.

josteink 6y ago

> For me it's the weird new way of handling custom search engines that annoys me. It's like we used to have a "search bar" and when you wanted to "search" for something you used the "bar" designated for that purpose... And since this "bar" had a designated purpose, it was also super-easy to configure, at will, for that express purpose without things getting confusing, cumbersome or complex. It really was pretty damn good. But nonono. Chrome wanted to leak every single thing you typed into the location-bar straight to Google anyway, so clearly we should get rid of the search-bar and do that too. What on earth was the FF-team thinking?