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With custom userchrome currently slated for getting axed, what I want most from Mozilla right now is a built in way to: 1. Hide the unnecessarily huge sidebar

With custom userchrome currently slated for getting axed, what I want most from Mozilla right now is a built in way to: 1. Hide the unnecessarily huge sidebar header (allowing addons to show their own arbitrary fully custom sidebars separate from the official sidebar system could also work) 2. Hide the default tab bar I currently run a vertical tab setup with Sidebery that looks great with custom userchrome, but the release that kills userchrome will make it too much of a mess to bother with a redundant tab bar and ugly space stealing sidebar header. Additionally, an “adaptive” theme that pulls colors from the OS like Sublime Text’s adaptive theme does would be greatly welcome. While it’s nice that Firefox comes with a dark theme (and that there are plenty of third party dark themes), it’s irritating that it’s always a different shade than the rest of the OS — both the background colors (which change dynamically with wallpaper-adaptive appearance enabled) and accent colors (which is user specified on both macOS and Windows and soon on Linux with GNOME too).

rasfincher 5y ago
Do you know when userchrome is going to be axed? I haven't seen anything about it.
- kitsunesoba 5y ago
  I don’t think there’s any set date, but it’s been deprecated for a while now. That’s why you have to go into about:config to turn it on. I’m sure it’ll make waves and be all over the front page of HN when the date is decided upon.
  - Ayesh 5y ago
    I'm somewhat active on r/FirefoxCSS, and have substantially customized my Firefox UI. Never saw any deprecation notices in the console, or a message on the subreddit. I highly doubt Firefox would ever drop support for userChrome. The themes aren't nearly as powerful and low level. The about:config toggles works as a footgun protection. I have yet to see any technical reason for them to drop support. That said, Firefox has dropped support for small yet useful features for no apparent reason, so there is a non-zero chance of them dropping support for userChrome customizations.
    - novok 5y ago
      I think it will happen mainly because it's a feature that is behind about:config.
    - rurp 5y ago
      Killing userChrome would be extremely on brand for Mozilla, so I'm sure it will happen at some point. Killing features beloved by a subset of power users appears to be a guiding design principle there. I've seen userChrome suggested as the fix for all kinds of UX regressions that Firefox pushed on users. But if Firefox is willing to go out of its way to break the UX in various ways, why would I ever trust it to maintain that support?
      - userbinator 5y ago
        Of course people are going to find ways around it, simply because the alternatives are still so much worse, but it definitely disappoints me to see that we have to be fighting this constant war with the developers at Mozilla who are continuing to oppress users while thinking that they're doing the right thing.

rasfincher 5y ago

Do you know when userchrome is going to be axed? I haven't seen anything about it.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
I don’t think there’s any set date, but it’s been deprecated for a while now. That’s why you have to go into about:config to turn it on. I’m sure it’ll make waves and be all over the front page of HN when the date is decided upon.
- Ayesh 5y ago
  I'm somewhat active on r/FirefoxCSS, and have substantially customized my Firefox UI. Never saw any deprecation notices in the console, or a message on the subreddit. I highly doubt Firefox would ever drop support for userChrome. The themes aren't nearly as powerful and low level. The about:config toggles works as a footgun protection. I have yet to see any technical reason for them to drop support. That said, Firefox has dropped support for small yet useful features for no apparent reason, so there is a non-zero chance of them dropping support for userChrome customizations.
  - novok 5y ago
    I think it will happen mainly because it's a feature that is behind about:config.
  - rurp 5y ago
    Killing userChrome would be extremely on brand for Mozilla, so I'm sure it will happen at some point. Killing features beloved by a subset of power users appears to be a guiding design principle there. I've seen userChrome suggested as the fix for all kinds of UX regressions that Firefox pushed on users. But if Firefox is willing to go out of its way to break the UX in various ways, why would I ever trust it to maintain that support?
    - userbinator 5y ago
      Of course people are going to find ways around it, simply because the alternatives are still so much worse, but it definitely disappoints me to see that we have to be fighting this constant war with the developers at Mozilla who are continuing to oppress users while thinking that they're doing the right thing.