14 ms·

Making Firefox's right-click not suck with about:config

351 points by mmsc 7mo ago

shablulman 7mo ago
[flagged]
wvenable 7mo ago
> Why do all of the above have ...? No clue. The "..." convention is used when menu options open a dialog box rather than just immediately doing the action.
- paulddraper 7mo ago
  +1 This has been true for, what, 30 years?
  - plorkyeran 7mo ago
    At least 40 years, since it was already present in Windows 1.0 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-SuAaYDZIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-SuAaYDZIk for an example).
    - marssaxman 7mo ago
      The original Macintosh software also did this, back in 1984. From the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, published in 1986: "The application dims an item when the user can't choose it. If the user moves the pointer over a dimmed item, that item isn't highlighted." There may well have been prior art, but that's as far back as my knowledge goes.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
- TonyTrapp 7mo ago
  Specifically, it means that more information is required to complete the task (e.g. requesting the filename for saving a file). If the action is literally about opening that dialog (e.g. something like "Show Properties"), the ellipsis is not needed.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    The practical use is that the user knows they will still have the opportunity to back out of the operation, and not commit to it by the first click. I don’t think “will need more input” is that useful as an information by itself.
    - hunter2_ 7mo ago
      At first I was going to say that the opportunity to back out and the need for more input are identical: if the dialog consists only of a button to proceed and a button to back out, the user needs to choose one of those as input, and eliminating that need for input means eliminating the opportunity to back out. But now I'm thinking that a need and an opportunity are very distinct. For example, browsers used to present a Save dialog during a download: was there a need for input? No, accepting the default filename works, and based on that, they no longer offer the opportunity to choose a filename. Thus, "..." indicates the opportunity, even if there is no true need.
      - layer8 7mo ago
        In addition, if you consider a "Print" dialog, it would be conceivable that it only provides a print preview, but no further inputs, and has only command buttons "Print" and "Cancel". In that case, I still think the menu item should be "Print…" with an ellipsis, despite the lack of further input. Conversely, you might conceivably have a command that requires additional input, but where the dialog box taking the input doesn't offer the option to cancel the operation. In that case, I would consider an ellipsis misleading, even though a lack of ellipsis might be confusing as well if the command doesn't make sense without additional input.
- ndespres 7mo ago
  Some of these complaints feel like they aren’t specific to Firefox at all, but are UI conventions that used to be ubiquitous and no longer are, much to the chagrin of those of us of a certain age. He also rails against menu items that are greyed out and unusable, where to me that’s a very useful indicator that the action isn’t available here but that I’m looking in the right place. When I want to click a menu item and find it greyed out, that tells me something. But when I want to click a menu item and it’s not there at all, I’m confused. Did a developer move it somewhere else? Did the name of the action change? Am I losing my touch?
  - vanschelven 7mo ago
    Indeed both the "..." and "disabling over removing" were in the windows 95 UI manual
    - jrmg 7mo ago
      Also macOS in its various guises, for decades.
    - quesera 7mo ago
      They were original in the 1984 Macintosh OS (before it had a name), and published in the first edition (1987) of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Just two of the things Microsoft copied successfully. :)
      - zinekeller 7mo ago
        Eh, they were definitely from Xerox (so it would be unclear since that both Windows and the Mac System Software derived some of their UI elements from Xerox experiments)
        quesera 7mo ago
        The Alto? I don't think that's accurate. Only 2000 devices ever shipped, and I used one at my parent's workplace back in the day. But I would have been far too young to remember that detail. It may well have been kicking around PARC before Jobs made the deal with Xerox. But I can't find any images that show either of those UI elements, pre-Lisa.
- lucianbr 7mo ago
  This particular line serves only to highlight the author's limited knowledge. I wonder what they meant by it. Also greyed out options have a point, they only seem "fucking useless" if you don't know it.
  - mmsc 7mo ago
    You're right, I didn't know about what that "..." meant. It's kind of obvious what I meant though: "I don't know why all of these have ..." I've added that information to the post. The greyed out options have no point because 99.99% of the links I click are already clean. Like so many of the other privacy enhancing options, just provide an option to "clean links automatically."
    - plorkyeran 7mo ago
      Link "cleaning" will sometimes just break a link entirely since it's a heuristic-based thing that removes query parameters that appear to be nonfunctional tracking parameters. Doing it by default would be setting up users for the occasional very bad experience.
    - lucianbr 7mo ago
      Did you really make a blog post to tell the world that you don't know some things? That's not usual. If that is true, the only conclusion is that you should learn those things, and I'm not sure what I am supposed to get from reading it. I think, or at least the way it reads to me is that you believe Firefox devs are wrong. This is what it looks like you meant. You believe the "..." is wrong to be there, and it should be removed. Which I do not agree with, and in any case we should first consider the "..." conventional meaning and only then we can maybe get to the conclusion that it should be removed. That it should be removed because you don't know why it is there is not reasonable, not to me. In my humble opinion you should reflect a bit more on what you actually meant to say by this and also other points in the post. > The greyed out options have no point because 99.99% of the links I click are already clean. Frankly that's nonsense. They obviously have a point, and the fact you disagree with the point is something completely different. Firefox isn't specifically made for you. I appreciate the greyed out options in general, it helps me know they are there and that they may become available under some conditions.
- CamperBob2 7mo ago
  The article's author doesn't appear to be particularly tech-literate. I flagged the post on the grounds that it doesn't meet HN standards in general.
  - Joshuas_Mom 7mo ago
    [flagged]
  - paulddraper 7mo ago
    It's strange, because they do know about:config....
- Zopieux 7mo ago
  I feel old. Every single millennial versed into computers knows about this convention, which I think probably comes from Windows, back when they paid their employees to care.
  - Narishma 7mo ago
    It was already there in the original Mac, and is probably older than that.
- eviks 7mo ago
  How would a user learn about this convention?
varun_ch 7mo ago
It is fantastic that Firefox gives us the benefit of choice though. Maybe Chrome or whatever has better UX taste out of the box, but good luck changing anything if you disagree. I wrote a blog post about how I customized Firefox exactly to what I wanted https://varun.ch/posts/firefox/ https://varun.ch/posts/firefox/ including a minimal UI, monospaced font, sidebar, etc etc. userChrome.css is a great feature and it’s amazing that it’s just exposed to the user.
bigthymer 7mo ago
Personally, I think the Firefox browser right-click options are one of the more useful right-click menus. The one on the Apple OS is a better example of excessive and worthless.
- peterspath 7mo ago
  I really miss the look up, translate, and search with... options in Firefox I have anywhere else when I right click on a selected word.
  - tcfhgj 7mo ago
    interestingly, I have these options in Firefox
    - OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
      I think the above comment meant that he misses those Firefox options when he uses other applications.
aftbit 7mo ago
Odd complaint but interesting list of about:config options! I must be in the tiny minority that has actually _used_ all of these right-click menu items at one time or another.
- yreg 7mo ago
  I mean "Set as Desktop background" seems to definitely be an overkill to have on a speed dial. Unfortunately that one is not removable through about:config.
  - debugnik 7mo ago
    That one gets used a lot when someone leaves their laptop unlocked at college.
  - plorkyeran 7mo ago
    That one's been there since the very early days of Netscape Navigator. It's been a few decades since I last clicked on it, but that's mostly because I haven't set my desktop wallpaper in a few decades and I suspect using that isn't too rare for the people who do set wallpaper?
  - aftbit 7mo ago
    I don't have that option on Linux, but then my desktop background is being drawn by feh launched from .xinitrc. It probably works on Gnome or whatever.
dwoldrich 7mo ago
Apple famously abandoned per-window menus per Fitt's law[1]. Wiki[2] says: > Apple experiments in GUI design for the Lisa project initially used multiple menu bars anchored to the bottom of windows, but this was quickly dropped in favor of the current arrangement, as it proved slower to use (in accordance with Fitts's law). The idea of separate menus in each window or document was later implemented in Windows and is the default approach in most Linux desktop environments. I recall hearing a quote that said Jobs called the menu the ultimate discoverability tool in the designer's arsenal, but I couldn't find the quote. I am thankful for the menu junk drawer in Firefox. Better to give me everything I can discover in a menu rather than make a zillion fugly buttons and cluttering up the chrome. Although, anything that isn't frequently used by users should at least go under a few submenus to echo OP's criticisms. If Copy Clean Link is the "right" thing to do for users, then make "Copy Raw Link" a sub-menu item. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_bar
- layer8 7mo ago
  Fitts’s law for menu bars made sense on a 12” monitor back then, but not so much on today’s large displays.
  - dwoldrich 7mo ago
    Maybe worthwhile to encourage a heavier reliance on right click menus going forward, then? Seems to make sense in a future VR world. I have noticed that Mac Sequoia I'm running now has some memory as to which process last focused on each display and now is able to show a different menu per display, albeit grayed for displays where the user is not currently focused. It's a little janky, but kindof a graceful devolution of the original single menu vision.
    - layer8 7mo ago
      Context menus are specifically for actions on the particular thing you click on (for example a file in a file listing, or an object in a layout program). It still makes sense to have a separate application menu bar. But personally I think menu bars are really more intuitive attached to the application window rather than at the top of the screen, potentially relatively far away from the window. With today’s wide screens, a vertical menu bar at the side would perhaps make more sense than the usual one at the top, though, similar to vertical tabs. I don’t see a future VR world other than for casual use, because keyboard and mouse/trackpad will remain the highest-bandwidth way to interact with a computer.
archerx 7mo ago
I think Firefox’s “shift + right click” to bypass context menu blocking should be adopted by all browsers.
- ghrl 7mo ago
  Yeah, it's one of those features where after getting used to it you just can't understand why not every browser has it. I remember trying to copy an image from OneNote and conveniently in the custom content menu there is a button to copy the image. The only thing it does however is tell you it doesn't work and to use Cmd+C instead, which doesn't work either. So Shift + Right Click saves the day again.
yreg 7mo ago
The opening rant is quite fun to read. It's nice that it's possible to clean up the context menu in the config.
agwa 7mo ago
In an alternative timeline, Firefox makes their context menu really short and someone writes a blog post ranting about how it deprives functionality from power users. In fact, I've read several such rants about Firefox removing functionality from other parts of their UI. It's sure hard to make everyone happy.
- NoboruWataya 7mo ago
  My first thought reading this was "it's amazing what some people can get angry about".
  - wolvoleo 7mo ago
    I sure hated it when windows 11 dumbed down the explorer context menu. Lots of stuff I used to do a lot now took 2 clicks instead of one. Luckily it can simply be switched off.
- mantra2 7mo ago
  You can please some of the people, some of the time.
- heraldgeezer 7mo ago
  Yes, I for one love all the options... dont hide menus from me, I have a big screen.
  - behringer 7mo ago
    The trick is adding letter selections so you can press the underlined letter on your keyboard and get that option! You can do things really quickly that way!
  - somat 7mo ago
    It's the duality of user interface design. Two forces at war with each other. The professional interface is a complete mess. flat not nested, functionality duplicated all over the place, widgets strewn across the screen like a toddler just got done playing legos. Exactly what one needs when they will be working with it for hours at end. Contrast with the casual interface, nested, one way to do things, neat compartments for everything. What is needed to gently guide the user through an unfamiliar task they may only do once a year. And this is ignoring the dark side, the "designer" interface. Where it just has look good functionality be damned. Take note. The big lie about design is that it exists in a vacuum, that there can be an independent design title. Real design is fundamentally a holistic process that has to consider and integrate all aspects. Including deep engineering. A real designer is an engineer with taste, a rare find to be sure.
mantra2 7mo ago
I wish they had an always up to date guide on what each about:config option does.
- alpaca128 7mo ago
  Or make them more discoverable. I spent so much time looking for a UI scaling setting, and in the end it turned out its name does not contain any obvious word like scale or size, instead it is called devPixelsPerPx. It isn't even consistent about Pixels vs Px.
  - 1718627440 7mo ago
    > It isn't even consistent about Pixels vs Px. px is the CSS unit, device pixels aren't.
    - alpaca128 7mo ago
      Good to know it has some logic to it, thanks for the clarification
jadar 7mo ago
i see the author has a small vocabulary.
captn3m0 7mo ago
This is disabling features entirely - I take screenshots using the Firefox feature sometimes, but never with the right click option. Same for autofills, printing, and devtool a11y features. I don't like the clutter, but I can't disable these either.
- deathanatos 7mo ago
  > I take screenshots using the Firefox feature sometimes, but never with the right click option. Um … how else do you access this feature? (I use the context menu's item for that all the time … since that's the only way at it that I know of.)
  - saratogacx 7mo ago
    Ctrl-shift-s
    - imp0cat 7mo ago
      You can also put a tiny camera icon in the tool bar and take a screenshot by clicking on that.
  - EvilTerran 7mo ago
    You can add a screenshot button to the toolbar from the "Customise Toolbar" screen, does the exact same thing as that context menu item.
  - 1718627440 7mo ago
    By pressing the context-menu key when the element is selected in DevTools.
anonym29 7mo ago
just use a gecko fork without the AI loael librewolf is great
- mmsc 7mo ago
  loael
wackget 7mo ago
These prefs - and many others - can be placed in a user.js file: https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox
wiseowise 7mo ago
> To be blunt: holy fucking shit, what the fuck is all of this shit? 26 rows of which 2 are greyed-out (aka: fucking useless) Chef’s kiss.
chrismorgan 7mo ago
Long ago, I culled some items from the context menu via userChrome.css. 1. In about:config, turn pref toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets on. 2. Create chrome/userChrome.css in your profile directory (which you can find from about:support). 3. Open the Browser Toolbox with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I or ≡ → More tools → Browser Toolbox or Tools → Browser Tools → Browser Toolbox or some such thing. This is dev tools for the browser. 4. In the Inspector tab, search #contentAreaContextMenu to navigate to the <menupopup id="contentAreaContextMenu" …> element. 5. Look through its children. Decide which ones you don’t want, then kill them in CSS. From my userChrome.css (I think this must be something like a decade old because I started typing curly quotes somewhere around then): /* I don't want *two* items for Inspect, just the one main one please. */ #context-inspect-a11y, /* I'm happy to use Ctrl+Shift+S; I don't need a context menu item for it. */ #context-take-screenshot, #context-sep-screenshots, /* I don't use Firefox's password manager. */ #fill-login, #fill-login-generated-password, #manage-saved-logins, #passwordmgr-items-separator { display: none; } The article takes the approach of disabling features (e.g. devtools.accessibility.enabled). I take the approach of leaving the features enabled (I want the accessibility stuff!) and just removing the specific context menu item that I found annoying. (… and I see at the end of the article that this approach is what the next post is to be about. Heh. Posted before reading to the end. Probably would still have posted roughly the same thing.)
- OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
  The other great use for userChrome is reclaiming the space at the top of the browser if you use tree-style tabs. With just the url bar, the window is close enough to full-screen when I close the tab tree that I rarely feel the need to use F11.
- sunaookami 7mo ago
  Important for macOS: You must set "widget.macos.native-context-menus" to "false" or else you can't inspect/modify the context menu through userChrome.css.
- asadotzler 7mo ago
  This is the way. Turning off features only to unclutter a menu is silly and I can't believe there's not more pushback than your post here. userChrome.css exists for this exact reason, mucking about in UI without mucking about in feature machinery. I guess a text file and some CSS is just too hard many HN users.
pmontra 7mo ago
That was a really long menu. I do use "Save Link As…” when the link is obviously a file to download and I don't want it in the default folder. I think that I never used “Set Image as Desktop Background…” in all my life. That's a very narrow use case to get its own menu entry.
- layer8 7mo ago
  Incidentally, “Save Link As…” is mislabeled, because it doesn’t save the link (which would be possible), but the resource the link points to. It still confuses me whenever I occasionally see it.
  - 1718627440 7mo ago
    By that measure "Open Link in [...]" should open a text viewer showing the URL instead of retrieving the resource that links points to. I rather have the current behaviour.
    - layer8 7mo ago
      I’m not arguing for changing the behavior, but for changing the label. Safari uses “Download Linked File”, which makes much more sense.
      - 1718627440 7mo ago
        And I'm arguing that this term is used in exactly that meaning everywhere and is the expected use of the word "link".
        layer8 7mo ago
        I disagree that this is standard usage. Saving a link is like saving a bookmark. Random examples: https://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Link https://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Link https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-save-a-link https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-save-a-link https://superuser.com/questions/996482/how-do-i-save-a-link-to-a-webpage-as-a-shortcut-in-the-windows-file-manager https://superuser.com/questions/996482/how-do-i-save-a-link-... https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mwkwnzd0l4n https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mwkwnzd0l4n https://www.oreateai.com/blog/a-simple-guide-to-saving-links-on-your-desktop/0409e19a8825acd90af6ba7ce02b2cdb https://www.oreateai.com/blog/a-simple-guide-to-saving-links... https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/898834 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/898834
chuckadams 7mo ago
I use "translate selection" all the time, but a proper menu editor wouldn't go amiss. Remember when apps had those?
WarmWash 7mo ago
For some reason Mozilla has been super focused on firefox feature pack rather than general usability for some time now. It's obviously not been working, but they must be convinced that if they just add xyz new feature, firefox will make a comeback. Just make the goddamn browser fast, lightweight, and stable. Forget everything else. Except spell check. Please god fix that too.
WillAdams 7mo ago
I just want to take a moment to note that I am _very_ grateful for the flexibility of this configuration and that it affords the power/option to disable scrolling with a stylus (effectively dumbing it down to an 11th touch input) and allowing it to function as I've come to expect since the days of PenPoint and Windows for Pen Computing to select text and so forth.
deathanatos 7mo ago
… railing against greyed-out items is… interesting. One of my biggest peeves with a lot of modern software is the trend of "gaslight the user about the existence of functionality". A lot of software (Github, Okta, etc. etc.) will just delete portions of their UI, usually because you don't have permission to access it, or even just some of it. So, if you google "how do I do X?" the AI — assuming it gets it right at all — will tell you to click on UI that doesn't exist. Even if you then scroll to the organic docs, those will also have you click UI that does not exist. A greyed-out item gives you the affordance of knowing that that feature / path exists, even if it's not available right here, right now. Truly good UI would also give me an affordance of knowing why (e.g., a tooltip saying "to access blah, you need permission blah"), but that's just asking for the moon, I know. But when you're staring at docs referencing a non-existence menu item: is it because I lack a permission? What permission? Or perhaps the docs are just out of date? — you don't know!
- the_bear 7mo ago
  Agreed. Unless it's a really frequently used UI, my company defaults to showing all options to all users regardless of permissions. It's better to see "Manage users" in the settings menu which takes you to a page explaining that you don't have permission as opposed to seeing nothing and wondering why it's not there even though the help article says it should be there. No, putting an explanation on the help article that this feature is only available to admins doesn't work. No one reads anything.
- array_key_first 7mo ago
  Modern software UX is gaslight central. I think people are scared that if users read something they'll get confused or frustrated, so they just default to... nothing? Even error messages are dying. Half the time shit doesn't work and there's no indication. Maybe a loading spinner just disappears and that's supposed to be your clue to try again.
- Zopieux 7mo ago
  Thanks for putting this into words better then I would. I was screaming discoverablity at my screen.
olivia-banks 7mo ago
I've been wondering about the Polish thing. On the screenshot at the top of the page, it reads "Translate Selection to Polish," and I initially thought this might just be something gleaned from the author's locale, but the tld is .hu, and I recall seeing "Polish" as the default "international" language option on a number of services (such as Google Translate). Is there a technical reason for this that Polish is defaulted to more often than not? Or is this just a me thing.
- mmsc 7mo ago
  It's gleaned from my locale. .hu is irrelevant; my alternative keyboard on my system is Polish
  - olivia-banks 7mo ago
    Interesting. I’ve never been to Poland and yet Polish the default second option in a ton of places for me. No clue why.
silverwind 7mo ago
Mozilla really needs to trim this menu down by default. Who needs "Print selection" in this day and age?
- reciprocity 7mo ago
  The Windows 11 right click contextual menu is an order of magnitude worse. Not only that, but the delay in opening is more than perceptible. Annoying regression.
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  What if you don't want the whole webpage printed with all the images, menus and potential ads? Sure you can also select it in the devtools, but context menu is way easier.
SllX 7mo ago
All those items in the context menu are one of the reasons that context menus are so good. Ideally you never need to go to the menu bar for much of anything because the right menu item is right there in the context menu where your cursor is already aiming.
CamperBob2 7mo ago
The newest Firefox build has a nice feature: you highlight some text on a page, and instead of having to right-click and navigate to the AI submenu to bring up a list of canned prompts, none of which are what you actually want to ask, it just pops up a button next to the highlighted text that you can click to enter a prompt immediately. So this guy's rant, besides not making a whole lot of sense (first he complains about the length of the right-click menu, then he complains that they moved the AI stuff to a side menu...?) is also obsolete.
g947o 7mo ago
I wonder when was the last time any user used the "Email image" feature.
- qbrass 7mo ago
  Intentionally? I've only ever "used" it when trying to copy a link to an image.
eikenberry 7mo ago
No way to remove the most annoying thing.. how Copy takes the top spot away from the back arrow when you've highlighted text of any sort. I don't mind the Copy option but don't change the standard menu, add it to the bottom.
sznio 7mo ago
this is how ui was supposed to be. i can pick out the button i want instantly. i don't have to navigate multiple buttons to do anything
bayesianbot 7mo ago
Just as FYI, for people currently using firefox or want to use firefox but found its keyboard control (or plugins like Vimperator) lacking, I really recommend glide[0] highly. I've used qutebrowser for years as I feel the keyboard controlled web is much more convenient, and there hasn't been any reasonable competition to qutebrowser. The vim keyboard control plugins for chrome or firefox don't fit the bill for me, they feel slow, are often out of focus, and quite limited. glide fixes all of those problems, supports firefox extensions and has a really powerful and approachable scripting API. It's alpha but feels quite ready, I've been running it a few weeks full time and loved the experience. [0] https://github.com/glide-browser/glide https://github.com/glide-browser/glide
drecked 7mo ago
My issue with this post isn’t so much the post itself but with what it demonstrates about culture today. 20 years ago one would have written the same post on Blogger but the odds are it would have been framed as “here’s how you can clean up the Firefox menu”. It’s not like vitriolic content didn’t exist. But the vitriolic content was usually limited to holy war posts, when a Mac user was disparaging PCs or vice versa, or if it was a vim vs emacs conversation. And even then there was an understanding that no one was being entirely serious. But in today’s social media/political environment, every post is turned up to 11.
- grayhatter 7mo ago
  I'm sure part of this is hindsight bias, but software was less intentionally user hostile in the before times. Firefox used to release features that improved privacy. Today they add features that reduce privacy. Enabled by default, with no easy way to disable or remove the spyware link. The tone should shift, in step with how much disrespect companies decide to inflict on their users.
  - bluebarbet 7mo ago
    >intentionally user hostile They want more users, so logically it cannot be intentional. More generally, we cannot know others' intentions, so the speculation is always redundant.
  - Sabinus 7mo ago
    This would be more relevant if the ui features being 'discussed' were privacy violating, but they're not. Anger about privacy violations (mostly by other software and companies) doesn't justify vitriol about right click context menus in an open source browser.
    - grayhatter 7mo ago
      Objecting to your reply is exactly why I made my original comment. It's the same thing as the cliche; "we can talk about who's turn it is to do the dishes; but first we need to talk about why you're so upset about it?", or the other "you might not shoot the messenger, but you also won't invite him to dinner". You might not feel the vitriol is warranted for this specific example, but you tell anyone that they are wrong to feel the way they do, at your own peril. Is it that big of a deal? IMO, no and I say that as someone who was pissed off by it too. But then again the straw the breaks the camel's back never does seem heavy. But in context: > every post is turned up to 11. Everyone is being disrespected all the time, from every direction. Here, it feels like Firefox is doing it too. Every one is already at 11, Firefox added an AI button nobody wanted, with no (real) way to disable it. And we now have an 11.05 post. As everyone paying attention would expect.
Snortibartfast 7mo ago
Ironically, the only[1] right-click option I used was changed into something more cumbersome: "open image" which was changed to "open image in new tab". [1] I exaggerate a bit, sometimes I use uBlock Origin's "block element".
kyusan0 7mo ago
There must be something wrong with Firefox on MacOS, I don't experience the same on linux. Options only show up when relevant, i.e. Save Image as only when hovering over an image, translate selection only when text is highlighted with the cursor, etc. The longest right click menu I could find by clicking around various elements is no more than 12 items, two of which are from extensions. I'd love to know why it's different.
- tim-kt 7mo ago
  But this is addressed in the first sentence? > [...] right-clicking an image while some text on the page is highlighted (to show as many buttons as possible) looks like so
  - kyusan0 7mo ago
    My bad, I glossed over that. Now I tested that too, it doesn't work that way for me, even if there's text highlighted (both regular text or a hyperlink) the menu remains contextualised.
- Krastan 7mo ago
  He says he highlighted some text then right clicked on an image to make it show as many items as possible.
SkySkimmer 7mo ago
>right-clicking an image while some text on the page is highlighted (to show as many buttons as possible) Actually an image which is also a link for extra buttons (typical wikipedia image AFAICT)
Krssst 7mo ago
The article talks of other menu entries but the screenshot of the menu literally shows the "Remove AI chatbot" option, why not just click that instead of hunting for it in about:config?
- kemayo 7mo ago
  As an aside, it does seem like a bit of a bad sign for a feature that you know up-front that it'll be so polarizing that you need to have an always-visible top-level "hide this forever!" button.
  - sfink 7mo ago
    Why? Shouldn't polarizing features be done exactly this way? The people on one pole use it, those on the other remove it. Perhaps you meant "unwanted" or "unpopular"? If you never add any features that could be polarizing, then you end up with a lowest common denominator interface that offends nobody and is useful to (almost) nobody.
jez 7mo ago
Still the only thing I miss about the Firefox right-click context menu coming from Chrome is that Firefox doesn't have a "Look up '<selection>'" in the menu on macOS, to look up in the macOS dictionary, for looking up words I don't know. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1116391 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1116391
ubercow13 7mo ago
The "Email Image..." one is infuriating. Who right clicks an image to email it to someone in 2026? And if it's you, could you help me understand why??
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  Every random app now-a-days has share buttons. Why shouldn't the browser have on, when it is inherently about browsing a network resource?
- Maken 7mo ago
  It's still more useful than the "Set as desktop background" entry.
layer8 7mo ago
> of which 2 are greyed-out (aka: fucking useless) It actually makes sense, because instead of wondering where the option is, you learn that it is not applicable in the given context. It also supports the spatial memory you have of the surrounding options.
LikeBeans 7mo ago
A while back I wanted more menu options with Firefox so I made an extension [1]. Basically when you highlight a word or a sentence on a page a menu popups up with some options like to copy, search, or lookup on Google maps. Or whatever option you want. I use it often and find it useful. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-tooltip/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-tooltip...
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  > Basically when you highlight a word or a sentence on a page a menu popups up with some options like to copy, search Huh, beside Google Maps, that's what the default context menu does in Firefox?
  - LikeBeans 7mo ago
    Yeah the Google Maps was my primary goal. But I was also thinking a person can add other options. For example different search engines. Or maybe your favorite AI agent search.
    - 1718627440 7mo ago
      I see, I've also wondered why Firefox doesn't allow configuration of search providers in the context menu or allows multiple one.
- memcg 7mo ago
  Thank you! Your extension is really helpful.
6510 7mo ago
I just notice they made about:config suck more. Articles about entries use to be able to do: about:config?filter=browser.translations.select.enable Now all that does is show this stupid "be careful" warning.
CobrastanJorji 7mo ago
> Removes the “Translate Selection” button from the right-click menu. I don't want the Translate button to NEVER be there. I want it to be there if and only if the selection is not in English.
- kps 7mo ago
  How would it know?
  - Zopieux 7mo ago
    Have you heard of machine learning?
    - unselect5917 7mo ago
      If you put machine learning into the loading of a right click menu, I want you to step on a Lego barefoot immediately afterward. Right click menus should be instant. No fade in. No animation. No spinner. And certainly not any machine learning calls.
      - eviks 7mo ago
        Have you heard of async? You can get instant menu with a delayed menu item
        VVertigo 7mo ago
        That is a recipe for pain too: menus shouldn't be morphing as the user is trying to choose an option.
        eviks 7mo ago
        Sure, but this also has an easy solution - don't morph, have an inactive menu in place (with an indicator of wort work in progress) that activates when the work is done
lifis 7mo ago
The improvement that could be made is to reorganize the menu so that entries are grouped in "Image", "Link", "Text", "Page" and "Development" sections, which could either be submenus or titled sections depending on screen size and user preferences
devmor 7mo ago
Holy crap, I use Firefox every day on Windows and MacOS and I've never seen a menu like that. Of course, I've never selected an entire page section of multimedia content and right clicked on it before. Of course the menu has a lot of options - you've given it multiple contexts and it's a context menu.
adamtaylor_13 7mo ago
Does uBlock Origin do something like this by default? I noticed that my right-click menu looks completely sane; almost identical to the end, clean result. But I've never done this particular config cleanup before.
oniony 7mo ago
There are actually eight dividers.
elxr 7mo ago
In a way, this shows why I generally love using webapps over desktop apps. The level of quick customizability for something as basic as a right-click is impressive. Love that firefox offers so much control, despite the questionable defaults.
edelind 7mo ago
I don't know, I am quite a power user of some stuff he removed. Especially Services! that is a gem in itself if you know how to use it.
jerhewet 7mo ago
Hmm. I guess I'm living the good life with all of the Firefox configuration changes I've made over the years. I have six right-click menu items and four buttons (page back, page forward, reload, and bookmark): Save Page As, Select All, Take Screenshot, View Page Source, Inspect Accessibility Properties, and Inspect. And one additional entry for uBlock Origin at the bottom of the menu (Block Element).
gethly 7mo ago
i switched to waterfox last week and the context menu is better from the get-go. and no AI either.
shultays 7mo ago
“Bookmark Link…” “Save Link As…” “Email Image…” “Set Image as Desktop Background…” “Bookmark Page…” ... we can’t get rid of these things by simply toggling some option in about:config ... Why seemingly the most useless options are not in about:config
willrshansen 7mo ago
The way sidebery let's you customize it's right click menu seems to be the right way to go about it
mrandish 7mo ago
Very nice. I didn't have some of those. Thanks for posting! For those of us who have a user.js file to keep all these about:config customizations over time and across installs... here they are formatted for user.js: user_pref("privacy.query_stripping.strip_on_share.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.translations.select.enable", false); user_pref("screenshots.browser.component.enabled", false); user_pref("dom.text-recognition.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false); user_pref("dom.text_fragments.enabled", false); Also, there's a nice little toolkit for removing items from all the Firefox right-click menus: https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard.
- lkbm 7mo ago
  That toolkit looks great. I have a big ol' userChrome.css removing ~15 menu items, but I may switch to this next time I work on improving things again.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
laalshaitaan 7mo ago
The pattern is always the same: product team has a new AI feature, someone says put it everywhere, nobody asks users if they want it, and then power users revolt while the feature languishes unused anyway. The right move was opt-in, but that would've made the adoption numbers look bad. Progressive disclosure exists for a reason.
zeagle 7mo ago
Is it different on Windows from MacOS? I have AI features disabled on firefox 148.0 and my options on an image are a reasonable list of Open Image in New Tab, Save Image As..., Copy Image, Copy Image Link, Email Image, Set Image as Desktop Background..., Take Screenshot, Inspect Accessibility Properties, Inspect (Q) and two related to extensions that are my choice (Block Element..., Bitwarden). For links I get the Open in (...) options. If I enable AI features I get one extra menu. And very niche to disable print.enabled so you can't print from your browser?
eviks 7mo ago
> But the real bad news is that we can’t get rid of these things by simply toggling some option in about:config. In a better designed customizable browser like Vivaldi you can just see the menu itself and move/edit/remove/add items aroudn. In a better mythical app you would be able to add an easy way to do those edits right there from the page context menu
glub103011 7mo ago
[dead]
tdeck 7mo ago
Is there a way to disable Ctrl+Shift+C yet? That's my only longstanding complaint in Firefox.
- evilpie 7mo ago
  Yes. It's in about:keyboard.
Markoff 7mo ago
Wait, you need to go to about:config to customize your right click context menu by disabling items one by one and you don't have normal Settings UI to customize it? Vivaldi browser desktop user (Settings → Appearance → Menu → Choose “Page” in the Menu Customization dropdown)
wink 7mo ago
I don't care about the tone or any inconsistencies, it's a good list.
LocalPCGuy 7mo ago
Bit sad that the DevTools Accessibility Inspector was one of the "superfluous" items, at least without a "if you're not a dev" type of disclaimer. If you do any web development, seems like a worthwhile item and I'm happy it is surfaced by default to help promote it's use. Obviously, no issues with non-devs who would never use it disabling it.
hexage1814 7mo ago
There used to be a great extension to edit context menu easily (you can still do it using userchrome.css). Mozilla kill when it moved from XUL to web extension. Mozilla is run by people who don't use Firefox nor care.
HackerThemAll 7mo ago
Yeah, former Opera employee making fun from Firefox. So cool. To respond: Remember you just took Google software, changed skin, added more telemetry and spying eyes, and call it a browser.
- mmsc 7mo ago
  https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html Please consider reading.
Baljhin 7mo ago
Another post listed the Arkenfox project, but that's focused on privacy & security, and secondarily performance -- not on UI/UX. (Changing some parameters might affect contextmenu entries.) It's a thankless task - except by nontech browser users - to modify Fx's menus. Anybody remember the XUL-era addon 'Menu Editor'? So many years and so much effort to make it 'simple' for typical users to customize Menu Bar and context-menus; and always a target that refused to stay standard given Firefox version changes ALWAYS break something about the UI. Ultimately a valiant but unrewarded failure, no blame to the 'Menu Editor' developer(s) and userbase. As the writer will learn, the 'best' way to UI changes current (and XUL) Firefox is via userChrome.js/.css -- which has also had troubled history, as waves of main-office Fx developers have been openly hostile to promoting and supporting is functionalities. [0] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/ https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/

351 points by mmsc 7mo ago

[flagged]

> Why do all of the above have ...? No clue. The "..." convention is used when menu options open a dialog box rather than just immediately doing the action.

paulddraper 7mo ago
+1 This has been true for, what, 30 years?
- plorkyeran 7mo ago
  At least 40 years, since it was already present in Windows 1.0 (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-SuAaYDZIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-SuAaYDZIk for an example).
  - marssaxman 7mo ago
    The original Macintosh software also did this, back in 1984. From the Apple Human Interface Guidelines, published in 1986: "The application dims an item when the user can't choose it. If the user moves the pointer over a dimmed item, that item isn't highlighted." There may well have been prior art, but that's as far back as my knowledge goes.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
TonyTrapp 7mo ago
Specifically, it means that more information is required to complete the task (e.g. requesting the filename for saving a file). If the action is literally about opening that dialog (e.g. something like "Show Properties"), the ellipsis is not needed.
- layer8 7mo ago
  The practical use is that the user knows they will still have the opportunity to back out of the operation, and not commit to it by the first click. I don’t think “will need more input” is that useful as an information by itself.
  - hunter2_ 7mo ago
    At first I was going to say that the opportunity to back out and the need for more input are identical: if the dialog consists only of a button to proceed and a button to back out, the user needs to choose one of those as input, and eliminating that need for input means eliminating the opportunity to back out. But now I'm thinking that a need and an opportunity are very distinct. For example, browsers used to present a Save dialog during a download: was there a need for input? No, accepting the default filename works, and based on that, they no longer offer the opportunity to choose a filename. Thus, "..." indicates the opportunity, even if there is no true need.
    - layer8 7mo ago
      In addition, if you consider a "Print" dialog, it would be conceivable that it only provides a print preview, but no further inputs, and has only command buttons "Print" and "Cancel". In that case, I still think the menu item should be "Print…" with an ellipsis, despite the lack of further input. Conversely, you might conceivably have a command that requires additional input, but where the dialog box taking the input doesn't offer the option to cancel the operation. In that case, I would consider an ellipsis misleading, even though a lack of ellipsis might be confusing as well if the command doesn't make sense without additional input.
ndespres 7mo ago
Some of these complaints feel like they aren’t specific to Firefox at all, but are UI conventions that used to be ubiquitous and no longer are, much to the chagrin of those of us of a certain age. He also rails against menu items that are greyed out and unusable, where to me that’s a very useful indicator that the action isn’t available here but that I’m looking in the right place. When I want to click a menu item and find it greyed out, that tells me something. But when I want to click a menu item and it’s not there at all, I’m confused. Did a developer move it somewhere else? Did the name of the action change? Am I losing my touch?
- vanschelven 7mo ago
  Indeed both the "..." and "disabling over removing" were in the windows 95 UI manual
  - jrmg 7mo ago
    Also macOS in its various guises, for decades.
  - quesera 7mo ago
    They were original in the 1984 Macintosh OS (before it had a name), and published in the first edition (1987) of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Just two of the things Microsoft copied successfully. :)
    - zinekeller 7mo ago
      Eh, they were definitely from Xerox (so it would be unclear since that both Windows and the Mac System Software derived some of their UI elements from Xerox experiments)
      - quesera 7mo ago
        The Alto? I don't think that's accurate. Only 2000 devices ever shipped, and I used one at my parent's workplace back in the day. But I would have been far too young to remember that detail. It may well have been kicking around PARC before Jobs made the deal with Xerox. But I can't find any images that show either of those UI elements, pre-Lisa.
lucianbr 7mo ago
This particular line serves only to highlight the author's limited knowledge. I wonder what they meant by it. Also greyed out options have a point, they only seem "fucking useless" if you don't know it.
- mmsc 7mo ago
  You're right, I didn't know about what that "..." meant. It's kind of obvious what I meant though: "I don't know why all of these have ..." I've added that information to the post. The greyed out options have no point because 99.99% of the links I click are already clean. Like so many of the other privacy enhancing options, just provide an option to "clean links automatically."
  - plorkyeran 7mo ago
    Link "cleaning" will sometimes just break a link entirely since it's a heuristic-based thing that removes query parameters that appear to be nonfunctional tracking parameters. Doing it by default would be setting up users for the occasional very bad experience.
  - lucianbr 7mo ago
    Did you really make a blog post to tell the world that you don't know some things? That's not usual. If that is true, the only conclusion is that you should learn those things, and I'm not sure what I am supposed to get from reading it. I think, or at least the way it reads to me is that you believe Firefox devs are wrong. This is what it looks like you meant. You believe the "..." is wrong to be there, and it should be removed. Which I do not agree with, and in any case we should first consider the "..." conventional meaning and only then we can maybe get to the conclusion that it should be removed. That it should be removed because you don't know why it is there is not reasonable, not to me. In my humble opinion you should reflect a bit more on what you actually meant to say by this and also other points in the post. > The greyed out options have no point because 99.99% of the links I click are already clean. Frankly that's nonsense. They obviously have a point, and the fact you disagree with the point is something completely different. Firefox isn't specifically made for you. I appreciate the greyed out options in general, it helps me know they are there and that they may become available under some conditions.
CamperBob2 7mo ago
The article's author doesn't appear to be particularly tech-literate. I flagged the post on the grounds that it doesn't meet HN standards in general.
- Joshuas_Mom 7mo ago
  [flagged]
- paulddraper 7mo ago
  It's strange, because they do know about:config....
Zopieux 7mo ago
I feel old. Every single millennial versed into computers knows about this convention, which I think probably comes from Windows, back when they paid their employees to care.
- Narishma 7mo ago
  It was already there in the original Mac, and is probably older than that.
eviks 7mo ago
How would a user learn about this convention?

varun_ch 7mo ago

It is fantastic that Firefox gives us the benefit of choice though. Maybe Chrome or whatever has better UX taste out of the box, but good luck changing anything if you disagree. I wrote a blog post about how I customized Firefox exactly to what I wanted https://varun.ch/posts/firefox/ https://varun.ch/posts/firefox/ including a minimal UI, monospaced font, sidebar, etc etc. userChrome.css is a great feature and it’s amazing that it’s just exposed to the user.

bigthymer 7mo ago

Personally, I think the Firefox browser right-click options are one of the more useful right-click menus. The one on the Apple OS is a better example of excessive and worthless.

peterspath 7mo ago
I really miss the look up, translate, and search with... options in Firefox I have anywhere else when I right click on a selected word.
- tcfhgj 7mo ago
  interestingly, I have these options in Firefox
  - OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
    I think the above comment meant that he misses those Firefox options when he uses other applications.

aftbit 7mo ago

Odd complaint but interesting list of about:config options! I must be in the tiny minority that has actually _used_ all of these right-click menu items at one time or another.

yreg 7mo ago
I mean "Set as Desktop background" seems to definitely be an overkill to have on a speed dial. Unfortunately that one is not removable through about:config.
- debugnik 7mo ago
  That one gets used a lot when someone leaves their laptop unlocked at college.
- plorkyeran 7mo ago
  That one's been there since the very early days of Netscape Navigator. It's been a few decades since I last clicked on it, but that's mostly because I haven't set my desktop wallpaper in a few decades and I suspect using that isn't too rare for the people who do set wallpaper?
- aftbit 7mo ago
  I don't have that option on Linux, but then my desktop background is being drawn by feh launched from .xinitrc. It probably works on Gnome or whatever.

dwoldrich 7mo ago

Apple famously abandoned per-window menus per Fitt's law[1]. Wiki[2] says: > Apple experiments in GUI design for the Lisa project initially used multiple menu bars anchored to the bottom of windows, but this was quickly dropped in favor of the current arrangement, as it proved slower to use (in accordance with Fitts's law). The idea of separate menus in each window or document was later implemented in Windows and is the default approach in most Linux desktop environments. I recall hearing a quote that said Jobs called the menu the ultimate discoverability tool in the designer's arsenal, but I couldn't find the quote. I am thankful for the menu junk drawer in Firefox. Better to give me everything I can discover in a menu rather than make a zillion fugly buttons and cluttering up the chrome. Although, anything that isn't frequently used by users should at least go under a few submenus to echo OP's criticisms. If Copy Clean Link is the "right" thing to do for users, then make "Copy Raw Link" a sub-menu item. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_bar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menu_bar

layer8 7mo ago
Fitts’s law for menu bars made sense on a 12” monitor back then, but not so much on today’s large displays.
- dwoldrich 7mo ago
  Maybe worthwhile to encourage a heavier reliance on right click menus going forward, then? Seems to make sense in a future VR world. I have noticed that Mac Sequoia I'm running now has some memory as to which process last focused on each display and now is able to show a different menu per display, albeit grayed for displays where the user is not currently focused. It's a little janky, but kindof a graceful devolution of the original single menu vision.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    Context menus are specifically for actions on the particular thing you click on (for example a file in a file listing, or an object in a layout program). It still makes sense to have a separate application menu bar. But personally I think menu bars are really more intuitive attached to the application window rather than at the top of the screen, potentially relatively far away from the window. With today’s wide screens, a vertical menu bar at the side would perhaps make more sense than the usual one at the top, though, similar to vertical tabs. I don’t see a future VR world other than for casual use, because keyboard and mouse/trackpad will remain the highest-bandwidth way to interact with a computer.

archerx 7mo ago

I think Firefox’s “shift + right click” to bypass context menu blocking should be adopted by all browsers.

ghrl 7mo ago
Yeah, it's one of those features where after getting used to it you just can't understand why not every browser has it. I remember trying to copy an image from OneNote and conveniently in the custom content menu there is a button to copy the image. The only thing it does however is tell you it doesn't work and to use Cmd+C instead, which doesn't work either. So Shift + Right Click saves the day again.

yreg 7mo ago

The opening rant is quite fun to read. It's nice that it's possible to clean up the context menu in the config.

agwa 7mo ago

In an alternative timeline, Firefox makes their context menu really short and someone writes a blog post ranting about how it deprives functionality from power users. In fact, I've read several such rants about Firefox removing functionality from other parts of their UI. It's sure hard to make everyone happy.

NoboruWataya 7mo ago
My first thought reading this was "it's amazing what some people can get angry about".
- wolvoleo 7mo ago
  I sure hated it when windows 11 dumbed down the explorer context menu. Lots of stuff I used to do a lot now took 2 clicks instead of one. Luckily it can simply be switched off.
mantra2 7mo ago
You can please some of the people, some of the time.
heraldgeezer 7mo ago
Yes, I for one love all the options... dont hide menus from me, I have a big screen.
- behringer 7mo ago
  The trick is adding letter selections so you can press the underlined letter on your keyboard and get that option! You can do things really quickly that way!
- somat 7mo ago
  It's the duality of user interface design. Two forces at war with each other. The professional interface is a complete mess. flat not nested, functionality duplicated all over the place, widgets strewn across the screen like a toddler just got done playing legos. Exactly what one needs when they will be working with it for hours at end. Contrast with the casual interface, nested, one way to do things, neat compartments for everything. What is needed to gently guide the user through an unfamiliar task they may only do once a year. And this is ignoring the dark side, the "designer" interface. Where it just has look good functionality be damned. Take note. The big lie about design is that it exists in a vacuum, that there can be an independent design title. Real design is fundamentally a holistic process that has to consider and integrate all aspects. Including deep engineering. A real designer is an engineer with taste, a rare find to be sure.

mantra2 7mo ago

I wish they had an always up to date guide on what each about:config option does.

alpaca128 7mo ago
Or make them more discoverable. I spent so much time looking for a UI scaling setting, and in the end it turned out its name does not contain any obvious word like scale or size, instead it is called devPixelsPerPx. It isn't even consistent about Pixels vs Px.
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  > It isn't even consistent about Pixels vs Px. px is the CSS unit, device pixels aren't.
  - alpaca128 7mo ago
    Good to know it has some logic to it, thanks for the clarification

jadar 7mo ago

i see the author has a small vocabulary.

captn3m0 7mo ago

This is disabling features entirely - I take screenshots using the Firefox feature sometimes, but never with the right click option. Same for autofills, printing, and devtool a11y features. I don't like the clutter, but I can't disable these either.

deathanatos 7mo ago
> I take screenshots using the Firefox feature sometimes, but never with the right click option. Um … how else do you access this feature? (I use the context menu's item for that all the time … since that's the only way at it that I know of.)
- saratogacx 7mo ago
  Ctrl-shift-s
  - imp0cat 7mo ago
    You can also put a tiny camera icon in the tool bar and take a screenshot by clicking on that.
- EvilTerran 7mo ago
  You can add a screenshot button to the toolbar from the "Customise Toolbar" screen, does the exact same thing as that context menu item.
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  By pressing the context-menu key when the element is selected in DevTools.

anonym29 7mo ago

just use a gecko fork without the AI loael librewolf is great

mmsc 7mo ago
loael

wackget 7mo ago

These prefs - and many others - can be placed in a user.js file: https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox https://github.com/yokoffing/BetterFox

wiseowise 7mo ago

> To be blunt: holy fucking shit, what the fuck is all of this shit? 26 rows of which 2 are greyed-out (aka: fucking useless) Chef’s kiss.

chrismorgan 7mo ago

Long ago, I culled some items from the context menu via userChrome.css. 1. In about:config, turn pref toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets on. 2. Create chrome/userChrome.css in your profile directory (which you can find from about:support). 3. Open the Browser Toolbox with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+I or ≡ → More tools → Browser Toolbox or Tools → Browser Tools → Browser Toolbox or some such thing. This is dev tools for the browser. 4. In the Inspector tab, search #contentAreaContextMenu to navigate to the <menupopup id="contentAreaContextMenu" …> element. 5. Look through its children. Decide which ones you don’t want, then kill them in CSS. From my userChrome.css (I think this must be something like a decade old because I started typing curly quotes somewhere around then): /* I don't want *two* items for Inspect, just the one main one please. */ #context-inspect-a11y, /* I'm happy to use Ctrl+Shift+S; I don't need a context menu item for it. */ #context-take-screenshot, #context-sep-screenshots, /* I don't use Firefox's password manager. */ #fill-login, #fill-login-generated-password, #manage-saved-logins, #passwordmgr-items-separator { display: none; } The article takes the approach of disabling features (e.g. devtools.accessibility.enabled). I take the approach of leaving the features enabled (I want the accessibility stuff!) and just removing the specific context menu item that I found annoying. (… and I see at the end of the article that this approach is what the next post is to be about. Heh. Posted before reading to the end. Probably would still have posted roughly the same thing.)

OkayPhysicist 7mo ago
The other great use for userChrome is reclaiming the space at the top of the browser if you use tree-style tabs. With just the url bar, the window is close enough to full-screen when I close the tab tree that I rarely feel the need to use F11.
sunaookami 7mo ago
Important for macOS: You must set "widget.macos.native-context-menus" to "false" or else you can't inspect/modify the context menu through userChrome.css.
asadotzler 7mo ago
This is the way. Turning off features only to unclutter a menu is silly and I can't believe there's not more pushback than your post here. userChrome.css exists for this exact reason, mucking about in UI without mucking about in feature machinery. I guess a text file and some CSS is just too hard many HN users.

pmontra 7mo ago

That was a really long menu. I do use "Save Link As…” when the link is obviously a file to download and I don't want it in the default folder. I think that I never used “Set Image as Desktop Background…” in all my life. That's a very narrow use case to get its own menu entry.

layer8 7mo ago
Incidentally, “Save Link As…” is mislabeled, because it doesn’t save the link (which would be possible), but the resource the link points to. It still confuses me whenever I occasionally see it.
- 1718627440 7mo ago
  By that measure "Open Link in [...]" should open a text viewer showing the URL instead of retrieving the resource that links points to. I rather have the current behaviour.
  - layer8 7mo ago
    I’m not arguing for changing the behavior, but for changing the label. Safari uses “Download Linked File”, which makes much more sense.
    - 1718627440 7mo ago
      And I'm arguing that this term is used in exactly that meaning everywhere and is the expected use of the word "link".
      - layer8 7mo ago
        I disagree that this is standard usage. Saving a link is like saving a bookmark. Random examples: https://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Link https://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Link https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-save-a-link https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-save-a-link https://superuser.com/questions/996482/how-do-i-save-a-link-to-a-webpage-as-a-shortcut-in-the-windows-file-manager https://superuser.com/questions/996482/how-do-i-save-a-link-... https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mwkwnzd0l4n https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9mwkwnzd0l4n https://www.oreateai.com/blog/a-simple-guide-to-saving-links-on-your-desktop/0409e19a8825acd90af6ba7ce02b2cdb https://www.oreateai.com/blog/a-simple-guide-to-saving-links... https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/898834 https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/898834

chuckadams 7mo ago

I use "translate selection" all the time, but a proper menu editor wouldn't go amiss. Remember when apps had those?

WarmWash 7mo ago

For some reason Mozilla has been super focused on firefox feature pack rather than general usability for some time now. It's obviously not been working, but they must be convinced that if they just add xyz new feature, firefox will make a comeback. Just make the goddamn browser fast, lightweight, and stable. Forget everything else. Except spell check. Please god fix that too.

WillAdams 7mo ago

I just want to take a moment to note that I am _very_ grateful for the flexibility of this configuration and that it affords the power/option to disable scrolling with a stylus (effectively dumbing it down to an 11th touch input) and allowing it to function as I've come to expect since the days of PenPoint and Windows for Pen Computing to select text and so forth.

deathanatos 7mo ago

… railing against greyed-out items is… interesting. One of my biggest peeves with a lot of modern software is the trend of "gaslight the user about the existence of functionality". A lot of software (Github, Okta, etc. etc.) will just delete portions of their UI, usually because you don't have permission to access it, or even just some of it. So, if you google "how do I do X?" the AI — assuming it gets it right at all — will tell you to click on UI that doesn't exist. Even if you then scroll to the organic docs, those will also have you click UI that does not exist. A greyed-out item gives you the affordance of knowing that that feature / path exists, even if it's not available right here, right now. Truly good UI would also give me an affordance of knowing why (e.g., a tooltip saying "to access blah, you need permission blah"), but that's just asking for the moon, I know. But when you're staring at docs referencing a non-existence menu item: is it because I lack a permission? What permission? Or perhaps the docs are just out of date? — you don't know!

the_bear 7mo ago
Agreed. Unless it's a really frequently used UI, my company defaults to showing all options to all users regardless of permissions. It's better to see "Manage users" in the settings menu which takes you to a page explaining that you don't have permission as opposed to seeing nothing and wondering why it's not there even though the help article says it should be there. No, putting an explanation on the help article that this feature is only available to admins doesn't work. No one reads anything.
array_key_first 7mo ago
Modern software UX is gaslight central. I think people are scared that if users read something they'll get confused or frustrated, so they just default to... nothing? Even error messages are dying. Half the time shit doesn't work and there's no indication. Maybe a loading spinner just disappears and that's supposed to be your clue to try again.
Zopieux 7mo ago
Thanks for putting this into words better then I would. I was screaming discoverablity at my screen.

olivia-banks 7mo ago

I've been wondering about the Polish thing. On the screenshot at the top of the page, it reads "Translate Selection to Polish," and I initially thought this might just be something gleaned from the author's locale, but the tld is .hu, and I recall seeing "Polish" as the default "international" language option on a number of services (such as Google Translate). Is there a technical reason for this that Polish is defaulted to more often than not? Or is this just a me thing.

mmsc 7mo ago
It's gleaned from my locale. .hu is irrelevant; my alternative keyboard on my system is Polish
- olivia-banks 7mo ago
  Interesting. I’ve never been to Poland and yet Polish the default second option in a ton of places for me. No clue why.

silverwind 7mo ago

Mozilla really needs to trim this menu down by default. Who needs "Print selection" in this day and age?

reciprocity 7mo ago
The Windows 11 right click contextual menu is an order of magnitude worse. Not only that, but the delay in opening is more than perceptible. Annoying regression.
1718627440 7mo ago
What if you don't want the whole webpage printed with all the images, menus and potential ads? Sure you can also select it in the devtools, but context menu is way easier.

SllX 7mo ago

All those items in the context menu are one of the reasons that context menus are so good. Ideally you never need to go to the menu bar for much of anything because the right menu item is right there in the context menu where your cursor is already aiming.

CamperBob2 7mo ago

The newest Firefox build has a nice feature: you highlight some text on a page, and instead of having to right-click and navigate to the AI submenu to bring up a list of canned prompts, none of which are what you actually want to ask, it just pops up a button next to the highlighted text that you can click to enter a prompt immediately. So this guy's rant, besides not making a whole lot of sense (first he complains about the length of the right-click menu, then he complains that they moved the AI stuff to a side menu...?) is also obsolete.

g947o 7mo ago

I wonder when was the last time any user used the "Email image" feature.

qbrass 7mo ago
Intentionally? I've only ever "used" it when trying to copy a link to an image.

eikenberry 7mo ago

No way to remove the most annoying thing.. how Copy takes the top spot away from the back arrow when you've highlighted text of any sort. I don't mind the Copy option but don't change the standard menu, add it to the bottom.

sznio 7mo ago

this is how ui was supposed to be. i can pick out the button i want instantly. i don't have to navigate multiple buttons to do anything

bayesianbot 7mo ago

Just as FYI, for people currently using firefox or want to use firefox but found its keyboard control (or plugins like Vimperator) lacking, I really recommend glide[0] highly. I've used qutebrowser for years as I feel the keyboard controlled web is much more convenient, and there hasn't been any reasonable competition to qutebrowser. The vim keyboard control plugins for chrome or firefox don't fit the bill for me, they feel slow, are often out of focus, and quite limited. glide fixes all of those problems, supports firefox extensions and has a really powerful and approachable scripting API. It's alpha but feels quite ready, I've been running it a few weeks full time and loved the experience. [0] https://github.com/glide-browser/glide https://github.com/glide-browser/glide

drecked 7mo ago

My issue with this post isn’t so much the post itself but with what it demonstrates about culture today. 20 years ago one would have written the same post on Blogger but the odds are it would have been framed as “here’s how you can clean up the Firefox menu”. It’s not like vitriolic content didn’t exist. But the vitriolic content was usually limited to holy war posts, when a Mac user was disparaging PCs or vice versa, or if it was a vim vs emacs conversation. And even then there was an understanding that no one was being entirely serious. But in today’s social media/political environment, every post is turned up to 11.

grayhatter 7mo ago
I'm sure part of this is hindsight bias, but software was less intentionally user hostile in the before times. Firefox used to release features that improved privacy. Today they add features that reduce privacy. Enabled by default, with no easy way to disable or remove the spyware link. The tone should shift, in step with how much disrespect companies decide to inflict on their users.
- bluebarbet 7mo ago
  >intentionally user hostile They want more users, so logically it cannot be intentional. More generally, we cannot know others' intentions, so the speculation is always redundant.
- Sabinus 7mo ago
  This would be more relevant if the ui features being 'discussed' were privacy violating, but they're not. Anger about privacy violations (mostly by other software and companies) doesn't justify vitriol about right click context menus in an open source browser.
  - grayhatter 7mo ago
    Objecting to your reply is exactly why I made my original comment. It's the same thing as the cliche; "we can talk about who's turn it is to do the dishes; but first we need to talk about why you're so upset about it?", or the other "you might not shoot the messenger, but you also won't invite him to dinner". You might not feel the vitriol is warranted for this specific example, but you tell anyone that they are wrong to feel the way they do, at your own peril. Is it that big of a deal? IMO, no and I say that as someone who was pissed off by it too. But then again the straw the breaks the camel's back never does seem heavy. But in context: > every post is turned up to 11. Everyone is being disrespected all the time, from every direction. Here, it feels like Firefox is doing it too. Every one is already at 11, Firefox added an AI button nobody wanted, with no (real) way to disable it. And we now have an 11.05 post. As everyone paying attention would expect.

Snortibartfast 7mo ago

Ironically, the only[1] right-click option I used was changed into something more cumbersome: "open image" which was changed to "open image in new tab". [1] I exaggerate a bit, sometimes I use uBlock Origin's "block element".

kyusan0 7mo ago

There must be something wrong with Firefox on MacOS, I don't experience the same on linux. Options only show up when relevant, i.e. Save Image as only when hovering over an image, translate selection only when text is highlighted with the cursor, etc. The longest right click menu I could find by clicking around various elements is no more than 12 items, two of which are from extensions. I'd love to know why it's different.

tim-kt 7mo ago
But this is addressed in the first sentence? > [...] right-clicking an image while some text on the page is highlighted (to show as many buttons as possible) looks like so
- kyusan0 7mo ago
  My bad, I glossed over that. Now I tested that too, it doesn't work that way for me, even if there's text highlighted (both regular text or a hyperlink) the menu remains contextualised.
Krastan 7mo ago
He says he highlighted some text then right clicked on an image to make it show as many items as possible.

SkySkimmer 7mo ago

>right-clicking an image while some text on the page is highlighted (to show as many buttons as possible) Actually an image which is also a link for extra buttons (typical wikipedia image AFAICT)

Krssst 7mo ago

The article talks of other menu entries but the screenshot of the menu literally shows the "Remove AI chatbot" option, why not just click that instead of hunting for it in about:config?

kemayo 7mo ago
As an aside, it does seem like a bit of a bad sign for a feature that you know up-front that it'll be so polarizing that you need to have an always-visible top-level "hide this forever!" button.
- sfink 7mo ago
  Why? Shouldn't polarizing features be done exactly this way? The people on one pole use it, those on the other remove it. Perhaps you meant "unwanted" or "unpopular"? If you never add any features that could be polarizing, then you end up with a lowest common denominator interface that offends nobody and is useful to (almost) nobody.

jez 7mo ago

Still the only thing I miss about the Firefox right-click context menu coming from Chrome is that Firefox doesn't have a "Look up '<selection>'" in the menu on macOS, to look up in the macOS dictionary, for looking up words I don't know. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1116391 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1116391

ubercow13 7mo ago

The "Email Image..." one is infuriating. Who right clicks an image to email it to someone in 2026? And if it's you, could you help me understand why??

1718627440 7mo ago
Every random app now-a-days has share buttons. Why shouldn't the browser have on, when it is inherently about browsing a network resource?
Maken 7mo ago
It's still more useful than the "Set as desktop background" entry.

layer8 7mo ago

> of which 2 are greyed-out (aka: fucking useless) It actually makes sense, because instead of wondering where the option is, you learn that it is not applicable in the given context. It also supports the spatial memory you have of the surrounding options.

LikeBeans 7mo ago

A while back I wanted more menu options with Firefox so I made an extension [1]. Basically when you highlight a word or a sentence on a page a menu popups up with some options like to copy, search, or lookup on Google maps. Or whatever option you want. I use it often and find it useful. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-tooltip/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/popup-tooltip...

1718627440 7mo ago
> Basically when you highlight a word or a sentence on a page a menu popups up with some options like to copy, search Huh, beside Google Maps, that's what the default context menu does in Firefox?
- LikeBeans 7mo ago
  Yeah the Google Maps was my primary goal. But I was also thinking a person can add other options. For example different search engines. Or maybe your favorite AI agent search.
  - 1718627440 7mo ago
    I see, I've also wondered why Firefox doesn't allow configuration of search providers in the context menu or allows multiple one.
memcg 7mo ago
Thank you! Your extension is really helpful.

6510 7mo ago

I just notice they made about:config suck more. Articles about entries use to be able to do: about:config?filter=browser.translations.select.enable Now all that does is show this stupid "be careful" warning.

CobrastanJorji 7mo ago

> Removes the “Translate Selection” button from the right-click menu. I don't want the Translate button to NEVER be there. I want it to be there if and only if the selection is not in English.

kps 7mo ago
How would it know?
- Zopieux 7mo ago
  Have you heard of machine learning?
  - unselect5917 7mo ago
    If you put machine learning into the loading of a right click menu, I want you to step on a Lego barefoot immediately afterward. Right click menus should be instant. No fade in. No animation. No spinner. And certainly not any machine learning calls.
    - eviks 7mo ago
      Have you heard of async? You can get instant menu with a delayed menu item
      - VVertigo 7mo ago
        That is a recipe for pain too: menus shouldn't be morphing as the user is trying to choose an option.
        eviks 7mo ago
        Sure, but this also has an easy solution - don't morph, have an inactive menu in place (with an indicator of wort work in progress) that activates when the work is done

lifis 7mo ago

The improvement that could be made is to reorganize the menu so that entries are grouped in "Image", "Link", "Text", "Page" and "Development" sections, which could either be submenus or titled sections depending on screen size and user preferences

devmor 7mo ago

Holy crap, I use Firefox every day on Windows and MacOS and I've never seen a menu like that. Of course, I've never selected an entire page section of multimedia content and right clicked on it before. Of course the menu has a lot of options - you've given it multiple contexts and it's a context menu.

adamtaylor_13 7mo ago

Does uBlock Origin do something like this by default? I noticed that my right-click menu looks completely sane; almost identical to the end, clean result. But I've never done this particular config cleanup before.

oniony 7mo ago

There are actually eight dividers.

elxr 7mo ago

In a way, this shows why I generally love using webapps over desktop apps. The level of quick customizability for something as basic as a right-click is impressive. Love that firefox offers so much control, despite the questionable defaults.

edelind 7mo ago

I don't know, I am quite a power user of some stuff he removed. Especially Services! that is a gem in itself if you know how to use it.

jerhewet 7mo ago

Hmm. I guess I'm living the good life with all of the Firefox configuration changes I've made over the years. I have six right-click menu items and four buttons (page back, page forward, reload, and bookmark): Save Page As, Select All, Take Screenshot, View Page Source, Inspect Accessibility Properties, and Inspect. And one additional entry for uBlock Origin at the bottom of the menu (Block Element).

gethly 7mo ago

i switched to waterfox last week and the context menu is better from the get-go. and no AI either.

shultays 7mo ago

“Bookmark Link…” “Save Link As…” “Email Image…” “Set Image as Desktop Background…” “Bookmark Page…” ... we can’t get rid of these things by simply toggling some option in about:config ... Why seemingly the most useless options are not in about:config

willrshansen 7mo ago

The way sidebery let's you customize it's right click menu seems to be the right way to go about it

mrandish 7mo ago

Very nice. I didn't have some of those. Thanks for posting! For those of us who have a user.js file to keep all these about:config customizations over time and across installs... here they are formatted for user.js: user_pref("privacy.query_stripping.strip_on_share.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.translations.select.enable", false); user_pref("screenshots.browser.component.enabled", false); user_pref("dom.text-recognition.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.search.visualSearch.featureGate", false); user_pref("browser.ml.linkPreview.enabled", false); user_pref("browser.ml.chat.menu", false); user_pref("dom.text_fragments.enabled", false); Also, there's a nice little toolkit for removing items from all the Firefox right-click menus: https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard https://github.com/stonecrusher/simpleMenuWizard.

lkbm 7mo ago
That toolkit looks great. I have a big ol' userChrome.css removing ~15 menu items, but I may switch to this next time I work on improving things again.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

laalshaitaan 7mo ago

The pattern is always the same: product team has a new AI feature, someone says put it everywhere, nobody asks users if they want it, and then power users revolt while the feature languishes unused anyway. The right move was opt-in, but that would've made the adoption numbers look bad. Progressive disclosure exists for a reason.

zeagle 7mo ago

Is it different on Windows from MacOS? I have AI features disabled on firefox 148.0 and my options on an image are a reasonable list of Open Image in New Tab, Save Image As..., Copy Image, Copy Image Link, Email Image, Set Image as Desktop Background..., Take Screenshot, Inspect Accessibility Properties, Inspect (Q) and two related to extensions that are my choice (Block Element..., Bitwarden). For links I get the Open in (...) options. If I enable AI features I get one extra menu. And very niche to disable print.enabled so you can't print from your browser?

eviks 7mo ago

> But the real bad news is that we can’t get rid of these things by simply toggling some option in about:config. In a better designed customizable browser like Vivaldi you can just see the menu itself and move/edit/remove/add items aroudn. In a better mythical app you would be able to add an easy way to do those edits right there from the page context menu

glub103011 7mo ago

[dead]

tdeck 7mo ago

Is there a way to disable Ctrl+Shift+C yet? That's my only longstanding complaint in Firefox.

evilpie 7mo ago
Yes. It's in about:keyboard.

Markoff 7mo ago

Wait, you need to go to about:config to customize your right click context menu by disabling items one by one and you don't have normal Settings UI to customize it? Vivaldi browser desktop user (Settings → Appearance → Menu → Choose “Page” in the Menu Customization dropdown)

wink 7mo ago

I don't care about the tone or any inconsistencies, it's a good list.

LocalPCGuy 7mo ago

Bit sad that the DevTools Accessibility Inspector was one of the "superfluous" items, at least without a "if you're not a dev" type of disclaimer. If you do any web development, seems like a worthwhile item and I'm happy it is surfaced by default to help promote it's use. Obviously, no issues with non-devs who would never use it disabling it.

hexage1814 7mo ago

There used to be a great extension to edit context menu easily (you can still do it using userchrome.css). Mozilla kill when it moved from XUL to web extension. Mozilla is run by people who don't use Firefox nor care.

HackerThemAll 7mo ago

Yeah, former Opera employee making fun from Firefox. So cool. To respond: Remember you just took Google software, changed skin, added more telemetry and spying eyes, and call it a browser.

mmsc 7mo ago
https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html Please consider reading.

Baljhin 7mo ago

Another post listed the Arkenfox project, but that's focused on privacy & security, and secondarily performance -- not on UI/UX. (Changing some parameters might affect contextmenu entries.) It's a thankless task - except by nontech browser users - to modify Fx's menus. Anybody remember the XUL-era addon 'Menu Editor'? So many years and so much effort to make it 'simple' for typical users to customize Menu Bar and context-menus; and always a target that refused to stay standard given Firefox version changes ALWAYS break something about the UI. Ultimately a valiant but unrewarded failure, no blame to the 'Menu Editor' developer(s) and userbase. As the writer will learn, the 'best' way to UI changes current (and XUL) Firefox is via userChrome.js/.css -- which has also had troubled history, as waves of main-office Fx developers have been openly hostile to promoting and supporting is functionalities. [0] https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/ https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/