
Vertical Tabs
I’m going to go d this one a crack I think.
The Mozilla Foundation has let Firefox 105 out of the gate, and if you use a Chrome-based browser, it's a good time to take another look. Firefox 105 appeared on Tuesday, and while this isn't a show-stopping release, there is some new stuff that is well worth having. It's not quite five months since Firefox 100 came out, which …
Strange that Liam chose to recommend the barely known Vertical Tabs extension instead of the much more popular, tried and tested, and refined Tree Style Tabs (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/). It's as if he doesn't use what he promotes and only copied the top result for "vertical".
To be fair if you do a search for "vertical" on the Firefox add ons page, tree-style-tab is not shown. If I wanted vertical tabs and did not know about tree-style-tab, how would I find it? It's a bit like the supposed millions of apps on the Google Play store. Why do I keep seeing the same apps rather than some new ones?
I still prefer the original Panorama/Tab Groups extension which got brought into Firefox and then unceremoniously dumped in Mozilla's continual efforts to turn the GUI into an empty interface with just one button in the middle.
There is a similar extension, but it's less polished than the original because WebExtensions is gubbins.
Tree Style Tabs is what I use - and from memory, it's in the five pages of 'recommended' addons - but it has started to be a bit unstable when you have thousands of tabs.
I will have to check to see if the memory reclaiming feature means I can stop using an addon to do that.
When you give it a run, please do report back on how annoying the forced automatic updates are, and the lack of a button to turn them off.
Firefox devs believe it is their task to ensure everyone is updated, all the time, and ignoring the pop up eventually makes Firefox refuse to load anything in a new tab until you've restarted Firefox (and then had to reload all your tabs) ... and no, there is no option in the config: either, because they've removed that as well.
This is the Firefox devs attitude, because I've been there and had that conversation with them... and switched to Vivaldi.
When you give it a run, please do report back on how annoying the forced automatic updates are, and the lack of a button to turn them off.
Are you a Linux user, by any chance? Last time I looked, standard Firefox still allowed control over updates but the Xubuntu (and I presume Ubuntu) version which I use didn't. Apparently that's because the OS team have designated Firefox updates as OS security ones, so they cannot be turned off or even postponed.
That in turn means that Firefox in Xubuntu regularly restarts itself, losing all work in open tabs (which it rarely reopens properly) without any opportunity of a graceful exit or saving.
Screw them. I have moved to Chrome.
Just looked in Windows, and FF 105 has options to auto update or not.
I will also say FF on the mac has never restarted without asking me first. (That's the one I tend to leave running for weeks on end). Just looked, it's on 104 and isn't bugging me.
Oh, as to their annoyance level, personally: zero.
Yes, with some fiddling, so things like Tab Mix Plus for multi-row horizontal tabs work again: https://github.com/onemen/TabMixPlus/#readme
Though not via Snap, but Snap FireFox has a ton of problems, like saving downloads to '/tmp/' actually being saved to some other folder under the real '/tmp/', so I've moved all our Ubuntu machines off the Snap and onto old school .tgz installs direct from Mozilla.
I'm probably going to waste yet more time finding out why all my menu & bookmark text is suddenly 72 point again. Mozilla keep changing the knobs that let you control non-web text sizes and don't document it clearly. Bloody annoying and no, I don't have a 96 DPI screen, not do I want shouty menus. Just stop fucking around with it!
[I want a steam coming out of ears icon.]
Keep at it, Moz! We need there to be someone challenging the big G at their monopoly. As it stands, I admit that FF is not quite as snappy as Chrome. However, this is a price I'm willing to pay for not being in thrall to the ad-slinger.* It would have to be actually unusable for me to switch to Chrom(e/ium)(/Edge/other skin).
(*Yes, I know you're going to tell me FF is supported by Google's money. I don't care: it lets me use the web without wanting to gouge out my eyes.)
In my experience as a webdev and after hours of profiling I find that Firefox is better at static stuff, in one memorable example I had a page with other a million elements and Chrome took 30 seconds to parse it all whereas Firefox measured in mere milliseconds! When it comes to dynamic stuff Chrome takes the lead, it's JavaScript engine is superior although in my subjective experience it also crashes more often.
I was the same for years then the stupid company was at also made the stupid decision to move to gsuite (its shit) and "encouraged" us to use Chrome. I disliked it but discovered Google Keep. Actually really useful if you find a website interested in. Find a bit of a website interested in etc, you just highlight send to Google Keep. Essentially really quick note taking. Sadly no one has made one for Firefox, not an official extension for Google Keep for Firefox so I ended up moving perm to Chrome. Didn't help when I moved into my new home, due to having no room the PC that worked perfectly fine day before move. Decided, a year later of not being turned on, for Windows 7 to go all weird and refuse to update (before updates were ended) and then firefox detonated and kept crashing and killed all the bookmarks.
So now on work laptop, even though no longer required, I sadly stuck with Chrome.
Hubert,
I strongly recommend not gouging your eyes out. My eyesight is going and there is no update for that, yet.
I've had to enlarge all the text now that all print is small print, which is fine for horizontal tabs but leaves no room for vertical tabs.
Help the aged, one time they were just like you
Coding, fixing bugs and developing GNU
It really has nothing at all to do with Firefox, but how we've come full circle and a lot of sites are only bothering to test with Chrome. Reddit, for example, has had a known bug for YEARS, in its comments. Pasting into a comment box with Firefox is completely borked, and despite there being a ticket open in Bugzilla for Firefox, it doesn't seem like it's high on anyone's priority to try to fix. Don't really blame them, Reddit's the one that is using a broken bit of JavaScript and should be the one fixing it, but... yeah. Their support staff is well aware of the issue, have been for years, and they seem about equally invested in fixing it as Mozilla.
It is nice to know that Mozilla is still plugging away and providing a non-Chromium alternative for those who want/need it.
"Their support staff is well aware of the issue, have been for years, and they seem about equally invested in fixing it as Mozilla."
As back in the day when stuff worked or didn't work with FF or IE, devs mark all those kind of problems as "will not fix" because the metrics say they are self-repairing. User get so sick of waiting for a fix, they just install the browser that works with that site, possibly only for the few incompatible sites they encounter. What the devs see is that "everyone" is using the browser that "works" and almost no one is using the "incompatible" browser, therefore it's not worth spending time and resources fixing a problem only a very few "whiney" people have.
Not sure. I last did a pkg upgrade on FreeBSD a couple of days ago and got the new Firefox 105 then too. FreeBSD is normally a little behind Linux releases. Either there was almost no work involved[*] in FreeBSDing the source or Mint was late to the party :-)
[*] That's not to denigrate all the much appreciated hard work the FreeBSD Ports team and the groups and individuals maintaining the ports and packages do, but they are not always in the same loop or have the same resources as the big Linux "distro" teams.
"If you're a heavy user and routinely have many dozens of tabs open, we highly recommend giving the Fox another try"
Just a day after installing the update and it's the first time that FF has locked up solid... no other programs running... had to use the power button to shut the laptop down!
I'm often low on memory and it looks to me like Firefox is constantly unloading tabs - rather than letting the OS page *other* apps out.
So my user experience is this;
Before : tabs were instant.
After : five seconds to switch between tabs.
It's "browser.tabs.unloadOnLowMemory" to False to disable.