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Friday, March 19, 2010

Attention Mozilla

Dear Makers of Firefox,

What. In. The. Fuck?

One of you needs to get slapped upside the head.

 

I upgraded to the latest version of Firefox. 

I was perfectly happy with the older version, but the incessant nagging to upgrade finally got the best of me.

I should have known better.  The continuous reminders to upgrade to the latest version were ominously similar to Microsoft’s constant bullshit, and I should have taken that as an omen.

So far as I can tell, the new version and the old version are exactly the same – except Mozilla has changed certain browser functions for no conceivable reason whatsoever.  And this is pissing me off to a degree you simply can not imagine. 

I use multiple tabs. I normally have anywhere from ten to twelve tabs open at once.  I have a particular set of websites open in a particular order. That’s how I want it.  I don’t give a flying fuck if Mozilla doesn’t like it that way.  I don’t give a flying fuck if you, gentle reader, don’t like it that way.  I don’t give a flying fuck if the President or the Pope or God himself doesn’t like it. It’s my computer and I’ll damned well have my browser session arranged the way I want it. 

Now, since version one, Firefox has always opened a new tab to the far right of the tab bar.  That’s how it has always worked, and that is how I want it to work for now and forever. Period. I open a lot of temporary tabs when I’m doing research and I don’t want to have to fuck around when I want to close one, I just close the far right.

Except, suddenly, for no particular reason other than to just plain irritate the ever living hell out of me apparently, Mozilla decided that Firefox version 3.6 would suddenly change my settings and open new tabs next to whatever tab had the focus when it was called. And there is no control under options to change it back the way it was. Out of reflex I keep closing tabs I want open and leaving tabs I want closed.  I want it to work the way it has always worked, I want my software to adapt to me, not me to it.

God damn it, Mozilla, did Bill Gates buy you out finally?

Changing my settings every upgrade is the kind of corporate assholiness that I’ve come to expect from Microsoft, seeing it happen with Mozilla is a foul and unpleasant surprise.  Like waking up and finding you’ve been ass-raped.  What’s next? Ribbon bars?

 

I’ve looked through the Tab related add-ons, can’t find one that will give me control over this function.  I found a couple that say they’ll give me control, but none do. If any of you can tell me how to return my browser to its previous behavior, i.e. new tabs open far right, I would be eternally grateful.

And you, Mozilla, you should have to wear the Bill Gates Dunce Cap of Shame for the next month. If I wanted you to dictate how I use my browser, I’d use IE.

Keep this kind of crap up, and I’ll be using Google Chrome. 

22 comments:

  1. Not positive, as I don't use Firefox very often anymore, but this seem to work in the 10 seconds I tested it.

    1. Type about:config in address bar.
    2. Search for browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent
    3. Change from true to false.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What are you using?

    trying your suggestion now.

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  3. That did it, thank you Iakanta, I swear I was just about to lose my damned mind.

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  4. No problem, I'm glad it worked.

    And I switched to Chrome, which I find suits me better than Firefox. However, the tab behavior is the same as the new Firefox, and if you have a set usage pattern with Firefox it would probably annoy you in whole new ways.

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  5. I have Chrome, I don't use it much at the moment, it's a little too bare bones for me. But I'm finding that Mozilla is beginning to annoy me more and more for a variety of reasons. If I had to pay for it, I'd stop using it.

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  6. I have my zombie killing bazooka so I'll just say that I do use IE and it opens windows to the far right by default. So does Opera.

    latio - a patio in Miami

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  7. I like in Chrome that you can "pin" tabs, and save your favourite webpages so they're all right there when you open a new page.

    I've farewelled Firefox, and am happy enough.

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  8. I'm not happy with the new Firefox upgrade either. Like you, I open a lot of tabs at once and all of a sudden they aren't opening like they did.

    Also, I've never liked the yahoo tool bar and I've never understood why people use yahoo a lot for anything. I've always thought it attached too much garbage and without clearly asking me first. With this new upgrade, there is the yahoo tool bar stuck like glue to my screen and I've not been able to find an uninstall for it yet!

    I didn't choose to have it installed so Foxfire should not been so presumptuous.

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  9. Try Opera, you might like it. I do.

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  10. Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give them a try.

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  11. I have the same complaint with the new Firefox version. Thanks for bringing it up and thanks to lakanta for the fix.

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  12. The weird thing is that I refused this Firefox upgrade -- I don't know why, because I usually upgrade every time they offer, but, with this one, I just said no. Glad I did. I would've been annoyed by this tab opening thing too.

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  13. The reason Not to always try trial and error first (which is what I usually do despite the inevitable colossal waste of time) is that if I'd just googled "remove foxfire 3 yahoo tool bar,"in about 30 seconds I'd have had the answer.

    Thank you to lakanta for the answer to the tabs problem.

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  14. Hallelujah! Thank you, lakanta! That was irritating the crap out of me as well.

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  15. Opera lets you choose which tab behavior you want (right next to, or far right). It's had that choice for quite a while. Seems kind of odd that Firefox would suddenly allow the other type and then not give you a choice (without messing around in about:config I mean).

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  16. For a long time I had no idea what you were complaining about this time.

    That's because I've been using an Add-on to control tab behavior for years.

    Try Tab Mix Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122)

    I initially got it because I want my home page--not a blank page--to open, but one of the things I also like is that I can place new browsers precisely--when I right click to open a link in a new tab, I like it to open next to the parent. Tab Mix plus lets me do that--and does a lot of other things as well.

    You can also use it to control tab closing behavior, which I also do.

    And it goes other stuff as well, some of which I use, some of which I don't.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yes, Michelle, I have Tab-Mix Plus loaded (and have used Tax Mix since before it was "plus") for similar reasons to you - I want new tabs to open on the home page and not blank. However, the control in Tab Mix to control location of new tabs would not work. No matter the setting, new tabs opened next to the parent (the new default) instead of far right (the old default). It required manual manipulation of the config file to fix it.

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  18. That's very bizarre.

    I'm running Tab Mix Plus on (counts on fingers) five different computers [or is it six? I think it's on the Mac at work too] and didn't run into anything like your describe on any of the machines.

    I wonder if it could have been another plug in?

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  19. Possible. Maybe more likely an incompatibility.

    The behavior change only appeared after the upgrade to v3.6. I disabled all add-ins and then reenabled Tab Mix, set the parameter - and it didn't work. reset it, same thing. Reenabled each add-in turn. Nothing. I was getting ready to delete Firefox altogether and reinstall it, when Iakanta suggest directed editing of the parameter in the config file. For some reason, I always forget I can do that.

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  20. thank you thank you thank you.. I've been suffering with this change ever since I "upgraded" my FF. I can't tell you how many windows I have closed and had to use the "History - recently closed tabs" menu.. Lakanta you are my hero! And Jim you are an class-1 Associate Hero for bring it up in the first place for allowing a forum to get it fixed

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  21. I'm using an earlier version, as I'm on Ubuntu 9.04 and it hasn't upgraded to the 3.5+ versions yet. However, I have been using the Next Tab and Tab Mix Plus extensions/add-ons for ages now. I'm not sure which one it is now (lol) but one of those gives me the option when I right-click links, to open next to current tab, open in new tab, open in current tab, in a foreground tab, or in a new window. I absolutely love the control it gives, sometimes I DO want to open a related tab next to the one I'm in, rather than at the end. And I, too, keep about 15 tabs always open.

    ReplyDelete

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