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I have the same concern, particularly with regards my MS Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard: I use the Mute key all the time for exactly what it does natively on Windows 7 (and did on XP too): mutes all audio on the system. If this functionality is implemented in the browser, what exactly happens? Does it mute the tab (something Chrome 71 already made a mess of)? Does it mute audio in the entire browser? And if it does either of those, is there a way to disable it (say, through chrome://flags)? Because if not, that's a huge problem and major oversight.

As I wrote the above paragraph, I noticed that a reply came in elsewhere indicating that apparently the only keys it'll look at are play/pause/seek and track-oriented keys. What if people are already using those with their media player of choice? Furthermore, the document is marked Editor's Draft as of 2019/02/09, a.k.a. working draft, a.k.a. subject-to-change-at-any-moment. And even if it wasn't, we all know this is exactly how it begins: today it supports only those functions, but 6 months from now it's extended to support Mute and Volume Up/Down, which will provoke someone to consider adding Home, Favourites, Mute, Calculator, etc. via something similar -- all keys that have historically (we're talking 15+ years, folks) been dedicated to the UX aspect of the OS only, UNLESS you specifically went out of your way to configure them on a per-program basis and within that program (ex: Winamp), with some exceptions (read: Internet Explorer actually does use some of these keys itself when running) -- then it'll get extended to Logitech G15 LCD so the browser can print stupid crap on the LCD, followed by RGB LED tweaking, then some kind of fan RPM mod, blah blah blah. This is what's called creeping featurism and it is not a new phenomenon, but its prevalence has greatly amplified in the past 10 or so years.

I have no problem with the browser implementing, say, the appropriate API functions so that an extension/add-on could be used to set said keys up in the browser to perform media-related tasks (not a bad idea really, sort of akin to what the Streamdeck does alongside OBS Studio) -- the user has to install the Chrome extension by choice, thus the concern is alleviated for everyone as a default (read: majority) and bugs/quirks only affect those who effectively opted in through use of an extension.

In all seriousness, the past few major Chrome releases -- 70, 71, and 72 -- all brought with them more UX-related problems than improvements, IMO. For example, in 72 for whatever reason they decided to get rid of the incredibly useful details at chrome://net-internals/#proxy that would tell you what the active/effective settings were -- extremely useful for knowing if your PAC file was loaded or not, if a proxy was in use at all (and if so, if it was SOCKS or DIRECT or what), etc.. And just today I found they removed the chrome://net-internals/#events viewer entirely and replaced it with a dump-crap-to-a-file model that requires you to install Python and a completely separate external utility to decode it. What was wrong with doing this natively? Why not offer both?

I say all of this as a person who is an extremely strong advocate of KISS principle. I just don't see why removing useful information and capabilities of this sort is considered positive progress. Likewise, I don't see how adding media keys support to a browser is progress either. I think it creates more problems and annoyances than it solves. Obligatory Jurassic Park reference.

Also, just found one more extension that may help Tab Mix Plus users:

Open Link with New Tab https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

I haven't actually tried it because when you go to install it, it says that it requires your permission to access your data on all websites, and since I'm not really certain how Firefox extension permissions work, I don't know if that actually implies some kind of security risk.

If you read the comments a lot of people are berating the author because it won't open bookmarks in new tabs, but that can easily be accomplished by adding a Firefox preference; you don't need an extension for that anymore. http://techdows.com/2017/09/fi...

Far and away the one I miss the most is Tab Mix Plus. While you can use scripts and in some cases about:chrome preferences (such as http://techdows.com/2017/09/fi...) to get some functionality back, it was a whole lot easier to just set all your preferences in Tab Mix Plus.

The other one was Classic Theme Restorer. While some of that functionality can be obtained using CustomCSSforFx (https://github.com/Aris-t2/CustomCSSforFx/releases/tag/1.3.0) it's a far more messy and manual process, and the options aren't all that well explained.

I have installed Waterfox (https://www.waterfoxproject.org/), which allows me to use almost all my old extensions, but I'm a little afraid of it since I know nothing about the developers or how seriously they take security. But for now, it's definitely an option for people who hate Firefox 57 and just want to get the use of their legacy extensions back. If as many people are upset about losing the use of extensions we've been using for nearly a decade (in some cases) as I am, Waterfox just MIGHT get a lot more popular. It would be interesting to know if their download count has suddenly skyrocketed. If you install Waterfox BEFORE updating to Firefox 57 and then have it copy all your settings from Firefox, it will look almost exactly like Firefox. Not all addon settings get copied, though (the addon itself gets copied, but not all the settings do for some addons), so you may have to change some of them by hand.

Heads up, FF 48 has removed the browser.urlbar.unifiedcomplete setting. This setting was introduced in Firefox 43 to disable the annoying Unified Complete system introduced in that build. Unified Complete is what causes the first drop-down result to be "Visit/Search With [domain]" rather than the most relevant result, as was the default before Firefox 43.

Since the preference has been removed entirely, there is no current way to get this behavior back. It would need to be fixed by an extension.

there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

And I'm already beyond fixing something that as far as I'm concerned is broken out of the box. I have better things to do than download extensions to make software behave sensibly.

there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

That why he said:

Fortunately there's an extension that adds the status bar back in.

What I wonder however is:

I wonder how long it be be until they are forced on us and we will have to rely on yet more extensions in order to have a decent browser.

Firefox extensions to get Chrome or Opera installed? I don't get it ;)

there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

But, why remove it in the first place? For a decade or more, the status bas has been useful to check what that link you are about to click on actually points to. Removing it just opens people up to all sorts of things.

To me, that is kinda like having a mod to my car to add back the rear view mirror. I just don't see why removing it in the first place is 'progress' ... I am beginning to fear Firefox may have jumped the shark.

Which is annoying, because IE still sucks, Safari is annoying, and I can't even begin to care about Chrome.

The last cool innovation in a web browser that I actually found useful was tabs. Quite sad, really.

there's already an extension to add the status bar functionality back

Yup, they actually removed it not made it "hidden" as a default.

There is an extension (status4evar) but it does not work very well.

Stupid move IMHO.