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Mozilla Is Removing Tab Groups and Complete Themes From Firefox (venturebeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: As part of Mozilla's "Go Faster" initiative for Firefox, the company is removing features that aren't used by many and require a lot of technical effort to continually improve. VentureBeat learned that the first two features to get the axe are tab groups and complete themes. Dave Camp, Firefox’s director of engineering, said, "Tab Groups was an experiment to help users deal with large numbers of tabs. Very few people chose to use it, so we are retiring it because the work required to maintain it is disproportionate to its popularity."

14 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How do they know? by ioErr · · Score: 3, Informative
  2. Re:Mozilla wins #1 prize! - for "hiding" features by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Okay, I just tried the tab group feature (that I forgot even existed) and accidentally closed all my tabs... Point taken.

  3. Re:What's next? by Dagger2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    That article is talking about plugins. The GP is actually talking about extensions. They're two very different types of add-ons.

    Of course, they're also dropping support for extensions (and replacing it with support for slightly-improved Greasemonkey scripts). You can't make this stuff up, folks.

  4. Electrolysis project by Malc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Meanwhile another year has passed and they still haven't completed the Electrolysis project (multi-process browser).

    The monolithic process with all its memory leaks and unrestrained memory growth, and no way to figure out which tab was eating all the CPU and draining my laptop battery meant I switched to Chrome and Safari years ago. FF is not fit for purpose.

  5. Re:What's next? by hyades1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You should check out Pale Moon. It's basically Firefox before it all went to shytte, and they seem intent on maintaining the kind of browser that made Firefox a success in the first place.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  6. Re:How do they know? by alexgieg · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is precisely why I enable telemetry data in any software I use that uses it. If that specific bit data collection is in place, it will be used to determine future development of the software, so I well might try and help the software developers know that yes, I do use these menu options.

    Alas, my telemetered usage of tab groups in Firefox didn't help this feature stay, and I wonder how many power users never let Mozilla know they use it in the first place. Sigh.

    I've been considering moving to Pale Moon due to Mozilla's dumbing down of Firefox. The fun thing with that is that, while Pale Moon did this before, tab groups can be added back if one so wishes: Pale Moon Tab Groups add-on. And it also allows installing the Australis theme if one likes it (I do): Australium theme. So, yeah, I'm moving there sooner rather than later now...

    --
    Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  7. Re:How do they know? by alexgieg · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think it was Windows-only in the past, but I just checked and nowadays there are also official Linux and Android versions too.

    --
    Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
  8. You're only thinking of the UI by rsilvergun · · Score: 1, Informative

    and the most obvious part of the end user experience. Rapid automatic updates mean everyone has the latest version, which means developers can count on everyone having the latest version. Just about every aspect of modern UI counts on this. Try taking IE 8 for a spin sometime, it's awful. But there are still users clinging to it so there are still web sites stuck putting money into supporting it instead of making new, useful features. And of course don't get me started on the Security nightmare that happens when you've got dozens of unsupported browser versions in use because people refuse to upgrade.

    Basically you're point is only valid if you ignore the mountains of under the hood enhancements that have been piling into browsers for the last 10 years.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  9. Re:That's not their problem by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 3, Informative

    their problem is Google pulled their funding

    No, Mozilla decided to go with Yahoo: Yahoo usurps Google in Firefox search deal

  10. Re:What's next? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Palemoon is a fork and it's its point provide a stable API that stops changing with the mood of Firefox devs. It means your favourite extensions that work with Palemoon will keep working indefinitely, which is a major progress. It also means you can't keep in sync with the newer versions developed for Firefox.

    If you want the latest extensions go with Firefox, and keep in mind it might stop working at anytime because Mozilla changed an API, and it will eventually definitively stop working when Mozilla finally goes with their plan of removing the XUL extension API to replace it with the Chrome extension API.

  11. Re:Fuck Mozilla by Alumoi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Right now, I have 40 open tabs in this Firefox session, opened from different points in time and which I've never closed b'cos they contain interesting tidbits which would be tricky to search for again.

    If I knew that there was something that would help me w/ this, I'd use it.

    Ever heard of bookmarks?

  12. Tree Style Tabs by unencode200x · · Score: 3, Informative

    I hope this doesn't affect my Tree Style Tabs Plugin. It's the only reason I stay on FireFox and it's awesome. You can have the tabs on the side and have subtabs which keep everything organized and nice to use.

    Chrome doesn't have anything comparable. Chrome's extension is ugly and the tabs are in a separate, weird window. I can't go back to tabs at the top.

    --

    Chance favors the prepared mind.
    Perfect is the enemy of good.
  13. Put 'em in extensions by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    What we expect Mozilla to do is remove features from Firefox core and distribute them as extensions on addons.mozilla.org. For example, Pocket used to be exactly such an extension, as are various tab management extensions. "Where's my feature?" is a matter of missing machinery in the core on which to build extensions.

  14. Re:Mozilla is following in Microsoft's footsteps by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."