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Firefox 45 Will Remove Tab Groups Today, Get This Add-on To Replace It (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Firefox 45, set to be released today, will remove the Tab Groups feature, a feature that many people used, but Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code. The good news is that a developer created a perfect replacement for this feature as an add-on. Users that use Tab Groups on a daily basis are urged to install the add-on before upgrading to Firefox 45. The add-on will take over from the browser's Tab Groups feature without any complex configuration. Users that update to Firefox 45 will have their tab groups moved to their Bookmarks as folders, which may be difficult to move back into the Tab Groups add-on later on, especially if some people have hundreds of URLs.
...Mozilla's solution to a bit of code that's been present in their software for years and is buggy is to remove it years later rather than fix it?
Good to know they're still the consummate professionals we always assumed they were.
Really, where does Mozilla find so many chimps to hire?
In my day, we would axe a good question in school. Today, we ask a feature that sucks. What a future
as a bonus.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
What did they ask due to buggy code? Must use Cortana........
Today slashdot accidentally ebonics'd.
Usually, one hears people mispronounce "ask" as "aks" -- this is the first time I've seen the mistake made the other way around.
Editors plz!
a developer created a perfect replacement for this feature as an add-on
And it will work for approximately half a year until they break it, at which point it becomes "incompatible" with "modern" firefox and you're left hanging. You know, the add-on system seemed like a great idea at first, and it was certainly sold as a great idea, but what's actually happened is that the firefox developers came to view it as an excuse to offload work to third parties. Instead of a platform to bring new and innovative features to firefox, it's a justification for removing core functionality from firefox. The end result is that using firefox today is at least an order of magnitude more work and frustration than it should be.
"Mozilla decided to ask due to buggy code."? /.'s editors got their lingo wrong.
I think
You better axe somebody!
OMG (Score:5+ Insightful)
What? Why did they spend all of their time fixing this stupid feature no one uses! Firefox is supposed to be lean instead of all this useless bloat! Just make it an extension, that's the whole point of Firefox
I thought everyone abandoned ship.
who edits these submissions?
So why not just fix the buggy code? I'm getting a little worried about the slips the Mozilla foundation is making. First with pushing "recommended sites" on the "home page" when a new tab was opened (used to push advertising agenda), now this. The is a new browser from the founders of Opera called "Vivaldi" at http://www.vivaldi.com/ and it's very good. MS is pushing "Edge" (along with windows 10 on every Windows 7+ OS and involuntary at that...shut down Windows Update in your services to prevent OS hijacking by MS) but it's not great. Ironically, you're better off with Firefox.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
reverse Ebonicsed
Letter To Iran
endless revisions of us? the best has yet to come... thanks again moms
Can I axe u a question?
I used to love you. Now I find you have fallen behind even Microsoft Edge. I don't know when it happened, but I realized that on my latest laptop (I usually get a new piece of equipment at home or work every six months on average) that I didn't even bother to install you.
I thank you for reopening the browser wars. For that, I will forever be in your debt. But somehow, you managed to lose the war badly. Chrome is faster and better with memory management and has nice built-in developer tools. Edge is actually quicker too though I feel dirty for praising a Microsoft product. You used to have the corner on add-ins, but that is no longer the case.
Thanks for what you did for the Internet. But your time has passed.
Great. Now funding can go to REAL use. Like Facebook integration, Microsoft back doors, and ivory back scratchers for the executives. Y'know, gotta keep up the revenue for the non-profit. ...wait, was Firefox a web browser at one point?
I tried groups for a while.
I really didn't see what it bought be over just opening new tabs in different windows.
Worse, it made it do I could close tabs that were open in background groups without noticing.
To me it seemed like a solution in search of a problem.
In their defense, it does make equally as much sense to remove a feature by "asking" as it does to pose a question by "axing". The score is utterly tied here.
I use the add-on in Firefox to get tab groups in my tab groups (Inception-style). With Firefox 45 this will no longer be possible.
On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents 'I never used it at all', and 5 represents 'I used it all the time': How often did you use the 'Tab Groups' feature in Firefox?
Me? '1'; I knew what it was, but didn't see the point to it and therefore never used it.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Pale Moon is the Firefox that you wish Firefox still were.
I've been using this addon since Fx 45 beta came out. It runs flawlessly and it even adds some functionality. (Some bugs are still unfixed -- new tabgroups often open on top of old ones, and everything piles up in the left upper corner. I'm also missing functionality such as "move these tabs into a new group but stay in the old one". And maybe Vivaldi has the better approach with "tab stacks", but it's not there yet.)
I just wonder how long the Firefox addon will last, because the evil spirit that has taken over Mozilla's carcass is determined to block any addon that is more than a glorified userscript.
Firefox deserves to go the way of IE6.
Well, Mozilla's symbol is a dinosaur after all.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Is there any other reason to upgrade to version 45?
In other browser news I see Comodo Dragon is up to version48.12.18.243
But Avast thinks its a virus and won't let me download it.
I've never seen sound. (At least not directly.) How do you do that?
Also, it's not "axe", it's "aks". It's a well-known linguistic quirk of several African languages where certain words have their sounds reversed in certain situations. This quirk was brought along for the ride as people migrated (forcibly or otherwise) out of Africa.
Hey, it's no weirder than special forms of certain letters when they appear at the end of a word (Greek sigma does this) or special forms of every letter at the beginning of a sentence (capital letters).
Language is weird. No exceptions.
Right!
# apt-get install palemoon
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package palemoon
Unlike IE, Chrome, and Safari, Firefox is not the default browser on any widely used platform (except desktop Linux, although even that is still mostly a system for nerds and not widely used by ordinary plebs). That means that the market for Firefox is the users that are knowledgeable enough to download a binary to replace the default web browser on their platform--likely, this means power users. Power users like things like advanced tab and cookie management. Power users do not like social media integration. Power users do not appreciate when the features they like (especially the ones they like enough to work around some long-lived bugs) are axed and replaced by an extension they have to go out and download.
I wouldn't expect Slashdot users to reason about this or be fair in their assessment, but once in a while it would be nice if you guys weren't so transparent with your anti-Mozilla bent. Over the last few weeks there has been amazing news about Servo, a very positive Reading List update, but here we are, on our third recent negative comment-fest instead. You're not even trying to hide your shame anymore.
>> people still use FireFox?
Sure, for testing. It's been a few years since I've run into in the field, though.
i just got version 44 working as it's *supposed to* and as expected... on just one of many desktops (others are quite a bit behind).... please let me enjoy a personalized, functional browser for a few days before you fuck it up again
i guess i'll just set up 45 esr on everything.. that way i'm only at risk of being pissed off at them once a year or so instead of every six weeks.
That's why I use Pale Moon. It's FireFox without the bloat. And it's also available in a 64-bit version.
There is no need to rant about declining firefox quality.
Mozilla will happily march on the route they started walking several years ago. Into obscurity, that is. SJWs have taken over and now spent the money they see fit. It won't stop. It will just continue at a steady pace.
I think that's a typo, it's #axe-get update && axe-get palemoon. You dummy.
Mozilla Boss: How can we fuck up Firefox for the next release?
Mozilla Dev: We've had great success fucking up or removing features people use.
Mozilla Intern: And make sure we make it more like Chrome, people hate that.
MB: Sounds good, what should we target next?
MI: I can run some numbers and see what features a moderate percentage of our users use. That way we continue the nice slow spiral down the drain.
MD: As long as I don't have to add anything new, I'm all for it.
MB: All right, so we pick some remaining features that distinguish us from Chrome, and we take one away that users depend on. Not too few users, not too many.
MI: I'll run a report against a target 20-40%.
MD: Once we pick a feature, I'll get on bugzilla and start adding bullshit about how it's a security risk for unspecified reasons, how it's unmaintained despite it not needing any maintenance, etc.
MI: I'll use my sock puppet accounts to create a few dupe accounts to reply in agreement with our actions.
MB: I'm fine with this as long as we make it absolutely clear we don't give a fucking shit what users want. Make sure to mark all their issues as "will not fix" and lock the comments whenever they post evidence of use or arguments against our "unmaintained" line.
MD: Don't worry, I'll post that we're redirecting all "conversation" to the mailing list.
MI: And as the moderator of the mailing list, I'll simply reject any postings that argue against us.
MB: Excellent. At this rate, we'll have a complete Chrome clone by the end of the year!
Remove an extremely useful feature rather than fix it? What the fuck is wrong with you ninnies??
Firefox is officially jumping the shark.
"Herr derr, we're too dumb to fix our own shit, let's just yank it out and pretend no one ever used it, herr derr"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
That's axe-get install palemoon, you pinhead.
I know there are some people who mispronounce "ask" as "axe", but seriously? It hurt my head to read that.
Captcha: bitter
"... before upgrading to Firefox 45."
I'm pretty sure that at this point we can cease calling these 'version change' upgrades.
I propose 'market shrinkage release'.
They better go ax somebody!
...Mozilla's solution to a bit of code that's been present in their software for years and is buggy is to remove it years later rather than fix it?
Good to know they're still the consummate professionals we always assumed they were.
Really, where does Mozilla find so many chimps to hire?
Judging on recent examples, I'd say from the Nautilus, Gnome 3 and systemd crowd.
Removing important and popular features is the new IT paradigm!
You complaints about Firefox sound good, except that all the other mainstream browsers are at least as bad.
Chrome is a memory hog and reloads everything when a session is restarted (unlike FF which waits until you look at a tab to reload it).
IE is, well, IE (or "Edge" as they call it now), and has no plug-ins AFAIK. On today's web, uBlock Origin and a script blocker are mandatory. And it only runs on Windows.
Safari only runs on Macs.
So it's not like there's a lot of great choices out there.
What if I was not so advanced in reading English?
Then you get the axe.
Right!
# apt-get install palemoon Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package palemoon
Pale Moon on Debian Jessie:
echo "deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepi... mepis12cr test" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mepis.list
apt-get update
apt-get install palemoon
If you're running a 'buntu variant, add the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~marian....
If you're on some other Linux variant, (or on Debian or 'buntu for that matter), just run the install script available here: https://linux.palemoon.org/dow...
Really, it's not that hard. Hell, there's even a special version for the Raspberry Pi.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Does anyone know of a good alternative for the Mac? The one thing that is really keeping me on Firefox is it's ability to restore my session after a crash (either browser or system). A few years ago I tried a couple other browsers and they would lose tabs that I had open if they quit unexpectedly but Firefox doesn't do that.
It's important because right now my system freezes sometimes when it goes to sleep. The screen will turn back on and I can move the pointer around with the mouse but that's as responsive as the system gets. Even the time shows what time the system went to sleep. So that's why I want a browser that can reliably keep my session for me.
And I don't want Flash installed on my computer. I got tired of it updating every week or two and having to restart my browsers along with a couple of other applications. And the curious thing is that except for a couple of sites (BBC mainly) I don't even notice that it's gone.
You know nothing of the Slashdot community if you think we're "anti-Mozilla".
Many of us were, at one time, the biggest supporters of Mozilla. We contributed bug reports, documentation, code, extensions and advocacy. We're the people who took Phoenix, then Firebird, and finally Firefox from absolutely nothing to one of the most popular web browsers ever.
Then Mozilla decided to shit all over us. They ruined Firefox's UI, and trashed it even more with Australis. They stripped out lots of useful core functionality, while inserting lots of totally unnecessary shit (like Hello and Pocket). Yet at the same time they never managed to fix Firefox's performance and memory usage problems, and there were many bugs that went unfixed for many years.
So we moved on. We moved to Chrome, Safari, Vivaldi, and even Edge. Why should we subject ourselves to Mozilla's shitty browser when we can get better elsewhere? We aren't going to use a browser that's inferior, and we especially won't use one that gets worse each release, like Firefox has a tendency to do.
But you know what? We'd gladly go back to using Firefox and supporting Mozilla if the stupidity stopped, and the awful changes to Firefox were reversed.
Contrary to your misconception, it's not Mozilla itself we have a problem with; it's the fucking stupid things they keep doing that we dislike and speak out against! We'd like nothing more than the old Mozilla to return. We want the Mozilla from before they turned Firefox into a shitty imitation of Chrome. We want the Mozilla from before the so-called "social justice" (which in practice involves far more injustice than justice) took root. We want the Mozilla that wouldn't waste their time with fucking idiotic and failed projects like Firefox OS, Rust and Servo.
That's right, Servo is a failure. I know this because I tried it recently after reading comments from people like you raving how great it is. Long story short, it was fucking terrible. It was extremely slow, and it crashed on most of the sites I tried it with. I would have probably gotten better results using Mosaic for the few sites that did barely work in Servo. If Servo is the future, then the disastrous Firefox present look absolutely glorious in comparison!
If Mozilla gets their act together, we will support them and their products. But based on everything we're seeing today, that sure as fuck isn't going to be happening any time soon!
So with the new owners click-whoring headlines enter Slashdot? I've been visiting the site from pretty much the beginning and haven't really noticed this journalistic cancer before. If you stop it now, no major damage happens.
Minus the tab grouping, even the minimalist Safari has Show All Tabs, which shows you all open tabs in a grid view, just like the feature Firefox is removing.
When is someone going to step up to the plate and create a rock solid privacy centered browser? The world is begging for a revolutionary, scorched earth approach to this problem which nukes intrusive javashit and browser fingerprinting out of the box. Unfortunately the best we have right now is leaky, bloated firefox with it's motley crew of addons.
The browser should be a sandbox which effortlessly spoofs anything the internet sees about it, either using the most common fingerprints to blend in with the crowd or just randomising everything on every session so it's impossible to build a profile. What are the technical hurdles, really?
It's hardly that big a shift. Tab Groups (Formerly Panorama) used to be an add-on called "Tab Candy" (IIRC).
Was this written by an 'African-American'? (Or APEfrican-American, more like). Hilarious.
So you wrote "ask" instead of "axe", and blacks say "axe" instead of "ask". LOL!
The perfect "add-on" to install on your computer is called Palemoon:
http://www.palemoon.org/
It replaces so many things that Firefox has gotten rid off, takes away the junk like telemetry, and adds features that are supposed to be in a browser.
Once you install Palemoon, you can uninstall Firefox altogether. In fact, you don't even need Firefox installed at all.
https://linux.palemoon.org/
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Flashblock on Firefox seems to have gone to shit recently. Is there a version that works?
-- Fuck Beta
Most of the last several linux distros I tested came with SeaMonkey as their default browser. And I was like -- yes! someone gives a shit about everyday usability!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Replacing Firefox with the very browser it was supposed to supplant is deliciously ironic.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
True, given that SM is basically an updated Netscape.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?