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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.
In my day, we would axe a good question in school. Today, we ask a feature that sucks. What a future
>> where does Mozilla find so many chimps to hire
The complete works of Shakespeare were already published so the chimps were "on the bench" so to speak.
"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
As someone who's used Firefox since way back when it was named "Phoenix," I say that removing anything and everything that isn't strictly necessary (except tabs themselves and support for extensions) is a good thing!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've been amazed, and not in a good way, since Mozilla has started their code cleanup project. People had been complaining for years that Mozilla was throwing every bell and whistle into Firefox adding bloat and bugs. Now that they have found out the users are right and start removing the bloat and bugs, all the users can [still] do is bitch. Extensions are being added that allow the smaller pools of users to continue using those features and the bloat is gone for everyone else. It's a win all the way around. Do this for enough features and everyone gets a slimmer, faster browser that has the features you use but, without all the bloat for the ones you don't. The one person that exists that uses every feature removed might lose out but, all of the rest of us gain.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I thought it was a cool feature. I never had a use for it. I guess it was a solution in search of a problem.
Perhaps because what people wanted them to remove were completely non-browser related crap like "Pocket", or "social integration" features, or "recommended sites", rather than actual browser related functionality like fine-grain cookie management and tab groups.
They're keeping the shit and throwing out the useful bits. Which I might see if it was working, but it's not: they're haemorrhaging more and more market share as they add shit and remove good things, because - gasp - people wanted the good stuff and didn't want the shit.
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.
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!
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.
They promised to remove Extension support several years ago, with some foolish idea that they could drive people to use their "jet" thing. Not only was Jet utter crap, but the outcry at the threat of removing extensions echoed for a long time in their ears. I don't think they have enough remaining customers to make good on that stupid promise again.
The only reason I've remained loyal to Firefox is the extension model works so well. I can live with most of their ugly and awkward UI changes, even though they're all user-unfriendly and I hate everything about them. Extensions have replaced some of the missing needed features they've removed. But the main thing is there is no reason to use any browser that doesn't run NoScript. There's no reason to contact any server of a resource if I have no intention of loading or viewing said resource. And all the major alternatives are worse. Chrome is actively sending browsing habits directly into the world's largest advertising company, and I have no desire to feed that rapacious tiger. Microsoft's old offerings are laughably as insecure as swiss cheese, and their new browser phones home with practically every keypress.
Yes, I could run privoxy, but that's a really awkward approach when compared to NoScript's brilliant rules engine. But if the only choice becomes running through a filtering proxy, then I'm no longer bound to Firefox. May as well use the built in browsers at that point - they're less hassle.
John