A fresh new Firefox is here

Used to run Firefox but have thrown it aside in favor of Brave. FF new version looks tempting but isn't enough to get me to switch.
 
Firefox 91 came out today and apparently has fixed the 'system' theme. Light tabs on dark title bar is now available. Doesn't seem as jarring as the 'light' theme that you were stuck with if you didn't like dark.
 
ghostwich said:
For those who may not like the changes, you can sort of revert things-

In a new tab, go to about:config and search for the text "proton" and turn off a few things:
  • browser.proton.enabled
  • browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled
  • browser.proton.doorhangers.enabled
  • browser.proton.modals.enabled
Click to expand...
Version 91 has been released and having settings like "browser.proton.enabled" set to false will actually create UI issues!

https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/p26oow/all_checkboxes_looks_unchecked_after_new_update/
 
Alright so I ended up doing the following:
  1. Open a new tab, go to "about:support" and find your Profile folder (open it, or take note of its location)
  2. Open an Administrator Powershell and run this (you may need to set your Execution Policy)
    Powershell -c "iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/master/install.ps1 -useb | iex"
  3. There will be prompts
    1. I chose "Original (default)"
    2. Select your profile folder
  4. Restart Firefox
This is a patch created by someone on GitHub that takes v89 and above and patches as much of the old UI back in as possible (i.e. tabs and spacing between menu items, buttons, etc.). I combine this with a theme for the older color scheme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/photon-colors/

The GitHub repo is here: https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix

It has some manual install instructions if the Powershell script doesn't work (or if you don't trust it, that's possible). As far as making an Admin Powershell work, I had to set my Execution-Policy for the process (Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope Process) in order for it to run the script it downloads (I always recommend reading the source code of any script!).

I think it's an improvement.
 

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I installed it last week and will try it for awhile. First thing I did though was check to make sure the update did not screw with my security, privacy and auto update settings-- one of my anal computer habits.
 
I don't like Proton. Seems like they are going to be more likely to push away loyalist than attract new people with this UI.
 
ghostwich said:
Version 91 has been released and having settings like "browser.proton.enabled" set to false will actually create UI issues!

https://reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/p26oow/all_checkboxes_looks_unchecked_after_new_update/
Click to expand...
Yeah looks like Mozilla disabled the ability to disable proton. I'm trying to get used to the new look but it bugs me. Has too much padding, especially on the bookmark menu. I wish it was adjustable at least. Seems like they are following the Windows 11 UI guildlines. I think I can get use to the new tabs but the bookmarks, maybe not.
 
bigdogchris said:
Yeah looks like Mozilla disabled the ability to disable proton. I'm trying to get used to the new look but it bugs me. Has too much padding, especially on the bookmark menu. I wish it was adjustable at least. Seems like they are following the Windows 11 UI guildlines. I think I can get use to the new tabs but the bookmarks, maybe not.
Click to expand...
I posted a workaround!
AustinW said:
looks like a edfe clone from that screenshot
Click to expand...
Edge still uses Chromium (Blink now?), and while I use Chrome (and Safari bleh) sometimes, I like to use alternative rendering browsers.
 
I don't know, the new UI looks fine to me. Not a huge departure and nice in some ways.
 
This new Fire Fox update is a POS!! I've already had 2 crashes on my home computer and 4 on my work computer today.

I can't remember it ever crashing on older versions....

Time to start looking for a new browser. Suggestions?
 
This is absolutely asinine, why did they remove the option to disable this ugly AF UI? Two things can happen here, I disable updates, or ditch firefox entirely. I know you can fuck around with userchrome.css to undo most of the damage, but that is never a permanent solution. Usually every major version change breaks what you set up in userchrome.css. And I don't want to go through that hassle.
 
The Firefox Extended Sanity Release (ESR) channel offers a much smoother experience. No new UI here (yet).
 
ElementDave said:
The Firefox Extended Sanity Release (ESR) channel offers a much smoother experience. No new UI here (yet).
Click to expand...
Unless it missed the ESR due to delays you'll be getting it soon enough. The timing for when it came out on main was done so that it would make the new ESR.
 
M76 said:
This is absolutely asinine, why did they remove the option to disable this ugly AF UI? Two things can happen here, I disable updates, or ditch firefox entirely. I know you can fuck around with userchrome.css to undo most of the damage, but that is never a permanent solution. Usually every major version change breaks what you set up in userchrome.css. And I don't want to go through that hassle.
Click to expand...

They rewrote large parts of the UI itself (not having to support the old codebase for another year was why they were pushing to get it done in time for the next ESR). I don't know what the specific objective of the rewrite was, but generally they've been redoing old subsystems to fix problems with excess memory usage (especially when duplicated over multiple sub-processes), making the components play better in general with multiple processes/higher levels of content isolation, and increasing the ability of what's shown to be rendered on the GPU instead of the CPU. Why their UI designers also wanted to change up the general appearance as much as they did, I don't know; but then I've never understood why those people do much of what they do.
 
ghostwich said:
For those who may not like the changes, you can sort of revert things-

In a new tab, go to about:config and search for the text "proton" and turn off a few things:
  • browser.proton.enabled
  • browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled
  • browser.proton.doorhangers.enabled
  • browser.proton.modals.enabled
Click to expand...

Well, this stopped working today.

Now I'm stuck with this garbage UI, and I am NOT happy about it.
 
sleepeeg3 said:
I trust the CCP more with my data than the US government. What is the CCP going to do with it? When the SHTF, I'd rather China knows everything about me than Google/.gov.

Both browsers have problems now:
Brave/chromium is not 100% open source so no idea what it is doing with your data. I don't understand why a Google product gets so much attention.
I can't remember exactly, but in version 69, Firefox started forcibly syncing either browsing history(?) or UN/PW(?) with Mozilla. This was a former third party add-on called Xmarks that they integrated the core functionality.
Click to expand...

That is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

They have a long history of collecting what the Russians call "Komprimat" on ordinary western citizens just in case they ever need it for anything.

The Chinese use it to either gather enough information about you that they can compromise your work accounts and gain access to work secrets, or, if they don't have enough data to do so, use the threat of sending your embarrassing nudes or porn habits, some medical condition you don't want others to know about or any other compromising information they have collected on you to blackmail you into giving them the information they want.

They then steal corporate IP, use it to make their own versions of your products, and use government subsidies and funding to dump it on the global markets until you go out of business and are out of a job, and then jack up the prices. Congratulations, you have given them a market and they hvae cost you your job.

These are not just some yinfoil conspiracies. Chinese military intelligence has been actively waging an industrial espionage war for decades, with the goal of being predominant in th eglobal economy and ruining every other competitor, and by being cavalier about stuff like this you are playing right into their hands.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That is some of the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

They have a long history of collecting what the Russians call "Komprimat" on ordinary western citizens just in case they ever need it for anything.
Click to expand...
Right back at you Serotonin. His personal concerns are this being done to him here at home as compared to pixie dust on the other side of the world, true as it may be. Domestic data collection is a valid concern.
 
SJetski71 said:
Right back at you Serotonin. His personal concerns are this being done to him here at home as compared to pixie dust on the other side of the world, true as it may be. Domestic data collection is a valid concern.
Click to expand...

Of course it is. I never said it wasn't. ALL data collection is a concern, but it is a huge mistake to be dismissive of the implications of foreign data collection and only focus on the demestic.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Interesting, thank you.

I thujght we were still talking about the system theme fix, my bad. Been too many github references in this thread.

Will have to look at that. Does it pull in any binaries that could potentially launch arbitrary code?
Click to expand...
unless there's something I missed it's entirely local. Just paste some css and the js to load it in your profile folder.
 
Classic System Theme by jacobhkyle seems to set you back to a somewhat normal visual experience. There are ways to tweak padding under about:config to shrink padding, but I like this fix because it's minimally invasive to a default install. I'll stick with the thicker padding for now to see if I get used to it.
 
DanNeely said:
Like I posted upthread:

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix/wiki/Installation-Guide
Click to expand...

I had this installed, and it was working, but today it broke, and I'm back with the fugly screen real estate wasting Proton look. :(

I don't know if it was broken by a Firefox update, or if my profile somehow reset. Going to have to try to reinstall it and see if it works.

edit
Hmm. I'm on the site now, and I am confused. It used to be called "chrome" I think, but now it's called "lepton"?

Maybe they realized the name was confusingly similar to another popular web browser and renamed it?

Going to try to remove my old chrome folder in my profile and reinstall this lepton version...

edit2:

Reinstalling it fixed it.
 
Last edited:
Zarathustra[H] said:
I had this installed, and it was working, but today it broke, and I'm back with the fugly screen real estate wasting Proton look. :(

I don't know if it was broken by a Firefox update, or if my profile somehow reset. Going to have to try to reinstall it and see if it works.

edit
Hmm. I'm on the site now, and I am confused. It used to be called "chrome" I think, but now it's called "lepton"?

Maybe they realized the name was confusingly similar to another popular web browser and renamed it?

Going to try to remove my old chrome folder in my profile and reinstall this lepton version...

edit2:

Reinstalling it fixed it.
Click to expand...

My tweaked version's been broken since the last browser update, but I'd been too busy to look at what went wrong.

As for the name, user confusion is probably why it got renamed; but FF has used userChrome.css for applying UI tweaks for a long time. I suspect longer than the Chrome browser has existed; but I'm not sure.
 
DanNeely said:
My tweaked version's been broken since the last browser update, but I'd been too busy to look at what went wrong.

As for the name, user confusion is probably why it got renamed; but FF has used userChrome.css for applying UI tweaks for a long time. I suspect longer than the Chrome browser has existed; but I'm not sure.
Click to expand...
Since netscape, I think...
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I had this installed, and it was working, but today it broke, and I'm back with the fugly screen real estate wasting Proton look. :(

I don't know if it was broken by a Firefox update, or if my profile somehow reset. Going to have to try to reinstall it and see if it works.

edit
Hmm. I'm on the site now, and I am confused. It used to be called "chrome" I think, but now it's called "lepton"?

Maybe they realized the name was confusingly similar to another popular web browser and renamed it?

Going to try to remove my old chrome folder in my profile and reinstall this lepton version...

edit2:

Reinstalling it fixed it.
Click to expand...
Yeah I had to reinstall it for the latest version (96.x).
 
WTF. Did anyone else's Firefox just unprompted switch the default search engine to Google?

Somoene needs to be prosecuted.
 
scojer said:
You still use Firefox?
Click to expand...

Not quite by choice, but what else would I use?

It's the only usable browser on the market.

Chrome, Edge and Opera are all practically speaking spyware.

Brave is an outright scam.

As is Waterfox now, since it was bought by System1 a couple of years ago.

Firefox is pretty shitty with default settings too, but if you spend 30-60 minutes tweaking settings when you first install it, you can get it to a reasonably OK level.

It's literally the least shitty of the current offerings, but all of them are bad.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
WTF. Did anyone else's Firefox just unprompted switch the default search engine to Google?

Somoene needs to be prosecuted.
Click to expand...
Nah, but I haven't updated it in a while.

Got Edge installed because Fx Beta has been failing at websites recently.

Screenshot_2022-12-16-15-01-19-75_ffb2f5e1b976ff98cfc94f359fbce8de.jpg
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Not quite by choice, but what else would I use?

It's the only usable browser on the market.

Chrome, Edge and Opera are all practically speaking spyware.

Brave is an outright scam.

As is Waterfox now, since it was bought by System1 a couple of years ago.

Firefox is pretty shitty with default settings too, but if you spend 30-60 minutes tweaking settings when you first install it, you can get it to a reasonably OK level.

It's literally the least shitty of the current offerings, but all of them are bad.
Click to expand...

30-60 minutes tweaking the settings? That's too much time.
 
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