1 (edited by nathanm 2013-11-27 20:16:05)

Topic: Screw Australis.

This will be my place where I rant about Australis. Australis, for anybody who has been living under a rock, is the new UI for Firefox. However, it isn't too good, to say the least. I mean, it looks like Mozilla just wanted to take their mobile interface and apply it to their desktop operating systems. This concept makes no sense on a variety of cases:
1. Small screens. Windows XP, which is still supported, has a minimum requirement of an 800x600 screen. Do you think such a bulky interface will run on a screen this size?
2. Tech junkies (like me!). Just to be informative, my Firefox is set up like this: Tabs on bottom, small icons, and an extension called TinyMenu. What this does is allow me to have the full menu, instead of the Firefox button. This is on the Menu bar. I then can relocate all of the buttons on the navigation bar to the menu bar, and save some space. With Australis, I can't relocate tabs to the bottom,  or use small icons so this system's useless. Also, the add-on bar cannot be used, and customization as a whole is severely limited.
3 . Third tier ports. For those who don't know, a third-tier port is one that is created by somebody who is not Mozilla, like TenFourFox. This change throws a wrench in the engine of any of these ports, as they may not have the resources to incorporate such a large upgrade.
Once March comes around, I recommend either changing to the Pale Moon browser at http://www.palemoon.org/ if you're on Windows, or the SeaMonkey browser at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ if you're on something else.

EDIT: If you MUST use Firefox, you can get an extension that takes out most of the changes here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo … erestorer/ which takes out most of the changes that Australis brings.

Re: Screw Australis.

Yikes. Thanks (?) for the warning. Ever since the demise of FF 3.5, I've been using the ESRs dressed up like 3.5, not aware of what they've been developing at all. I also use those "old fashioned" things like toolbars. Sounds like my little XP netbook will be in trouble. But on the other hand, XP support ends in April, so I probably wouldn't be using it on the web anyway- too dangerous. I'll just keep it on my older laptop to run those great old outdated programs. I figure my netbook will go to Ubuntu, which will probably make it a speed demon as a web browser, as opposed to the clunker it is now. I tried SeaMonkey after FF 3.5 was withdrawn, was not happy at all. @ nathanm, I seem to remember you had a fondness for those obsolete things called "desktops," too. I think we now are sadly living in a day when mobile devices truly rule, everything else is just a place to plug into a USB port to charge them.

Re: Screw Australis.

You can take my PC away from my cold, dead hands, as otherwise I'd bludgeon you over the head with my CRT. That thing literally weighs more than 70 pounds, but I don't replace things unless there's a fairly good reason to do so.  But seriously, if only 20% of the nightly users- the very people who are the most receptive to change- like the new interface, there's something seriously wrong with that product. I've been a Firefox user since v2, and this change has made me move from the 64-bit nightly build to Pale Moon.

Re: Screw Australis.

I stopped using Firefox many moons ago.  I used it from the start because it was what I wanted from a browser: small, lightweight, fast, and secure.  Any additional features you wanted had to be added with extensions.  This kept the main application light and fast, the opposite of everything M$.

They kept rolling popular extensions into the main code base and bloating it up.  There was a period of about a year where I couldn't run more than about 20 tabs without my machine coming to a crawl and FF crashing once or twice a day.  This was right about when Chrome development was hitting it's stride so I switched and haven't looked back.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

5 (edited by nathanm 2013-12-01 08:50:31)

Re: Screw Australis.

Be part of the botnet. Get Chrome.
A little something I cooked up a while ago that I think applies.

Re: Screw Australis.

nathanm wrote:

Be part of the botnet. Get Chrome.
A little something I cooked up a while ago that I think applies.

Bad link.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

Re: Screw Australis.

You guys both make points that concern me. For me, the best FF was before FF, back in the "Navigator" days. It really was light, and the availability of community-tested add-ons made it personalized. @Materdaddy you're right how the add-ons became part of the package. It changed like zurkware did here, from something that could fit on a floppy, to a bigger lumbering thing. Most of the add-ons I use now are things that un-do the add-ons that have been built in. But once that's done, it behaves pretty much like the older Firefoxes. Unfortuntely, my anti-ad-ons also keep it as slow as old versions of FF. Still, I can live with that, but I don't know how much longer that will last. I really appreciate the stability of some FF extensions like the ad-blockers. I found them glitchy when I tried Chrome. I felt a little "embarrassed" when I bought a new computer and found IE 9 so much faster than my modified FF, and seemed much safer than older IEs.

Something I dislike about all the modern browsers is how they constantly try to auto-update. With any program, I like to know what I'm doing before it's done.

On the other hand, I am totally paranoid about Google getting to know me so well. Materdaddy, do you use Google Chrome, or some other flavor? I used the Iron Browser for a while, but it didn't seem to sit well with my old Vista computer.

Re: Screw Australis.

I only reason I use FF now if for the DownLoadEmAll plugin.

I would love a stripped down basic browser but alas that does not exist. I have used a browser called QTbrowser in the past but development has stopped and it has trouble on some sites.

I guess I will keep looking.

Re: Screw Australis.

I use actual Chrome because they support plugins better than the "free" versions like chromium and package maintained ones.  I'm not as paranoid about Google's data mining.  I believe they're not doing it in malice, the only reason people fear them over most other entities collecting all of your data is simply because they're so good at it.  Do you boycott amazon for aggregating your purchases, viewing history, searches, etc. and badgering you with other similar products?  Do you always send in those "privacy notice" papers for lenders, cell phone company, trash bill, etc. that sell your information or give it to their partners?  I try to, but inevitably miss a couple or run out of time in the "return this in 30 days" period.

I understand the paranoia and the principle, but in the case of most google products and services, I choose convenience over privacy.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think the government or anybody else should have access to any of this information, but if I'm *willing* to let google have this, so be it.

Linux Guy - Occasional Chumby Hacker

10 (edited by bobsz 2013-12-03 16:01:27)

Re: Screw Australis.

You're right, it's just a personal call about privacy. I know my cable TV company knows more about me than anyone, and Amazon knows what I like. It's just the pervasiveness of Google that overwhelms me. Definitely, leftover paranoia from my hippie days. But that's another topic. Thanks for the explanation.

Re: Screw Australis.

Got "tricked" into upgrading from FF ESR 17 to FF 24 ESR on my netbook. Seems like the little netbook is running slower with it. It kills me how if you do help->about firefox-> check for updates ... that it doesn't just "check" but it goes and installs the update anyway. I'm keeping 17 ESR on my other computers, but heard that soon the update will be force fed. So, I've been using Pale Moon for about 1 day. First impression ok, with some weird quirks. This is a Win 7 64 bit computer, but the Pale Moon guy says overall use the 32 bit version anyway, because of incompatible extensions. Disappointed to see some "Dumbing down" in here too. Author took off choice to turn off javascript, as did FF. I often turn it off just for suspicious or bulky junky pages. Like to run with no tabs sometimes, just for screen space. Would like to have an icon for "new tab" visible. Unfortunately, looks like I'll have to add more add-ons to keep my old fashioned ways. But overall, browser is running fine, maybe a little faster than FF 17 ESR, but this has no add-ons yet. So I'll comment again after I've used the browser for a decent amount of time. Thanks for telling us about it.

Re: Screw Australis.

You do know that FF 17 will stop being supported in January, right? If you want to just turn off Javascript for specific pages you can use the addon "YesScript". It's sort of like NoScript, except with a blacklist instead of a whitelist for Javascript. The link for that is here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo … yesscript/. About the 64 bit version, I've been using Pale Moon 64-bit no problem, although you will have to download 64 bit versions of Flash and Java.

13 (edited by bobsz 2013-12-13 00:24:54)

Re: Screw Australis.

Thanks but yeah, I knew that stuff. The negatives I found in FF 17 ESR are the same or worse in 24. Annoying bug ever since the 3.x ended- I frequently copy columns of text by highlighting to the bottom of the pages. Doesn't work in FF any more if you have windows taskbar on autohide. Unless you turn on bottom FF status bar, it doesn't know the cursor is at bottom of Window. Simple, basic, but never fixed since "new" FF. Got desperate, tried Seamonkey again. Still lumbering, but I don't know why. Got more desperate, been using IE 9 that came loaded with Win 7. Was fairly impressed until I found every time I closed a browsing session, there were lots of aggressive pop-unders hiding there. Yikes, that's so Y2k.

BTW, I did put some ad-ons on Pale Moon that work fine. At first I thought AdBlock Plus was completely failing, I was getting all Google targeted text ads, etc. But then I remembered a few versions ago AdBlock started to "allow unobtrusive advertising" by default to keep Google help paying for their project. So I unchecked that and the world was fine again. (it's so ironic that one of the thrills of the first Google was no results according to payment, just unbiased rankings.)

Since the end of FF 3x, I'd actually kept a list of things I had go un-do every time I did a fresh install. Lost the list. I don’t even remember if it's. FF, but some browser uses Google "I'm feeling lucky" as the default search. Crazy, one result.

I've read about Konqueror for years, finally thought i'd try it. Too complicated to set up in Windows, KDE stuff, wouldn't trust Windows with that.

Overall, I'm feeling the PC Web world is just getting crazy-slow. The more speed, RAM and bandwidth you have, the more it takes. I'm writing this on my PlayBook tablet with a browser called Oragami that has built in ad blocking, script controls, simple bookmarks, great icon and bar and tabs setup, and of course safe because of my obscure BlackBerry OS. Not to mention privacy. Pages display great and it's fast. It was made by one guy and it's free. And the whole program was I think 5 MB.

I wish I could run this browser on my PC, or even Opera Mini. It stumps me why nothing in the gecko, chrome, or Explorer families makes me happy any more. Maybe it's just the Web, the Feds messing things up because they're so slow atk stealing personal data from Google.

I think if there was a safe walled-in Web like AOL et all used to be, I might opt into it every once in a while. I remember how exciting it used to be when you had to log off of Compuserve before you could open Mosaic and go off on the Web wilderness on your own.

A bit of nostalgia I happened on to-
http://news.cnet.com/CompuServe-Announc … 04424.html

In fact, I'd love to have the option to *pay* for a better browser, rather than free compromises. I'm surprised nobody's doing that like in the mobile apps world's.

Well, maybe I'll just use the WAP browser on my old dumbphone. Wish I could thumb-type faster, though.

Re: Screw Australis.

Well, I got "force fed" the Firefox update to ESR 24 today. Wow, now I can't "accidentally" turn off javascript. I feel much safer. What stupid stuff. Pale Moon also wants me to update, but with no ESRs I don't think I could take the constant updates. Too bad you can't "subscribe" to only get security updates, without all the "cool and stylish" stuff.

Re: Screw Australis.

Pale Moon only updates when there's a new Gecko version to my knowledge. They have a forum, so I'd discuss any suggestions there as well as here. http://forum.palemoon.org/

Re: Screw Australis.

Thanks. My "process of elimination" continues. I found out that even Opera is now just a front end for Chrome. They still support their last "independent" version (12.x?) but I tried it and was so friggin buggy, I uninstalled it after about 10 minutes.

Re: Screw Australis.

Gad.  Australis.

I thought you were talking about cosmetics.  That's good eyeliner. But i don't use it anymore.
Haha.

Back to reality.  I think the minimalist rage in UI is ridiculous. It's just not powerful!  I use menubars, status bar, all the old stuff. 

And I lament how crappy firefox's bookmarks work since 3.5, and the password manager is nearly 100% broken. I had to start using Lastpass, which works like crap.

FWIW I have filed bug reports and interacted with the developers on the firefox password manager, and they have some silly wrong headed thinking that has caused that to be broken.  I couldn't convince a guy that www13.jcp.com was the same as www8.jcp.com.  "They shouldn't expose that stuff" was the response I got. 

As if a browser should not be made to work even in the face of what is actually bad engineering.

18 (edited by bobsz 2014-01-07 23:44:55)

Re: Screw Australis.

100% agree w your specifics Steevo- bookmarks in FF are so friggin complicated, almost useless. (Recently bookmarked??? How recent???) Why in the world do we have a down arrow that turns green, glows and pulsates when we download something? Kind of like the old "Pinball" theme. Believe it or not, my favorite browser is now Origami, unfortunately available only for my (orphaned) BlackBerry Playbook. It responds to gestures, looks good even on the 7 inch screen. 7 mb program! Wish someone would port it (along with Opera Mini) for Windows.

Origami bad picture- http://imgur.com/biSaGYo

My FF ESR 24.2 looks like this

http://imgur.com/d3lLEBZ

and is tolerable. But I also think, despite all they took away, I now have to use the add-on bar on the bottom to scroll-select below the bottom of the window. Hope one of us digs up a good old fashioned usable browser eventually.

I'm a little happier with PaleMoon than FF now that I found out PaleMoon is only going to update for major issues, not constantly like FF. FF ESR is still tolerable. But surprisingly, I'm finding more pages incompatible with FF and PM. Thought it was my add-ons, but no. Finding plain vanilla IE 9 even having trouble with some pages. Honestly, I think Google's taking over the world, one web page at a time.

Re: Screw Australis.

This will hopefully be my final post about this, but I just wanted to show you what I ended up with.  Basically, after a few months I realized that I've been using most of the components of SeaMonkey, so why not just use SeaMonkey? If you don't know, SeaMonkey is the modern equivalent of the Mozilla Suite, and thus the interface has barely changed since said software had been discontinued. Because of this, the interface is actually a lot more sane than Firefox has been. To show you what I mean, here's a screencap of my current setup. I have an addon called SeaFox that converts SeaMonkey to a pre-4.0 firefox, as well as the icons from Firefox 2.0 via an addon called Classic Toolbar Buttons, and am loving it so far. Of course, I also have the "essential" addons (GreaseMonkey, Adblock Plus, etc). Also. the version numbers aren't insane. Firefox is up to 26 now, but SeaMonkey's at 2.23, just to give some perspective. It takes a bit of work to get SeaMonkey this good, though.

Re: Screw Australis.

Ya know, you can't blame them for those updates. 

There's more hackers, spammers and crooks looking for vulnerabilities to exploit than there are ff developers.  So they are playing catchup.  All the time. 

Like Flash, which is updated weekly as new exploits are revealed, and java, which is updated all the time too for the same reason.  You surf by a site and your system is $owned.  It's spamming, part of a botnet, something. 

Thanks to them for keeping on top of that, without them keeping up there would be much more spam and viruses in the world.

Re: Screw Australis.

I'm fine with security updates, but screwing stuff up on a monthly basis is right out in my book. With SeaMonkey, you still get the updates but not the drastic changes. I used to use Firefox ESR for the same reason.

Re: Screw Australis.

Another alternative is to only surf the net from a live CD distribution of linux. Knoppix is the granddaddy of them all (I would prefer Linux Mint myself). Let the black hats do their worst. It all goes away as soon as you turn of the PC.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
http://www.linuxmint.com/

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.