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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

Apart from retaining XUL support, it also:

  * Disabled Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)
  * Disabled Web Runtime (deprecated as of 2015)
  * Removed Pocket
  * Removed Telemetry
  * Removed data collection
  * Removed startup profiling
  * Allow running of all 64-Bit NPAPI plugins
  * Allow running of unsigned extensions
  * Removal of Sponsored Tiles on New Tab Page
  * Addition of Duplicate Tab option
  * Locale selector in about:preferences > General

Judging by that feature list alone, this seems like a browser that respects user privacy, is against DRM and advertising to its users, and gives the user the power to run any extension they want instead of limiting them to running only signed extensions.

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> limiting them to running only signed extensions.

Surely you recognize that we are part of an extreme minority of users. For everyone else this change is extremely positive. Gone are the days of malwares installing themselves as browser extensions. Requiring power users to switch to Dev/Nightly to run unsigned extensions is a pretty small ask for a change that will stop friends and family from having horribly infected browsers.

isn't there also an unbranded version that's the exact same as the release, but does support unsigned extensions?

Yes, it was announced in https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/07/29/extension-signing...

Maybe GNU IceCat?

Are there any forks of Firefox that do all/most of the above but keep the new Firefox UI?

Or alternatively is there a one-click way of doing all/most of the above to regular Firefox?

Can I also add DuckDuckGo as a search engine without it adding &t=ffab to query urls?

Presumably it's to track "firefox address bar" as the query source, but I don't see why it needs to be there, and why I can't remove it as easily as I can in Chromium.

You don't see why it needs to be there? So they can know how the search function is accessed by users to improve UI, or to know that people are using Firefox specifically to access their site. It's called telemetry, and it's not always evil, not always a violation of privacy.

I know individual bits can add up, so I only think it's a /little/ bit silly to worry about. Honestly: Of all things privacy related regarding web browsers and the web in general, is one of the best browsers letting one of the most respectful search engines know a UI hint really that bad?

I think that's very reasonable, thanks for the insight :)

  * addition of duplicate tab option

Why can't Firefox and Chrome add this functionality?

How it should work: In IE11 it's Ctrl+K and it opens a new tab (a deep-copy of the current one, incl history so one click on the back button in the new cloned tab.

Duplicate tab option is present here in Firefox 57. It's in the right click context menu on any tab.

Is it too much to ask for a simple shortcut, like Ctrl+K

Ctrl+T ... new Tab

Ctrl+K ... dublicate Tab

Ctrl+W ... close Tab

I won't start clicking around on the tabs. Please add the missing shortcut (Ctrl+K)

can you file a bug in bugzilla.mozilla.org? It should be easy to do!

source: I added the duplicate tab context menu option in Fx57

Ctrl+K is already search in both Firefox and Chrome.

Chrome has had this functionality for a very long time. Right click on a tab => duplicate.

Clicking in the URL bar (or Ctrl-L) then pressing Ctrl+Enter also works. Ctrl-Clicking the back and forward buttons also opens items in new tabs. s/Ctrl/Command/g for macOS.

A lot of Developers are great at applying modifier key behaviours consistently with the button and key combinations you can think of, especially with Shift and Ctrl/Command :)

As others already mentioned, Firefox has this exact functionality available in the context menu (4th from the top) but also when you middle-click on the reload button.

In addition to the middle-click refresh and context menu entry that others have mentioned: you can hold down Ctrl and drag the new duplicate tab anywhere.

Browsing this on FF58, and at least here I do have a duplicate tab option.

It even duplicated my "add comment" tab with the text in the textbox retained.

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