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Thanks for that.

There are various solutions to tab groups out there, I thought? Just recently my Nightly seemed to have something like that natively (can't find it again now, but it allowed me to categorize tabs into groups)?

Cannot comment on Unity. I wasn't aware that Firefox requires Pulseaudio, but I've never understood the resistance against that project either - let's consider it a preference.

But why are you personally disappointed with Mozilla? Do you believe that the browser got worse for the general case or is this the feeling of being left out at the side of the road because you have special & specific requirements and preferences that aren't completely common?

(I didn't downvote you and I always had and have personal issues with Firefox myself - but I believe that it's becoming a more and more improved browser for ~everyone~ insofar as that's possible)

> There are various solutions to tab groups out there, I thought?

Not when I last checked. The only solution is either a separate browser window for each group of tabs, or put them in bookmarks.

> I wasn't aware that Firefox requires Pulseaudio, but I've never understood the resistance against that project either

I can deal with PluseAudio. It's just annoying since I've never set it up, and I don't need it - except for Firefox.

> But why are you personally disappointed with Mozilla?

Because they have caught the bug that to make things better you have to remove things.

It's one thing to make an alternative - like when they ruined the UI, but created "Classic theme restorer", it's another to remove features that people actually use.

Right now, Unity and Flash are better than any kind of native web technology. They just are. But Firefox is removing them anyway because of "purity" reasons.

> Do you believe that the browser got worse for the general case

Yes. Not everyone is affected equally of course, but removing things like Unity isn't a net win. Nor is removing Flash. I know, I know, not pure. I don't care. Removing flash removes so much stuff from the internet.

> or is this the feeling of being left out at the side of the road because you have special & specific requirements and preferences that aren't completely common?

No, I can't expect that. Honestly I can (and will) deal with Tab Groups and PulseAudio. PluseAudio especially I can understand. And I guess few people used Tab Groups.

But Unity and Flash, that's just unpleasant.

> but I believe that it's becoming a more and more improved browser for ~everyone~ insofar as that's possible

It has in some ways. But they also messed up really bad. For example they switched to WebExtensions before creating a replacement API that Tab Groups would need! Read this if you haven't already: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lXF50-h... (he gave up his DNS, that's how badly Mozilla burned him).

Why do that?

They removed NAPI without leaving any possible alternative.

Make the browser better by improving it. Stop making it better by not supporting things. Look at Linux "Never Break Userspace". Linux has things that are hard to support, but they deal, because it's the right thing to do.

Reading some more into tab groups I guess I understand what you're missing (I'm using Tree Style Tabs, which Work For Me™). The biggest/last blocker seems to be [1].

Pulseaudio? I think that shouldn't be a big issue imo, but you seem to agree here.

"Ruined the UI" is a tough one. For me the UI is completely fine and what isn't can be fixed in userChrome.css with little investment. What's broken or ruined?

Still unclear about Unity, are you talking about this [2]? It seems to say that this is unsupported/deprecated by the company itself [3]?

Hopefully you'll be able to migrate to a current version in the future. The 'start 52 in a sandbox' scenario doesn't sound fun at all.

1: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1384515

2: https://unity3d.com/webplayer

3: The Unity Webplayer is no longer supported. We provide this download link to the last build for convenience, but be aware that the Unity Webplayer has been deprecated and will not get any further update.

If you want to deliver Unity made content via web browser we recommend you use WebGL.

> What's broken or ruined?

I don't remember right now, but I do know I had to install the extension in order not to find the UI unpleasant.

> Still unclear about Unity, are you talking about this [2]?

Yes.

> It seems to say that this is unsupported/deprecated by the company itself [3]?

It was depreciated right after Mozilla announced they would no longer support it - Unity had no choice at that point. I can't imagine they were very happy about it, it all but destroyed their company.

I'm confused. I thought Mozilla has a really shitty market share. Everyone just cares about Chrome?

And I assume this plugin wouldn't work in Chrome (does it)?

How does a web player plugin come close to destroy a company that builds a graphic engine? I thought they make their money with licenses for game developers?

So far I understand your usability complaints, but this seems to go a bit far. At least without sources, couldn't find something myself. Mozilla all but destroying Unity because of their plugin/addon policy seems .. unlikely?

> And I assume this plugin wouldn't work in Chrome (does it)?

It used to - till Chrome disabled NAPI, but for a while you could reenable it, till eventually it was removed altogether.

It used to work on all browsers, then one by one it stopped working, Mozilla was the last straw.

The company has pivoted, so I guess they'll be all right, but their thing was a 3D graphics that worked everywhere. Now it's 3D graphics that you can build for many platforms - similar, but not exactly the same.

One nice thing about the web plugin was that it worked on Linux, and very few other 3D games worked on Linux, unless specially written for it.

> Mozilla all but destroying Unity because of their plugin/addon policy seems .. unlikely?

Yah, I'm going to far. Mozilla was the last straw rather than the main insult. I blame Mozilla because Firefox was what I used, I didn't really notice when it stopped working in Chrome (other than some posts urging people to install Firefox, which I thought was cool).

But today, right now, there are still a ton of Unity Web games that will soon be unplayable by anyone not running old code, and I find that sad, that all that work is just gone, destroyed.

Read this: http://www.ocsmag.com/2017/04/29/kde-vs-gnome-design-philoso...

I want Mozilla to be like KDE, not Gnome.

> ALSA sound (which they also disabled)

Not sure what happened here, but on gentoo I still have sound in firefox 57 without having installed either pulseaudio or the apulse shim. Probably some patching by the gentoo devs, but I was ready to install at least the shim, and maybe even pulse itself to get sound, but so far it has not been necessary.

i recommend waterfox.