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Comment by vmateixeira | Hacker News Reader

So... what kind of nonsense do I need to disable in about:config this time?

Oh, don't worry: more options have been removed again: setting browser.urlbar.update1 = false no longer gives you back the old, unintrusive urlbar behavior. Mozilla UX people have once again shown that they know best and you won't need to worry about getting a bad user experience just because you mistakenly thought you liked it.

Edit: Changed 'disabled' to 'removed' in the first sentence, as it's probably clearer.

This is exactly one of the things I wasn't really looking forward to.

I've been googling for the last 20 minutes trying to figure out how to re-disable this. Ugh, I can't stand it.

While you can't disable it, but you can still restyle it.

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...

So the only alternatives to fixing this is either switching to an LTS release or changing browsers completely? Is there an extension that fixes this?

Time to fork, I guess.

Why do they even remove the option to change it to your liking? It's... madness.

What a pointless question; how can any of us know what your individual preferences are like?

Mozilla aims to ship a default configuration that works well for a large number of users. Of course there'll be people -- like yourself, apparently -- who'd prefer some things to be configured differently, but what you'd like changed is entirely up to you.

Maybe you should be grateful Firefox offers (quite a lot of) customisation opportunities, instead of just posting snarky remarks.

It's not pointless to ask what long-standing behaviors are changed this time around. Mozilla has a history of making gratuitous UI changes that force existing users to re-learn something and have questionable benefits for new users. They also have a tendency to leave those changes (or at least the about:config workarounds) out of the release notes.

They don't need to know what my individual preferences are, actually, I would be glad if they don't try to "find them out".

Are you sure they're trying to ship what works best for most people? I've not read that anywhere. If they really wanted people to have a choice, they wouldn't be adding configurations that can't be switched on/off through they're preferences menu - like for example, that crazy bar they just added a couple of releases ago - oh.. and which apparently you are not allowed to switch off no more, not even through about:config, according to sibling comment. Also, they have a track record of breaking old configuration options quite often through updates.

I am grateful by what they offer - just not sure they're not sneakily changing course, similar to what chrome did.

> Maybe you should be grateful Firefox offers (quite a lot of) customisation opportunities, instead of just posting snarky remarks.

That's called user feedback. Users are always right. And looking at Firefox's browser share they are not getting too many new users anymore. Making the life of your existing users a little more miserable does not sound like a very sustainable strategy.

> That's called user feedback

Not in any useful sense. "What do I need to turn off this time" presumably just implies "they should never change anything, the product is perfect already". (Which one was the perfect version, out of curiosity?)

> they should never change anything, the product is perfect already

You're exaggerating. The problem isn't that Mozilla changes things, it's that they've set the bar too low for changes. Many of their updates seemingly deliver change for the sake of change, when a more reasonable strategy would be to require a change to be compelling enough to outweigh the frustration and friction it will cause. An imperfect UI that users know how to use is better than a moving target UI that constantly brings new surprises.

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