monsieurms wrote:

I see no refresh or reload button any more. Where did it go? How do I get it back? I also see no "STOP" button. How do I get that back?

Refresh/Reload and Stop have been moved into the address bar and LOCKED so they can't be moved. They alternate - it's a stop button while the page is loading and a reload button when it's not.

Firefox 29.0.1 wiped out my customized menus & won't allow me to put them back the way I want them.

Thanks....that does help, but I would add that I don't like it at all!

Refresh/stop should be part of the same group I always had---back, forward, home, stop, reload.

I see no point to mixing it up. More to the point, I don't see why this gets changed automatically and why I can't fix it.

Give it a try : Classic Theme Restorer : https://addons.mozilla.org/vi/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

Kam wrote:

Give it a try : Classic Theme Restorer : https://addons.mozilla.org/vi/firefox/addon/classicthemerestorer/

Already did that. Doesn't fix the problem.

The Refresh/Stop button is still locked into the right-hand end of the Address bar.

It did help with putting the tabs underneath the bookmarks toolbar. I also finally saw where it would let me use CUSTOMIZE to recreate the refresh/ home buttons. Yay. I finally saw where it seemed to restore the status bar too.

Of course, it doesn't make the theme and extension I was using compatible, but that's obviously another story.

This is a very useful extension. It is a shame it is necessary. I see no point to this redesign. Posting here, installing an extension, playing with its options. Running through multiple menus that often make little sense to figure out what they do. Pointless! Sorry. I just don't see why this had to be or what inherent sense it made. Someone just seems to have too much time on their hands.

So, mostly got it worked out with the desktop.

On the laptop, well.

1. How many times do I have to use the CUSTOMIZE button to try to put "reload" on the toolbar where I want it only to find that as I drag the icon up to the toolbar, Firefox automatically closes the CUSTOMIZE dialog and nothing happens? It looks about 6 times for every success. Nice.

2. I can't evidently move my gmail notifier icon after the back-forward buttons. Why? Dunno. (See #6)

3. I try to delete the redundant refresh button in the URL space since i prefer to have a separate and larger one on the left. Every time I try to delete it, it deletes the entire URL box instead. I was able to do this on my desktop. Seems like it cannot be done on the laptop.

4. Flag Fox in the URL box--has now just disappeared. That's an extension I like a lot. Oh, well. Any idea how to get the icon back? (Edit: Uninstalled, reinstalled, came back)

5. Morning Coffee extension no longer works properly. You can click it all you want--nothing happens. (Workaround--click configure first. You don't actually have to reconfigure it. Then click the icon again. Finally, it loads. Nothing like having something that was working fine now take multiple clicks, eh?

6. On my laptop, moreover, the back-forward buttons are now attached at the hip to the URL box. I cannot separate them. I would prefer to have the refresh button between the back-forward and the URL box, but that does not appear possible on the laptop.

7. The color of the top bar has gone all black to the point where I can barely see the icons place there (yes, Firefox, I don't really like your Chrome-like approach to hiding everything in a drop down box--why do 2 clicks, when 1 will do just fine?) Why does this them result in a black bar on the laptop and not the desktop. Excellent question. But it's barely useable now. Edit: This was related to a different Windows' color scheme on my laptop. Yet, it still works oddly. If I have the browser in a Window, I get one color. If I have it fully enlarged, I get another. Some are workable, some aren't. I kept changing color schemes until I got something tolerable at both sizes. But it is still so-so and annoying.

8. It disabled one Noia theme. Not compatible.

9. I switched to another Noia theme. That resulted in the black bar at the top, but only on the laptop.

10. I switched to Aeon. That now creates a blank toolbar. There seems to be no way to get rid of it. The only toolbars checked are my typical ones.

I give up.

I won't mention how much time I've wasted today for absolutely no purpose. Why, for instance, anyone thought it was a good idea to put the refresh button all the way on the right and divorced from the main navigation buttons--got me. Intuitively, they go together.

Moreover, on my desktop, I have a 24 inch screen. The refresh button is all the way at the right end of the screen. The URL box is enormous. It's not like the Refresh is right near the main URL. Going from right (refresh) and to left (home, back, forward) is senseless and annoying. It's like that joke on Airplane. You can just see FF designers going "Let's see how we can confuse people with our latest release. It'll be fun watching them sputter. Then we can tell them, don't worry, you can still do it your way. (Sure, maybe, if you install an extension you don't want, play around with it on 3 different machines, and still not be able to figure out all the issues....I guess they forgot to mention that part.)

This is a seriously useless and incredibly annoying upgrade, breaking extensions, wrecking my design scheme and killing my preferred theme as well. I've often been annoyed at FF releases. This is on my short list. I hear FF is losing market share? The "let's turn everyone into debuggers for our software" approach could be a reason.

@monsieurms : Try FF28 and disable its autoupdate : about:config > app.update.auto > false

@JBS1949: Go to Customize then drag & drop Refresh button to the left of locationbar . Go to CTR Options > check "Hide urlbar stop & reload buttons" > Restart FF

I switched to Pale Moon browser today. Because Firefox has been open source there are clones of it available. Pale Moon is literally everything Firefox was(down to each individual option) before Mozilla decided to break their own product and replace it with Google Chrome 29.

Looks the same, works the same, won't be updating and breaking itself all the time. Cheers all.

www.palemoon.org

I hope pale moon uses less memory. One FF screen with 4 tabs uses more memory than Photoshop busy editing a picture. By the way my Morning coffee is also cold after the update.

Elaborating on a parenthetical point earlier, someone has decided it's really important to have a clean screen, fewer buttons, toolbars, commands hidden away, etc., as a design imperative. This was always one thing I hated about Chrome.

Gee, doesn't everything look pretty.

But it's not as FUNCTIONAL and it is not as easy to find things. Translation of this clean-screen concept: everything gets hidden away and now you have to keep drilling down through menus, boxes, etc. Lots of commands and buttons can be arranged with easy access with one-click.

Now, on my desktop I have a 24" screen. I have tons of available real estate for a File menu (why by default do I want to hide this?? Because Chrome does???) and plenty of my most-used commands can be icons to place on that toolbar and access with one click--like zoom, gmail to this, downloads, share-this, Add to Evernote, etc.

Why in the world would I prefer to drill down through menus, Firefox buttons and so on, instead? How is that easier? Now, I will grant you that on my phone I might have a different answer. ANd the answer is modified somewhat on my 12" laptop screen. But I try to do most of my surfing with a screen as large as possible, because that's the most convenient way to surf.

Some of this can be rectified by playing with it and customization, but the defaults have a bias that is counterproductive to actually functioning. And as my post notes, some of this is not so easily fixed.

I tried that Pale Moon link and spent a little time with it.

Pros: After putting back all my add-ons, it seems to be about 3 times faster than Firefox, far smoother and more Chrome-like in its speed. 64 bit. Blazing fast. --Every problem I had with the new release went away. --It looks and feels more like what I want

Cons: --The migration tool would not work. Just got an error message on copying. So I had to set up from scratch. --One plugin I particularly like is the REal Player downloader. Could not figure out how to add it as even reinstalling the program didn't seem to get it recognized in PM

we are sorry for any inconvenience caused to you. If you feel strongly about the new changes I would suggest you to provide feedback on https://input.mozilla.org/feedback for the people who decided on the changes to actually see it.

Please keep in mind that Firefox is a work in progress and your feedback is very valuable for us to understand what can be done better!

Instead of trying a 'migration' just backup and restore settings and whatnot instead. Since it's firefox based, it will even read firefox save files.

GL!

Yep, doh. ;) Did that for the bookmarks. (Figured it out a bit late for the others....) On Laptop, just used SYNC.

I had similar problems. Classic Restorer corrected most of them, although one issue I still have is the lack of a "working on things" icon. I'm not really sure what that's called, but it's that little rotating icon that lets you know it's really trying and not just given up on things completely. I can't find one of those anywhere.

Basically though, 29.0.1 is universally worse than the previous version, everything that is different about it is lesser than what it replaced, and the best way they could improve Firefox moving forward is to put everything back where they found it. And stop bugging me to upgrade.