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Firefox is no longer capable of doing many of the things that made it great

Cab0oze
Cab0oze
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I know the support forum isn't the best place for this, but I really don't know how else to get people's thoughts on this. I get the impression the Devs have no idea how or why some people use Firefox.

I've been using Firefox on and off before it was even at version 1.0. When I started working at a big company in 2008 with a locked-down IT policy, Firefox had me 100% covered, and did everything I could ever dream of wanting it to do.

In the last year or two, key features that always made it a winner have slowly been disappearing, and now it has gotten to the point that it is actually barely any better than IE11, and no different than Chrome. Why? Big reason is now addons don't work, or can't work the way they used to/need to, but it goes beyond that.

1. I can no longer have my homepage open, when I load a new tab. This is absolutely mind boggling, even internet explorer can do that! NOTE: My homepage is a webpage saved on my harddrive that I made that gives me quick access to everything I need to do for work. I used to be able to load it natively, then it became something that required an add-on, and now it is completely broken, and impossible to do.

2. Devs clearly don't understand the concept of a PROXY. Lots of people (i.e. in corporate environments) have everything go through a proxy. I can't even use the firefox installer anymore (as I discovered yesterday) because it requires a direct connection to the internet.

3. Speaking of Proxy issues, when I open firefox, it immediately needs to connect to the internet, resulting in proxy authentication pop-ups. These used to be Auto-accepted with the addon AUTO-AUTH, however with the new web API crap this apparently isn't possible. There are settings in firefox that are supposed to auto-accept proxy-logins, but they don't work. So - I'm stuck hitting enter every single time I open the bloody program. There is no way to delay or stop firefox from automatically trying to connect to the internet which is also stupid.

4. I could go on, but what's the point... the Devs don't care. Time to go back to FF v51 or whatever version it was before things went so wrong and hang on to that, with my windows 7 installation. Sigh.

I know the support forum isn't the best place for this, but I really don't know how else to get people's thoughts on this. I get the impression the Devs have no idea how or why some people use Firefox. I've been using Firefox on and off before it was even at version 1.0. When I started working at a big company in 2008 with a locked-down IT policy, Firefox had me 100% covered, and did everything I could ever dream of wanting it to do. In the last year or two, key features that always made it a winner have slowly been disappearing, and now it has gotten to the point that it is actually barely any better than IE11, and no different than Chrome. Why? Big reason is now addons don't work, or can't work the way they used to/need to, but it goes beyond that. 1. I can no longer have my homepage open, when I load a new tab. This is absolutely mind boggling, even internet explorer can do that! NOTE: My homepage is a webpage saved on my harddrive that I made that gives me quick access to everything I need to do for work. I used to be able to load it natively, then it became something that required an add-on, and now it is completely broken, and impossible to do. 2. Devs clearly don't understand the concept of a PROXY. Lots of people (i.e. in corporate environments) have everything go through a proxy. I can't even use the firefox installer anymore (as I discovered yesterday) because it requires a direct connection to the internet. 3. Speaking of Proxy issues, when I open firefox, it immediately needs to connect to the internet, resulting in proxy authentication pop-ups. These used to be Auto-accepted with the addon AUTO-AUTH, however with the new web API crap this apparently isn't possible. There are settings in firefox that are supposed to auto-accept proxy-logins, but they don't work. So - I'm stuck hitting enter every single time I open the bloody program. There is no way to delay or stop firefox from automatically trying to connect to the internet which is also stupid. 4. I could go on, but what's the point... the Devs don't care. Time to go back to FF v51 or whatever version it was before things went so wrong and hang on to that, with my windows 7 installation. Sigh.

All Replies (5)

FredMcD
FredMcD
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I agree with you on this. I am still using Firefox v54 because of all the problems and lost abilities (like add-ons).

If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.

Modified by FredMcD

Cab0oze
Cab0oze Question owner
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Thanks Fred, I'll try that. I have a feeling nothing will come of it (which makes me sad) so I'll probably follow suit and roll back to 54. It's just such a shame...

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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For #1, local page on new tab, the New Tab Override extension should be able to import it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/new-tab-override/

Has that worked for you?

For #2, I don't know how the "stub" installer connects, but I have not heard that it encounters proxy issues before. If necessary, you can use an offline installer from:

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/

For #3, did anything in this article help:

How to stop Firefox from making automatic connections.

For #4, please ask your questions.

We may not be able to help, but running old vulnerable software in a business environment is not a good plan so it's worth a try.

Cab0oze
Cab0oze Question owner
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Jscher:

  1. 1 - it "works", but since pictures don't import it just looks downright terrible.
  2. 2 That's exactly what I ended up having to do, it's just frustrating that it is even an issue at all.
  3. 3 I started working through that at one point and gave up because you're really crippling some of the browser's capability by doing that. If I'm going to disable updates, blocklist updates, etc I may as well just use an old version of firefox. Still though, maybe I'll give it another shot before uninstalling just to see if I CAN get it to work.
  4. 4 The company runs IE11 so I'm sure running old firefox can't be much worse lol

Thanks for trying to help :)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
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For #3, the goal would be to figure out what is happening immediately at startup rather than disabling features that tend to run when Firefox is idle. For example, the captive portal detection has been noted by some network administrators.

For #4, I believe IE 11 still gets security patches from Microsoft at regular intervals. Firefox 59 and earlier do not get any patches. Not a laughing matter in my opinion.