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tabs below

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(Removed beta link to 28. -m)

All the current changes for firefox seem oriented towards the tab computer market but unfortunately these tab computers are way to slow and underperform compared dramaticly compared to my desktop computer. Having tabs below is what makes my system functionality and workflow perform at its best. I often have up to 100 tabs open at a time when doing research but with every change by firefox this ability is more and more taken away. from right click send emails and now tabs cant be placed below its time for firefox to decide if its time for two different versions of there product to be made. One for the desktop and a seperate version for tablet computers. Having tabs above the address bar is just plain stupid when you have 100 tabs open ie it just doesnt work. My pc has 64 gigs of ram and a 6 cor processor and with every itereation of firefox for the past 4 years my ability to use the ability of my PC has been more and more removed. I seem to have no choice but to revert to an earlier version of firfox in order to at least keep some of the former functionality. I dont use touch functionality and yet the latest version seems complllletelly oriented towards touch computers and thats great but its been done at the expence of people like me who will never use this type of feature. Time to creat two seperate versions of Firfox one for people like me who have realy powerfull computers and many many many tabs open at a time and one for the tablet pc touch people who only have 1 or 2 tabs open at a time.

<i>(Removed beta link to 28. -m)</i> All the current changes for firefox seem oriented towards the tab computer market but unfortunately these tab computers are way to slow and underperform compared dramaticly compared to my desktop computer. Having tabs below is what makes my system functionality and workflow perform at its best. I often have up to 100 tabs open at a time when doing research but with every change by firefox this ability is more and more taken away. from right click send emails and now tabs cant be placed below its time for firefox to decide if its time for two different versions of there product to be made. One for the desktop and a seperate version for tablet computers. Having tabs above the address bar is just plain stupid when you have 100 tabs open ie it just doesnt work. My pc has 64 gigs of ram and a 6 cor processor and with every itereation of firefox for the past 4 years my ability to use the ability of my PC has been more and more removed. I seem to have no choice but to revert to an earlier version of firfox in order to at least keep some of the former functionality. I dont use touch functionality and yet the latest version seems complllletelly oriented towards touch computers and thats great but its been done at the expence of people like me who will never use this type of feature. Time to creat two seperate versions of Firfox one for people like me who have realy powerfull computers and many many many tabs open at a time and one for the tablet pc touch people who only have 1 or 2 tabs open at a time.

Modified by Moses

All Replies (20)

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You can use either of the following add-ons.

If you don't want to install an add-on, put the following style in the userChrome.css file and restart Firefox. You can use the Stylish add-on instead, if you have it installed.


@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
/* The above line should appear only once in the file */

#TabsToolbar { -moz-box-ordinal-group: 99 !important }

Also see


One of the developers recently posted this explanation

MikeDeboer said

Each setting you see in a computer program you use requires work; when a developer wants to build something new or improve something, he or she has to go through each related (hidden) setting and test if it still works like before and do that on each platform Firefox runs on. That's Apple's Mac OSX, various flavours of Linux and various flavours of Windows, including Windows XP. This costs time, lots of it, and that amount grows exponentially with each setting that's added. This comes on top of our work to continuously fix, improve and innovate Firefox. 

That's why we also removed the tabs.onTop preference. Awesome community members, who were unhappy about that change, created the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. They deserve our collective hugs.

By the way, that link you posted up there isn't even the full release version, it's a beta. Notice the b before the 9 at the end?

Modified by Moses

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This does not solve the basic underlying issue that there now needs to be two very different versions of FF

The answer you have provided is not a sollution it is infact part of the problem.

Why should anyone have to do this just to make there browser work properly.

This is an ongoing issue with firefox and its push to support tablet computers at the expence of desktop usersand has been going on for the past 4 years.

I can see no other option for firefox than to produce a fully functional version for powerfull desktops that work best with keyboard and mouse and a totaly different version that works best with touch enabled devices.

The total alianation of all desktop users with this latest version of firefox is just crazy.

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Hi,

You should leave all feedback with the Firefox developers at input.mozilla.org/feedback as telling us volunteers this won't do anything.

I can give you the link to 28 but be warned about the security risks.

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Hi Moses, Its a waist of time trying to give feedback to the developers, its people like you that need to express your concerns about whats happening here. You have a voice as one of the top contributors of this forum and if all the top contributors gave real feedback about this issue then just maybe they will listen. Why would they listen to me???? The current 29 version is so unsuitable for desktop usage I just dont get it and to ask a million people to do strange crazy modifications to there browser is not an answer thats acceptable. How long will it be before they take away even the current ability to make these changes. Its time for two seperate versions of Firefox. One for Desktop power users and one for Touch tablet junk. There may be a lot of these Tablets around but they are all just toys with such limmitations I understand why developers want to remove functionality to make the browser work better on these toys but why do it at the expence of real desktop computers that have all the ram and processor speed and large screens and a mouse and keyboard. Advise me as to just how can people get the deves to listen and make real change to get back some of what has been taken away from desktop users, things they believe are good for firefox. one person posting a complaint in there feedback area has no affect at all !!!!

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I have left feedback with the Devs but I am not confident they will respond or even achnowledge there is an issue

Here is a copy of my feedback to the developers.

Dear developers, I have tried the latest version of FF 29 and would like to give some feedback. I have a powerfull desktop system with large tripple screens and I like to do lots of research and can have 100 or more tabs open at a time. Unfortunately the latest version of FF does not support this ability. Tabs on top is not feasable when having many many tabs open at the same time and all the extra room taken up by chunky tabs is not easy to deal with. I can see that the version 29 of FF would be great for Tab Touch screen computers but this constant removal of functionality to suite touch screens at the expence of Desktop computers with lots of ram and fast processors is becomming a big issue. The forums are full of people unhappy with all the current changes and they are mostly your loyal customers on desktop machines who have watched and complained for the past 4 years as all there desktop functionality was removed to suit a growing touch tablet market. So here is my Question!!! Is it possible to produce two seperate versions of FF?? One for Touch screen devices and limited functionality and a second version for desktop computers with lots of functionality as it used to be. This issue is big and getting bigger and I feel its time for firefox to be open to its customers about whats happening. Will firefox support desktop users into the future or not. The current fix offered to a million or so of your customers in the forums to get tabs below and make FF usable again with mouse and keyboard desktop systems is just crazy. Thankyou for listening

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" Is it possible to produce two seperate versions of FF?"

Yes, it is possible for Mozilla to do separate browsers for Desktop and Mobile devices, which is what Mozilla was doing before Firefox 29.

The question should be, will they resume producing separate browsers for Desktop and Mobile devices?

Very doubtful at this point. With the considerable amount of work Mozilla out into this new user interface and with the work being done to complete the planned changes that are in process, doing an immediate "about face" isn't practical.

IMO, users need to use Australis for awhile to get used to the new UI and slowly learn to customize it to their particular tastes. As far as "loyal customers" goes, Firefox isn't "sold" it is a free open source project - Mozilla has no "customers". IMO, Mozilla doesn't owe us anything. If we like it we use it; if we don't like it we are free to customize it in any manner that we care to, or to stop using it in favor of a different web browser. IOW, "thank you for Firefox" or "no thank you, i prefer to use some other browser".

As far as getting an acknowledgement from the developers about your feedback, good luck with that - I have never heard of that happening. And I have been around this forum since before it was open to the "public", by doing a little bit of beta testing and providing some feedback; little of which seemed to make any difference in the function and design of the forum software. Been using Firefox since the days of Phoenix 0.3 in the late summer of 2002.


Let me ask a few questions of you.
How much time have your spent reading the 'fixes' posted here?
How many 'fixes' have you tried out?
Anything related to minimizing the height of the toolbars / tab bar, like this? http://userstyles.org/styles/83327/minimal-for-australis

Personally, I am taking my time changing over to the new, UI while continuing to use Firefox 28 for my daily tasks. I did that when Firefox 4 was released; continued using Firefox 3.6.xx while I worked on perfecting the Firefox 4+ version to my tastes. Took me until Firefox 10 before I switched over to the new version full time.

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Hi the-edmeister, look i understand your trying to help and everything but asking what might be milllions of people to do all this crazy stuff just to make there browser work properly is just strange and bizzar. The tablet market is currentlly shrinking as peoplle wake up to there very real limitations so I just dont understand why all desktop users have to be put through the wringer to suite products I classify as as handy occasionaly but its a toy. Did I have a go at some of the modifications yes I did and I utterly hated the experience and cant understand why I should have to be doing this. I have reverted back to version 28 and will probably be stuck here till doomsday or a real and simple solution is developed to fix the issue of desktop functionality. Maybe I will be lucky and sombody will fork firefox to address these issues. Actually all they had to do was leave it alone and do some security updates and bring out the current version as a touch screen only version and everyone would have been happy. I dont see any other real solution at this time. And thanks for the info as I didnt know they had been working on seperate versions for desktop and touch devices till now. I live in hope :)

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Possibly you can try the ESR version of Firefox. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/faq/

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Ho Zoli62, For the moment I am trying http://www.waterfoxproject.org/ which is a native 64bit version of FF so depending on what happens with Waterfox yes I will definitely consider the ESR version. having a look at it now. Waterfox is the closest thing to a fork that I can find that still works properly so maybe its a suitable solution for others with issues surrounding FF 29

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The Waterfox project is a solution to the memory problems in Firefox? It would run on 32 bit Windows as well?

Modified by zoli62

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OK so here are the best options I have discovered that suit my needs and allow me to continue using Firefox without using Version 29 which I consider totally unusable on a desktop environment. There are 2 alternative forks of FF which are available and at this time they both support Tabs below the address bar. The first is http://www.waterfoxproject.org/ which is a native 64bit browser based on FF and the second is http://www.palemoon.org/ which has both 32 and 64 bit versions and a portable version all based on FF each still with desktop compatibility and security. After looking at the FF ESR version it appears it is due for the version 29 demolition team within the next month or so but I don't know if it will get the Full Monty of version 29 or not. I will wait and see. In the mean time I will use these different forked versions of FF and hope that at least one of them will keep desktop compatibility into the future and just maybe there is a bit of help here for others struggling with the new FF changes

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ikeepbees:

Here's a little more information about those browser.

Waterfox

  • native 64 bit
  • the UI will NOT be changed to Australis at any time (at least that's what the developer says)
  • Based off 28.0

PaleMoon

  • Based on Firefox ESR
  • 64/32bit
  • Will NOT get Australis (AFAICT)

These two are pretty good alternatives. At least you'll still be on Mozilla source code and have the customizability that Firefox has.

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Note that those so called 64-bit builds are not based on Official source from Mozilla as there are no Win64 releases of Firefox yet and the only place to get Win64 at moment from Mozilla is on the unstable Nightly development channel and these are mainly built for breakage/regressions purposes.

PaleMoon is based on 24 ESR rather as the next ESR will be based on Firefox 31.0

.
.
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edit: I am not implying that the PaleMoon builds are based on these Win64 Nightly builds as some may misread it as including a certain wolf somebody. Just pointing out that Mozilla does not have any Win64 builds made except for those unsupported ones on Nightly development channel. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Supported_build_configurations

Modified by James

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Hi James, What you say is true. For anyone who simply hates the 29 build of FF this seems to be the best answer. Its still based on FF but without the craziness of FF 29. They are stable and security is keep up to date as fare as I know. I am using Both at the moment but I am more inclined towards Palemoon. I don't know what FF 31 will look like but if palemoon or waterfox takes on the characteristics of FF 29 in its current format I simply will not use it I will have to find something else. Fortunately Moses has indicated that Both of these options will not follow FF 29 blindly and functionality will be kept and looks like they are on a winning horse as many new customers like me will come looking. So instead of promoting all these crazy strange workarounds and code modification that people should NEVER be asked to do just to have a functional browser you might consider promoting these two alternatives a bit more freely.

Asking or telling people to make mega changes to a brand new product is NOT A SOLUTION

The very good thing is I have a system that simply loves the 64bit versions as I have 64 Gigs of ram so finally I have a browser that can run properly with minimal slowing down when I have several hundred tabs open. Great Success !!!

Modified by ikeepbees

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It would be better to see if you can find ways to tweak and modify the current Firefox release to your liking.

There are extensions to achieve this and Firefox can be easily styled with code in the userChrome.css file without the need of extra extensions.

If you tell us which changes you would like then we can help you with that.

You can use the Stylish extension and search the userstyles website for styles.


See also:

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Actually I am now having a look at the Sea Monkey Project. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ no multi row tab support is a disapointment but tabs are below where they should be by defult as it used to be up until 4 years ago when someone decided that tiny crapy touchpads would control our lives. Cor-el sorry but Not a hope I will ever use FF 29. It's simply ridiculous to ask people to do what all of you are asking people to do simmply to get tabs below where they belong. I can only hope that this creates a fork and somebody fixes this crap. Even the one small change I had to do for the past 4 years was more than I should have had to do and now your all asking me to make major code modification to get firfox to work. Just what type of Drugs are you people on. Unbelievable Crazy stupid FF 29 is not usable on a desktop computer.

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I apologize in advance if this comes across as snarky; I am sincerely asking. What exactly are all of these great new functions that the developers are spending so much time working on? It seems like every time I turn around there's a new update to Firefox (which inevitably breaks all of my add-ons because those folks can't keep up, either), and I haven't seen ANY useful functionality added in many, MANY generations of the software. However, I do keep seeing basic functionality disappear.

I've seen hundreds of complaints over the past few versions about the inability to put tabs on the bottom (or at least the ability to do this easily). Tabs on the bottom are very obviously an extremely core functionality for a large number of Firefox users. The RSS button disappeared a few updates ago, with no explanation. (And now the add-on many of us were using to restore it breaks the browser with this most recent update). I don't know if it's just some glitch on my end or part of the design, but I don't have the lower status bar anymore since 29, either.

It doesn't make sense to spend numerous man-hours on dubious "improvements" of added features that the average user isn't even aware of, much less using, at the expense of basic functionality. We shouldn't have to resort to add-ons to do fundamental things in Firefox; add-ons should be for all of those extras.

I'd like to see the developers focus their time and attention on making sure that the "basic" functions of Firefox work smoothly and securely, so end users don't spend hours every few months chasing down new add-ons to do the same basic things with every update, "and let the add-on developers" focus on enabling extra features.

I really don't care if my browser can sing and dance if it can't even enable me to surf the internet efficiently.

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a2jc4life,

  I've seen hundreds of complaints over the past few versions about the inability to put tabs on the bottom (or at least the ability to do this easily). 

Tabs on bottom was removed in Firefox 29 in order to streamline UIs with Mobile and Desktop platforms. This can "easily" be restored using a 3rd party add-on or using the userChrome.css file to do this (I have the code if you need it)

   The RSS button disappeared a few updates ago, with no explanation. (And now the add-on many of us were using to restore it breaks the browser with this most recent update)

The RSS icon (now called Subscribe) is in the about:customizing page of Firefox (can also be found by going to the new menu and clicking Customize. In regards to the broken add-on, most of the times after the release of a new Firefox version, add-ons may become incompatible or not work as intended. It's up to the developer to address these issues and update it accordingly. You can contact the developer from their add-ons page.

   I don't know if it's just some glitch on my end or part of the design, but I don't have the lower status bar anymore since 29, either.

I'm assuming you're talking about the Add-on Bar or Status Bar. The Status Bar (the bar that showed "Loading support.mozilla.org", etc, is gone. (I haven't seen it in Linux but I don't pay attention to that). There's an extension to restore that

As for the add-on bar, see What happened to the Add-on Bar?. This can also be installed via an extension called Status-4-Evar

  It doesn't make sense to spend numerous man-hours on dubious "improvements" of added features that the average user isn't even aware of, much less using, at the expense of basic functionality. 

Please note that developer decisions and feature requests are outside of the scope of this forum. The forum is intended for single user questions not long discussion threads Especially on topics that are themselves not within the scope of the forum. You could consider the developers mailing list

Or to an alternate discussion forum such as

Administrators have confirmed that the Australis/Firefox 29 Development subject is off topic.

See guidelines current guidelines include

* Posts in the Mozilla support forum must be either questions about the use of Firefox, ....  Users who post about things other than Mozilla support will be directed to an alternative discussion place  ..... 
*      Create one thread and only one thread for each subject you want to discuss. 
*     For support requests, do not re-use existing threads started by others, even if they are seemingly on the same subject. Ask a new question instead.  

Any feedback given here should be redirected to Mozilla's developer feedback site at input.mozilla.org/feedback

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a2jc4life,

Please note that if you wish to use tabs on bottom using userChrome.css or an extension, I'll provide those options below: You can use either of the following add-ons.

If you don't want to install an add-on, put the following style in the userChrome.css file and restart Firefox. You can use the Stylish add-on instead, if you have it installed.


@namespace url(http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul);
/* The above line should appear only once in the file */

#TabsToolbar { -moz-box-ordinal-group: 99 !important }

Also see


One of the developers recently posted this explanation

MikeDeboer said

Each setting you see in a computer program you use requires work; when a developer wants to build something new or improve something, he or she has to go through each related (hidden) setting and test if it still works like before and do that on each platform Firefox runs on. That's Apple's Mac OSX, various flavours of Linux and various flavours of Windows, including Windows XP. This costs time, lots of it, and that amount grows exponentially with each setting that's added. This comes on top of our work to continuously fix, improve and innovate Firefox. 

That's why we also removed the tabs.onTop preference. Awesome community members, who were unhappy about that change, created the Classic Theme Restorer add-on. They deserve our collective hugs.
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you ask for everyone to help make Firefox better but Firefox team don't want to make it better cos when we the people ask. all you do is try to fix something that's not working for us.since version 24 and up............. right know i cant see videos or open up tabs like i use to cos of Firefox memory liking using up half of my ram 2.2GB sucks

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