Ever since Firefox Quantum was released my life has been in turmoils. It broke everything. Every little detail of how I used to browse the Internet has been changed irreversably.
See, I am a tab hoarder. I only close tabs if my computer takes too long to start firefox or if I really, really, really don’t need them anymore. But that’s not how you’re supposed to use firefox. Or chrome. Apparently Mozilla doesn’t like people like me because they have stripped away features I loved for years now.
First, they took away tab groups. When that happened I refused to update for 6 weeks (approximately) because I could not stand to lose the feature.
Second, they changed the way tabs worked. They followed chrome’s example (which is the worst way possible) and made it so that tabs shrink down in order to fit on the screen. No longer can you have 487 tabs and scroll through your tab bar in search of that YouTube video you really loved six months ago. With 487 open tabs nowadays you can’t even really close them. They’re simply too small. This was extremely sad since I was very comfortable using firefox with as little addons as possible. Made it run faster. So I had to switch to Tree Style Tabs, which, in hindsight, I should have done ages ago. It is the best. And for a long time they didn’t touch the way addons worked. But Firefox Quantum changed that. Addons now cannot, I repeat, CANNOT change the interface of firefox. Meaning TST now, in a normal installation of FF, sits at the side with the tab bar full of small, unreadable tab shits. Which is not how Tree Style Tabs was intended to be used. And while you can change firefox’s ui by editing / creating your own personal userchrome.css (and even fuck around with Javascript in a different userchrome.js), it is very sad that you have to do that now. Just to get rid of and get back a feature that used to be part of the main package.
The other way Quantum ruined my browsing experience was that now you can’t have bookmarks and TST open at the same time (since both are now part of the same sidebar). Again, I was very desperate and nearly refused to update. I did so anyway, and was very unhappy until very recently when I remembered that toolbars are a thing. Or used to be? I mean, I’m just speaking for myself here, but I hadn’t used my toolbars in years. And now I’m restructuring. In Firefox 56 and 57, when my bookmarks where left to TST, I had all my folders under “Other bookmarks” because that was the most convenient location (since it’s the last “category”). Now, I have to move all my bookmarks to the bookmarks toolbar. Which is a lot of work, tedious, tedious, boring work, but it’s what I do with my time. Usually I manage to sneak some porn-time into it. This also gives me the opportunity to rework how my sorting system for bookmarks is structured. It’s definitely overdue.
So I’m optimistic about the future. I survived the addon holocaust Mozilla through at me and myself and my browsing habits will only get stronger. There’s only one addon that I currently miss, and for which I have not yet found an acceptable alternative.
Tab Counter. It added up all your open tabs and displayed the total count as a beautiful number (which you could stylize yourself) on your toolbar, next to the sandwich menu, or, back in FF56, below Tree Style Tab (which for me made the most sense, since it counts the tabs and the tabs were all above it). Well, it’s not compatible with Quantum, and no reasonable, working alternative has been published so far. It’s been a while since I last checked, admittedly, but I don’t expect too much change on that front. Although I don’t blame anyone. Every addon developer is a glorious, gorgeous bastard, in my opinion, and they deserve a beer. Speaking of Tab Counter, another addon I miss because it was neet-o is about:sessionstore which showed you lovely information about your current and previous browsing session.
Well, next up is a post about porn, more porn, 60FPS porn, porn with barely any view, even more porn, camgirls, onaholes and fleshlights.