Firefox 69: userChrome.css and userContent.css disabled by default

Martin Brinkmann
May 24, 2019
Updated • May 24, 2019
Firefox
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138

Mozilla plans to land a change in Firefox 69 that disables the loading of userChrome.css and userContent.css by default to improve performance.

The files userChrome.css and userContent.css are used to modify content of webpages or the browser itself using CSS instructions.

The option to do so is not removed but Mozilla plans to make it opt-in instead of opt-out. The organization states that not having to look for the two files on startup improves the start-up performance of the Firefox browser.

Firefox users who use the files already will have the feature enabled for them automatically to avoid disruptions to their workflows or expectations.

The preference needs to be flipped to True on new installations only starting with the release of Firefox 69.

Tip: check out customizing Firefox with userchrome.css.

Timeline for the change (proposed, subject to change):

  • Firefox 68: Firefox checks if userChrome.css or userContent.css exist. If yes, preference will be set to True to allow the loading of these files on browser start. If no, preference remains set to False (don't look).
  • Firefox 69: new installations will not support userChrome.css and userContent.css by default unless preference is set by the user.

The Preference that determines the state

The preference in question is toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets. Here is how you change its value:

  1. Load about:config in the Firefox address bar.
  2. Confirm that you will be careful.
  3. Search for toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets using the search at the top.
  4. Toggle the preference. True means Firefox supports the CSS files, False that it ignores them.

Closing Words

Options to load userChrome.css and userContent.css won't go away but users need to be aware that they may need to change the preference to allow the loading of these files from Firefox 69 onward.

The organization announced no plans to retire the option in the future

Mozilla landed the User Scripts WebExtensions API recently in Firefox, but it appears unrelated to the change.

Now You: Do you use these files in Firefox?

Summary
Firefox 69: userChrome.css and userContent.css disabled by default
Article Name
Firefox 69: userChrome.css and userContent.css disabled by default
Description
Mozilla plans to land a change in Firefox 69 that disables the loading of userChrome.css and userContent.css by default to improve performance.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. J. said on November 27, 2019 at 12:32 pm
    Reply

    I like that feature as I’m using the CSS for enabling stacked tabs. This seems not to be available as any plugin any longer, but I need that desperately.

  2. Yvo said on October 24, 2019 at 12:26 pm
    Reply

    @Stephen

    What bothers me is that Firefox:
    1. Denies
    2. Ignores
    3. Delivers false statements
    4. Tests poorly on parts of code they wish tot test, skips the rest
    5. Repeats 1-4

  3. Stephen said on October 23, 2019 at 7:00 pm
    Reply

    What assholes it worked yesterday now a restart of the browser and the userChrome.css is not loaded at all despite being set to true in the about:config, no matter how many times restarted in Firefox 70. And they wonder why the users left …

  4. OzMerry said on October 16, 2019 at 11:17 am
    Reply

    I couldn’t find another article about this, so apologies if I’ve missed it. I’d appreciate feedback from Martin and other members about this.

    I’ve just been automatically upgraded to 71.0b1 for Firefox Developer Edition and the toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets preference is set to false by default now as well (whereas, IIRC 70.0b10 was set to true by default?).

    I don’t know what’s happened, but I was happily using 70.0b10 this morning and everything was working fine, then after the upgrade, my userchrome.css for displaying multiple tab rows had stopped working properly and is behaving very weirdly (after changing the toolkit… preference to true).

    All of the add-on icons in the overflow menu had also disappeared along with the installed theme (OMG, not that again!). I uninstalled/reinstalled FF and they all got loaded again automatically, thankfully.

    It also won’t load my usual webmail site either, whereas Firefox Release Edition 69.0.3 and other browsers do. Grrrrrrr.

  5. Yvo said on October 5, 2019 at 5:56 pm
    Reply

    @Sproxar

    I got my css working again by using the tor browser 8.5.5.
    Also, using firefox 60.9.0esr on which that browser is based, does the job.

  6. Sproxar said on September 5, 2019 at 9:28 am
    Reply

    My bookmarks toolbar has a lot of entries – so many that I’ve created folders to contain and organize related items. I used to be able to tell these folders apart, because I’d assigned unique icons to each of them in my userChrome.css file. The reason I’ve been using userChrome.css for this, instead of getting an addon to do it, is that version 57 disabled the perfectly good bookmark icon addon I had used previously. It seems the powers that be at Mozilla consider me a fringe case, and don’t want me to know which folders I’m clicking on. Why not just remove the bookmarks toolbar entirely? Who really needs bookmarks? Most Mozilla users just remember, and type each site they want to visit into the address bar, right? I’m kinda sick of these elitist jerks arbitrarily deciding which features Mozilla users no longer need.

    PS: setting toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets to true does NOT restore this feature. I know. Silly of me to even bother trying it.

  7. Yvo said on July 13, 2019 at 10:42 am
    Reply

    Firefox 68 unabled my carefully css-customized colored scrollbar back to the standard grey color. The “toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets” setting to “true” does NOT solve this. Now my scrollbar is stuck at the almost invisible grey color. What is wrong?

  8. 01101001b said on June 3, 2019 at 10:12 am
    Reply

    No problem here… because no FF.

  9. Anonymous said on May 31, 2019 at 5:55 am
    Reply

    Firefox user base will decrease… again.

  10. ShintoPlasm said on May 26, 2019 at 7:50 am
    Reply

    I use to make the Tab Close button appear on the left of the tab (as per macOS design conventions), an option which is standard in both Opera and Vivaldi but which Mozilla has cheerfully ignored since forever.

  11. Flotsam said on May 26, 2019 at 5:53 am
    Reply

    @Martin

    You need to rename your site: The Mozilla Haters’ Whinge Fest.

    1. anon said on May 26, 2019 at 7:19 pm
      Reply

      If it were for many commenters here, there would be no more Firefox because it would have stagnated just so Mozilla could appease them and their “power user” meme.

      1. Stan said on May 26, 2019 at 10:21 pm
        Reply

        I have no idea what “power user” is, never have.

      2. 99 said on May 27, 2019 at 12:24 pm
        Reply

        … nor I do, but that’s what they look like → PowerUsers

      3. SpywareFan said on May 27, 2019 at 2:42 pm
        Reply

        From the pic.:
        “People don’t like it when you share your opinion. They only like it when you share their opinion.”
        Change “people” with “Moz://a” and you have a clear picture of the current situation. :)

      4. Lord-Lestat said on May 26, 2019 at 8:33 pm
        Reply

        @anon

        Simplicity and minimalism is what is leading to stagnation – not the presence of options or choice.

        What is wrong with creative features? Simple/Chrome users do not have to use them – Features inside a browser are not restricting it in being useful. The opposite is the case. More options and more features make a software even more useful than just having simple and generic features and one single design which can not changed much.

      5. anon said on May 26, 2019 at 10:46 pm
        Reply

        > What is wrong with creative features?

        The necessity to maintain them.

        Firefox is going through a major overhaul that it drastically needs.

        https://mozilla.github.io/firefox-browser-architecture/

      6. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 9:49 am
        Reply

        @anon

        Also… if we talk about maintenance cost… why do you think that orgs that have less money than Mozilla – like Falkon, Vivaldi, Pale Moon or Otter-Browser are then able to have customization features if maintenance costs are so high?

        The reason is – customization and features belong to their concept, because that browser devs are dedicated to support people with more deep going demands, while Mozilla has decided to intentionally abandon mentioned users – for the very same mentioned other user groups.

        It is not about money or maintenance.. It is about dedication and which users you are valuing. Mozilla believed at a way earlier time in something different. And now they abandon it willingly because of pure greed and hunger for importance. The worst advice-giver possible!

      7. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:26 pm
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: +1.

      8. anon said on May 27, 2019 at 12:34 pm
        Reply

        > are then able to have customization features if maintenance costs are so high?

        Because they already know they’re going to be niche so there is no real harm done in accepting their irrelevance.

      9. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 3:12 pm
        Reply

        @anon

        Also, only a simple user who has no respect and understanding for someone different needs shows so much dislike and hate for choice. In the end, what shines right through your words is selfishness and an utter hate and dislike for something else than simplicity and speed!

      10. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 3:08 pm
        Reply

        @anon Mozilla apologist speech, nothing more and nothing less. Mozilla’s bowing down to simple and Chrome users have put them only into that position in which they are now.

        Their try to build a “better Chrome with just a different engine” was failing so far and it will fail. None with a sane mind believes in a back-stabbing developer who sold it’s own unique values and it’s own soul because they just got greedy/started to try to be able to merge a different user group than before – aka “Sell me once, shame on you; sell me twice, shame on me”

        This can be somewhat compared to the EU elections which happened during the weekend – While the one’s who sell their own people and their own values for something different and ignoring their own strength and own diversity keep on bleeding success away – the one’s who care and stand up for the true values get more and more traction.

        So much to Mozilla’s daydream of beating Chrome and becoming number one market-share wise.

      11. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 12:34 am
        Reply

        @anon

        Also, as long as Mozilla relies on developers who call themselves – and yes they do actually – Social-Justice-Warriors – who actually have no clue of true social justice and fight their wicked game against everything which is not “diverse” – a word which they also do not understand entirely – it is even more difficult to root with Modern-Mozilla – this has nothing to do with right or left side of the political spectrum, it has mainly to do with attitude.

        And the correct one from Mozilla in the past – has – like Elvis Presley – already left the building since a long time.

      12. Iron Heart said on May 29, 2019 at 1:26 pm
        Reply

        > Also, as long as Mozilla relies on developers who call themselves – and yes they do actually – Social-Justice-Warriors – who actually have no clue of true social justice and fight their wicked game against everything which is not “diverse” – a word which they also do not understand entirely – it is even more difficult to root with Modern-Mozilla – this has nothing to do with right or left side of the political spectrum, it has mainly to do with attitude.

        I’ve asked you this time and again: Why should one give two shits about the attitude or political opinion of the developers? The browser itself is non-political.

        > Mozilla apologist speech, nothing more and nothing less. Mozilla’s bowing down to simple and Chrome users have put them only into that position in which they are now.

        No. Chrome having been much faster and more stable when it was published in 2008 put them into the position in which they are in now. Firefox up to and including version 56 could be heavily customized, yet it still lost users left and right. When the – in your eyes – “crippled” Firefox 57 was released, Firefox was already down from 30% peak market share to about 12% market share in late 2017.

        > None with a sane mind believes in a back-stabbing developer who sold it’s own unique values and it’s own soul because they just got greedy/started to try to be able to merge a different user group than before – aka “Sell me once, shame on you; sell me twice, shame on me”

        In case you haven’t noticed yet: According to Mozilla telemetry, most Firefox users don’t even use add-ons. And those who do mostly have a single add-on installed (adblocker). The rest didn’t care about customization, and left because Chrome was both objectively faster and more heavily advertised. Most users don’t even care about add-ons, yet you think that those were the reason for Firefox’s downfall. That’s just false. And then again: They lost tons of users when it was heavily customizable, too, again indicating that most people didn’t care even when customization was a given.

        > This can be somewhat compared to the EU elections which happened during the weekend

        It’s your political diatribe again, as expected… *groans*

        > While the one’s who sell their own people and their own values for something different and ignoring their own strength and own diversity

        Far right Lord Lestat rears his head again: People immigrating into other countries are not automatically monsters. They are usually demonized by the far right as a threat to society, without any proof being presented to support this claim. Well, there is “proof”: An underlying racism that is not rational at all, but instead is born out of hatred and the willingness to create scapegoats.

        > the one’s who care and stand up for the true values get more and more traction.

        You mean the ones that mean to seal off and isolate their own nations in a more and more globalized world with various trade connections and partnerships between companies and human beings worldwide? You know, the ones who plead against collaboration and the solution of various problems in the international space / frameworks. Some problems of today’s world can only be handled when various nations work together, and are not ignoring each other based on “principles” of racism, isolationism, and populism. This will doom us in a world where so many countries work together economically and socially.

        > So much to Mozilla’s daydream of beating Chrome and becoming number one market-share wise.

        That isn’t even their stated goal. They want to offer a Chromium alternative for a web that gets dominated more and more by Chromium. They don’t even have the financial capacities to overtake Chrome’s market share, even if they wanted to. Hyperbole on your part.

      13. Lord-Lestat said on May 30, 2019 at 5:23 pm
        Reply

        @Iron Heart

        Mozilla is political – so this falls back to the product. And yeah users have left. And much of bad publicity has hit them – and why? Because Mozilla

        1) sides clearly with a certain (radical) political direction
        2) features have been removed with Firefox 23-57 and ongoing
        4) they made PR mistake after mistake and angered additional users
        5) They made a problem of something non-problematic (built in UI features)
        6) Still ongoing with selling their old concept against the Chrome concept
        7) Angered a great part of their dedicated add-on/theme developers

        >Far right Lord Lestat rears his head again
        >You mean the ones that mean to seal off and isolate their own nations

        You can and you SHOULD keep your own strength and unique values without bowing down to something different and replace your own values with this “different”

        This world is no anarchy where everyone is allowed to go wherever they want without following rules.

        1) Borders are important.
        2) National sovereignty is important.
        3) To stand behind your own strength/values/culture is important.

        To believe and stand behind your own strength and values is more important than to create a one-world-culture or one-world-religion.

        Who is not standing up for their own strength and unique values, betrays their own population/followers. This is common sense.

      14. Iron Heart said on May 30, 2019 at 8:11 pm
        Reply

        @Lord Lestat

        > Mozilla is political – so this falls back to the product.

        No, it doesn’t. Firefox itself doesn’t do anything political. Once it starts filtering content via a black list or similar, it would be political. But as far as I’m aware, nothing of this sort happens. Therefore, the political opinions of the developers and the browser itself are non-related.

        You can’t seem to let go of your hatred for Mozilla developers, even when the browser itself doesn’t do anything political. That line of thinking isn’t healthy when we are discussing the product itself.

        > 1) sides clearly with a certain (radical) political direction

        The developers are entitled to a political opinion, and contrary to what you claim, it currently doesn’t reflect on the product. Firefox losing customization features isn’t related to liberalism or even communism. If you think so, LOL. The only way to convert the browser into a “political tool” would be it filtering certain content out by default. I am not aware of anything like that, so it’s clearly non-political.

        > 2) features have been removed with Firefox 23-57 and ongoing

        Some features were removed, others were introduced. That’s the nature of all things, software development in particular. I am not aware of any(!) software that remained stale in terms of functionality over the course of time.

        > 4) they made PR mistake after mistake and angered additional users

        While you can criticize them for it, I don’t see that as a reason for demonizing them the way you do.

        > 5) They made a problem of something non-problematic (built in UI features)

        The reality is: Most people out there don’t care. Most people use Chrome which doesn’t even have customization features. A great part of Firefox’s original user base left for Chrome because they obviously didn’t care about customization features. Current Firefox didn’t lose an extraordinary number of users over Firefox 57, again because most normies don’t care.

        People tinkering and modifying the tools they use have always been a minority. Mozilla needs to stay relevant if they are to survive, and legacy add-ons were hindering the overall development of the product, so they had to reach a decision, and decided in favor of the vast majority of their user base.

        > 6) Still ongoing with selling their old concept against the Chrome concept

        You are only dealing within extremes. Again, most people consider the browser to be a tool and are not as emotional about it as you are. They want an easy to use tool and get stuff done. Tinkerers are a minority, and according to Firefox telemetry, always have been. Also, every browser vendor tries to strike a balance between functionality and ease of use.

        > 7) Angered a great part of their dedicated add-on/theme developers

        Citation needed. A great deal of add-ons are WebExtensions now.

        > You can and you SHOULD keep your own strength and unique values without bowing down to something different and replace your own values with this “different”

        Your own values must be quite weak if they are threatened by immigrants. You should study history, immigration has always taken place. The exchange of ideas has always been the foundation of progress. In today’s world, some issues need to be tackled by various nations working together. Collaboration of e.g. companies and people of different nations also has synergy effects.

        Your “own values” are isolationism and crude racism for no reason at all.

        > 1) Borders are important.

        So was the Chinese Wall, apparently. Immigration laws are changeable, and borders as a means to control immigration therefore up for interpretation. Borders can be strong or weak. Your isolationist stance won’t work in today’s world.

        > 2) National sovereignty is important.

        Collaboration on so many levels is more important. Some issues of today’s world can only be tackled by nations working together, e.g. the pollution of the oceans. This can mean that national sovereignty is (partially) transferred to transnational organizations which are more capable of dealing with said issues. We are living in a world where the economy is a global network, and consequently the need to work together on many levels arises.

        > 3) To stand behind your own strength/values/culture is important.

        Yeah, but you are overdoing it. Political opinions like yours lead to isolationism and irrational feelings of superiority. If you are interested in the good of your nation, wherever you live, please realize that your nation is likely dependent on trade and needs to tackle some issues in collaboration with other nations.

        > To believe and stand behind your own strength and values is more important than to create a one-world-culture or one-world-religion.

        So international collaboration and some form of immigration leads to a “one world culture” and “one world religion”. Yeah, don’t think so. If not for any other reason, then for the fact that religions always tend to split into separate subgroups and for the fact that the world is far too large for a single culture.

        > Who is not standing up for their own strength and unique values, betrays their own population/followers. This is common sense.

        Again, immigration has always taken place. Some issues need to be tackled by working together, there are synergy effects in trade etc. Your black and white thinking isn’t covering the issue in its greater complexity.

      15. Stan said on June 2, 2019 at 1:23 am
        Reply

        “Firefox itself doesn’t do anything political.”

        Well actually it does, it’s the ‘in user device’ ATM deposit box that finances MozCult lunacy. Without Firefox they’d be handing out flowers for donations at SFO.

      16. Lord-Lestat said on June 1, 2019 at 1:59 am
        Reply

        @Iron Heart Just keep on deceiving people. A Mozilla apologist is and stays a Mozilla apologist no matter what they do.

        >No, it doesn’t. Firefox itself doesn’t do anything political

        Mozilla is. And this reflects clearly seen by the users who support the browser. And how much more nice left/liberal/progressive users are – not – that is what you are showing constantly. And that point has to be called out. Political opinion reflects on the values as developer and also concept wise, which users you are supporting – and which you are NOT!

        >Some features were removed, others were introduced

        Mozilla apologist excuses. Powerful and creative features have been removed, features which are streamlined mostly for simple users have been introduced. This is nothing of which Mozilla can be proud of, as they have sided against their origin user-base.

        >While you can criticize them for it, I don’t see that as a reason for demonizing them the way you do.

        What positive you can say about a developer who sells their origin users, their old concept – and tries to adopt the concept of the competition – sides against conservatives and Christians. Not worthy of ANY respect! As this is a clear discriminating action!

        >The reality is: Most people out there don’t care.

        They could have just hidden the features instead of removing them so that they are out of sight and reach for simple users. That way they could have supported both sides. But Mozilla sided with simple users only in recent years, as that is the user-base Google Chrome does have – and Mozilla these days is trying to absorb the very same user-base. And angering developers.. for example Aris… who created the extremely useful Classic Theme Restorer. That kind of developers/users have been the core user-base – the vocal user group who Mozilla sold for simple users.

        >Your own values must be quite weak if they are threatened by immigrants.
        >So was the Chinese Wall
        >Collaboration on so many levels is more important
        >Political opinions like yours lead to isolationism
        >So international collaboration and some form of immigration leads to a “one world culture” and “one world religion”
        >Again, immigration has always taken place. Some issues need to be tackled by working together

        Immigration should follow after the concept that people who can strengthen the country are allowed to stay, others should be help – but it is foolish to invite everyone and allowing them to stay no matter what.

        You can work together with borders in place – borders are important and not outdated. Why do you think most houses have fences?

        Not isolationism but common sense – the own country and it’s culture/religion/laws are of most importance and the rest secondary… That way it has to be. And it is logical that it is that way.

        Yes, it does. As there is a large movement worldwide with the goal/interest/vision to “merge” all cultures and religions and remove everything what is unique about people/countries/ and so on

        Working together – Sure! But with borders and protecting the own country against too big influence from outside – Without middle ground you create only mindless damage. And that is the problem with the left/liberal/progressive side – they know no middle ground!

      17. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:27 pm
        Reply

        @anon: what future niche are you referring to?

      18. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 9:30 am
        Reply

        @anon

        Lame excuse – and a rather rubbish one.

        Mozilla wastes so much time and money to compete with Google in all ways possible – they invest so much money to be compatible with Chrome users needs.

        If they would use instead that wasted money for something REALLY useful – aka providing their own old classic target users again with the tools they deserve, there would still be enough money for tons of other useful Mozilla projects. But when Mozilla only uses their money for their fight against Google and for their desperate fight for Google/simple users – what else to expect then.

        That is the reason why Mozilla started to be in trouble. Drastically… the only benefit which you get with this “overhaul” is speed and simplicity – and this only is a benefit for simple/Chrome users – Mozilla’s new favored user-group.

        Old Mozilla would have understood that. This rather poor excuse which is literally abusing legacy Mozilla’s glorious history is not even worth 10% of old Mozilla’s value.

      19. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:24 pm
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: what Mozilla does not seem to realise is that what will attract users is not this kind of tweaking and fine-tuning, but to come up with a strong, “unbeatable” so-called Unique Selling Point. FF had that with its customisation and to some extent with its extensions. That the old style extensions posed a security risk and something therefore needed to be done is understandable.

        But, like you say, Mozilla has increasingly focused on mimicking Chrome and trying to beat Google at its own game, and that is what is driving users away. Eventually even the die-hard users will be driven away if this persists.

      20. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 11:36 am
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak Also… this security risk arguments are nonsense. Same catchword like “speed” what Mozilla and their apologists throw into the room always and always again! Incredible that still so many people fall for it.

        May i remind you that Webextensions can and have also been exploited for malicious reasons? If you look good enough you can exploit everything. It is the same reason why built inside customization until available in Firefox 28 had to go – This part of Firefox old’s USP is running against the interest of simple and Chrome users – and does not fit into Mozilla’s new USP – speed and simplicity. What Mozilla believes= “You can only absorb that kind of users if you throw away everything what they would call bloat”

        Most simple users are predictable and show zero patience. The kind of user who says “if a bug is not fixed in 24 hours i go elsewhere” – A really loyal user-base which Mozilla wants to absorb instead of their old and loyal origin core-users.

      21. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 12:06 pm
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: chance

      22. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 12:04 pm
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: you stated

        May i remind you that Webextensions can and have also been exploited for malicious reasons? If you look good enough you can exploit everything.

        That is very true, but, as with some many things regarding security, the important criterion is chance. From what I understand as a non-expert, the chance of malicious exploitation with Web Extensions is less than with the old (XUL?) extensions. Remember, there is no such thing as 100% guaranteed unbreakable security.

      23. Lord-Lestat said on May 29, 2019 at 12:21 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak

        What Mozilla says and what they actually really have in mind are 2 different things. They are pathological liars – and that since a very long time already.

        They have mastered the art of treachery – at least as one is able to master it ;)

      24. Lord-Lestat said on May 29, 2019 at 12:17 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak

        https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/29/another-malware-wave-hit-the-mozilla-firefox-extensions-store/

        So much to this topic. No matter if XUL or Webextensions.. both can be exploited. Which should show even more clear the non-existing value of how Mozilla argued with their catchphrase “security” :D

        Again… security only was a minor reason for replacing XUL/XUL add-ons technology. What counts for Mozilla most… are Chrome and simple users. And that is the major reason why XUL/XUL add-on technology was removed.

      25. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 9:58 am
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak

        Exactly, you have described it way better than i ever could… I guess i resign and let you argue from now on ;)

        The USP is important.

        For Opera it was customization
        For Firefox it was customization
        For IE, Chrome, Safari it is speed

        If you throw away your unique USP – and hope you can adopt the one from the competition… you still will not win out, as there is already an original which will just be copied that way, and people – in most cases will always pick the origin over the copy.

        The point is, it is pretty easy to create a dedicated follower base, but it is even more easy to drive them away, but it is almost impossible and unrealistically to believe that with a new USP you just can absorb with ease the follower base of another product.

      26. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 11:51 am
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: thanks for your kind words, but do not resign from arguing. I don’t hold the absolute truth, and it is always best to present things from a different angle, even if we agree on the fundamentals.

        I agree with you about the USP. I still like Firefox, although I must admit I am getting increasingly concerned by its subsequent “improvement” actions, which seem to be based on something different than what they are presented as. In other words, I get a feeling of disingenousness from Mozilla.

        Steve#99 in this thread mentions the Iridium browser. It is very privacy-focused and has a lot of the Google spying stuff stripped out. Nevertheless, it remains a Chromium-based browser and it is a lot less customisable than FF still is. Could it be a good replacement for FF? At this stage I don’t know enough about it.

      27. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 12:22 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak I would say it depends what you are looking for. If you want features, the only Chromium based browsers which could be useful for you then are either Vivaldi (partly closed source) and the full FOSS alternatives Otter-Browser (QT-Webkit or QT-Webengine available), Falkon (QT-Webengine) or Qutebrowser (QT-Webengine).

        Every other Chromium based browsers (including Brave) are rather generic and only optimized for the typical mainstream user who does not demand anything additional other than the often mentioned simplicity and speed.

      28. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 1:45 pm
        Reply

        @Lord-Lestat: thanks for that. I have had Falkon as my secondary browser for a few years. It is quite decent, although you cannot add any extensions to it, which is quite a drawback, although you can add scripts.

        I don’t know what its data collection/telemetry/phoning home activities are like, do you?
        Since it is FOSS I would think there isn’t any of that, can you confirm?

        As for the other Chromium-based browsers, you mention simplicity and speed as the only “features”, but from what I understand privacy is also their forte, supposedly. Iridium, Brave, and esp. Epic fall into this category. Epic’s listed features are impressive, though there is no Linux version – my requirement.

    2. Stan said on May 26, 2019 at 3:33 pm
      Reply

      Firefox needs every user it can get, which won’t be many if Mozilla elites continue ostriching behind a WALL.
      @ No doubt next on the chopping block will be the Search Bar because their data shows that no one uses it.

    3. Lord-Lestat said on May 26, 2019 at 12:35 pm
      Reply

      @Flotsam

      Mozilla is the only one who has to be blamed for that. After all it is them who intentionally set step by step to ensure to be able to phase out everything customization related in small steps, one by one at a certain time.

      Sure, one can argue that it is natural that customization does no longer belong to their new concept – of speed, simplicity and privacy features only – or one can argue that it is their right to do.

      BUT – the fact is still standing in the room. Mozilla does all that to be as attractive as possible to a new target user group and having decided that their old group, who wanted and loved Firefox customization features, choice and options – is no longer important for them and Mozilla fully stopped respecting and caring.

      What do you expect people who want and need that kind of features would react? Making a party after party where now here the first step-stones have been set into motion to remove another useful and unique feature at a not-so-far-away point in the future?

      The people who complain are allowed to complain – because Mozilla gives them reasons to complain – as that kind of users are sold without considering the impact this does have. When a once respectable developer who believed in being different and fully non-commercial throws all their visions and ideals away out of pure greed to be able to compete with their “arch-enemy” Google by all means possible – and even taking into account that collateral damage is happening – this is more than a poor development.

      Mozilla has earned all the critic and complaint since Australis with version 29 – as they turned intentionally away from visions they once had and the supporters they once had.

      Mozilla is no longer the saint no matter from which point you view it. Just because they still claim they are “FOSS” – is not saving them from reality…. That they have tossed all their once held high morals and visions away. And for what? For money? For a – fully unrealistic – chance to be able to outsmart and defeat Google?

  12. Marja Erwin said on May 25, 2019 at 5:28 pm
    Reply

    When Mozilla introduced the new extra-painful tab throbbers, and users started suffering migraines from those tab throbbers, the official fix involved userChrome.css.

    It wasn’t a very reliable fix, either. It wouldn’t necessarily load while the tabs were loading and the tab throbbers were firing.

    A lot of accessibility and safety fixes rely on userChrome.css and/or userContent.css. Yes, css is hard to learn and easy to screw up, but browsers and websites which inflict migraines are harder to use.

    I use userChrome.css to set a font and font size I can read, try to block tab throbbers, and some minor fixes.

    I use userContent.css to set a font and font size again, though I can’t use one front for all scripts, and to block a ton of migraine triggers, and some minor fixes.

  13. Phylis Sophical said on May 25, 2019 at 5:12 pm
    Reply

    Yep. Use it for Tabs on Bottom.

  14. Lord-Lestat said on May 25, 2019 at 4:16 pm
    Reply

    Anyone remembers which hip catchwords have been used so that it was possible that the removal of XUL and XUL-add-ons was justified?

    Yes that’s right: Security and performance.

    Now guess what Mozilla is using again in this case! Like it or not, this customization option too is gone in a couple of versions. Now where it will be deactivated for most users – and most will not turn it on as they do not know it – it is the perfect reasoning Mozilla has for removing just another minor used feature. And with that it rises Mozilla’s hope that more Chrome and simple users will join Firefox as the last remaining amount of “bloat” will be removed at some point in the future.

    Same old story.

  15. Lord-Lestat said on May 25, 2019 at 3:18 pm
    Reply

    Logical steps for a feature removal:

    1) First telemetry is gathered about specific features
    2) Afterwards it becomes an opt-in
    3) then deprecated
    4) then removed

    Chrome does not have advanced customization – So Firefox has to remove it too. Any more questions?

  16. Alanf said on May 25, 2019 at 1:57 pm
    Reply

    But…

    … will any point upgrades to Firefox 67 (or later), resolve the irritating issue of the the obscure, and essentially meaningless message

    “Your organisation has disabled the ability to change some options”

    that appears a the top of the Options, (about:preferences), page.

  17. ULBoom said on May 25, 2019 at 5:42 am
    Reply

    If mozilla can beat chrome, chromedgium, safari, whichever in some of those weird “standardized” tests sites like to publish, maybe they’ve convinced themselves they will take over the world, IDK.

    How long FF takes to start is affected by much more than those two files, network connection availability being one, the OS doing who knows what in the background when FF is launched, OS prefetching, VPN active, etc, lots of things.

    MY FF is ESR60 on a NVMe SSD in a gaming laptop. Should be enough hardware, I think. Sometimes it launches seemingly instantaneously; other times, in a second or two. That’s fine. If these changes make it launch faster than instantaneously, who cares? They won’t affect the two second launches in any noticeable way.

    FF out of the box isn’t much different than one of the better chromia. What it offers is customizability and privacy both attained with user changes; add ons and about:config mods.

    Mozilla advertises privacy but only delivers a smattering of it through Options. I doubt the average chrome user ever changes any settings (Argh! They’re scary!), only adds extensions that increase spying but look cute.

    Mozilla should give customers the privacy they promise with a version of FF that has the same config settings privacy conscious users make. The difference is very noticeable browsing; it’s faster, too. D’oh!

    Who’s got the big ones at Mozilla? Double dog dare you!

    1. lk34lkn5k34n said on May 25, 2019 at 11:23 am
      Reply

      Firefox development has gone from a usable browser to a developer circlejerk in recent years. The UI changes to match every passing trend. Every UI is “ugly” as soon as the next one comes out. Change for the sake of change. Customization becomes worse and worse. Features keep getting removed to shave off precious nanoseconds.

      Devs only care about the things that users do NOT care about. They don’t care about what users think, because it’s not for the users. It’s for the devs.

  18. StopPopups said on May 25, 2019 at 2:15 am
    Reply

    If there is another option than

    #PopupAutoCompleteRichResult { display: none !important; }

    to get rid of auto-complete popups, all is set.

  19. Greg said on May 25, 2019 at 12:32 am
    Reply

    Mozilla will eventually perm remove these 2 things, this is just the start of the removal.

  20. Stan said on May 24, 2019 at 11:21 pm
    Reply

    Not that hard to figure out.
    They used the ‘community’, became rich, then screwed the ‘community’.

  21. Vítor I said on May 24, 2019 at 10:24 pm
    Reply

    Another feature heading to the death row…

  22. to improve performance. said on May 24, 2019 at 9:42 pm
    Reply

    to improve performance.

  23. Ben said on May 24, 2019 at 8:50 pm
    Reply

    The reason is obviously bullshit too, only a step to removing the files altogether in the future.

  24. Ben said on May 24, 2019 at 8:49 pm
    Reply

    Will be funny when Mozilla removes both files in the future.
    Fanboys who said addons gone was not a big deal because of userChrome will finally see the problem with the bullshit Mozilla is doing.

  25. Anonymous said on May 24, 2019 at 7:42 pm
    Reply

    about:config just searching “toolkit” you have already a vague idea of what kind of spyware you have installed.

  26. John IL said on May 24, 2019 at 3:12 pm
    Reply

    I don’t live in a Google world myself, but I don’t understand Firefox’s thinking anymore. They seem to be just randomly trying stuff now days to see what strikes a cord. What happened to their vision?

  27. Steve#99 said on May 24, 2019 at 2:52 pm
    Reply

    The past five years of Firefox have been an uninvited/unwanted fight of Mozilla verses power users. I’m done, Mozilla won: I tapped out yesterday after reading this latest feature removal. Instead of Firefox not establishing 20 TCP connections to various domains upon startup, which would save far more than 20ms, Mozilla instead choose a user hostile method of shaving those 20ms by removing functionality. “Because no one uses it”, userChrome/userContent.css will be extra user.js settings today and gone tomorrow feature. The last few months of using Firefox have destroyed every last ounce of love I once had for it. I’m done, bye FF.

    I switched yesterday to the portable version of the Iridium Browser, which is a Chrome Clone. After shutting out google (see below), Iridium is dead silent with zero internet connects; unlike Mozilla’s products which are telemetry sucking / sending beast. The rest of this post is about Iridium, which I have zero connection with but came to it after spending a few hours compiling ungoogled-chromium which was not a simple task, taking 7+ hours. Note, Chrome & its clones are no where near as customizable as Firefox, but the writing is on the wall: Firefox wants to be Chrome and is no longer interested in being Firefox.

    * Get Iridium here:

    https://downloads.iridiumbrowser.de/windows/

    * For windows, you can lock google out of your Iridium business using the below Win7 firewall cmds (you can do near the same with ufw rules in ubuntu). Note, you will not be able to use gmail, youtube, google.com, et al in the iridium browser if you issue the below cmds, but that is the absolute intent of them – to keep your data private from google. The formatting might get hosed in this post due to html/web rules, so lookup how to issue WFW commands and correct all of the quoting. The below rules assume Iridium is here “C:\Program Files\Iridium\” . Delete rules precede the actual rules so you can place them in a cmd file; that way they won’t clutter your fw rules with multiple entries if clicked on more than once. Remove “,80,8080″ if you always use https and never use http.

    netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”Iridium”
    netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”GoogleBlock”

    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”Iridium” dir=out action=allow program=”C:\Program Files\Iridium\iridium.exe” enable=yes protocol=tcp remoteport=443,80,8080 description=”See also GoogleBlock and IridiumBlock”

    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”GoogleBlock” dir=out action=block program=”C:\Program Files\Iridium\iridium.exe” enable=yes remoteip=172.217.0.0-172.217.255.255

    * Because of the above firewall rules, we won’t be able to visit google playstore (really, why would we want to). Instead, install addons the more private way from a file. For instance, do the following to install uBlock-Origin.

    i. Download uBlock from the link below. Get the latest release version; careful not to choose the dev version unless that is what you want…

    https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases

    ii. Unzip uBlock, remember the location

    iii. In Iridium, go to this “web address”

    chrome://extensions/

    and check the box to allow Developer mode in the top right.

    iv. Click the Load unpacked extension button and select the uBlock unzipped folder from step 2 to install it.

    * If you don’t want Iridium calling home with its minor telemetry, issue these 2 cmds

    netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name=”IridiumBlock”

    netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”IridiumBlock” dir=out action=block enable=yes remoteip=88.198.85.193

    I’ve been using Iridium for the past 2 days now. It is refreshing not to fight a browser, not to have to be an expert at the innards of a browser, and not keeping track of 100s of user.js rules just to do a simple thing: browse.

    1. Jake said on May 25, 2019 at 9:52 am
      Reply

      do you know if portable version of that browser is truly portable or does it make “Register stuff”..

      1. steve#99 said on May 26, 2019 at 2:43 pm
        Reply

        Iridium is 99.9% portable where all user browser settings can be stored on a USB or C:\. See the bottom of this post, I did find a few reg settings. To run from a USB device, from Iridium’s download page…

        “Running the Iridium portable version works out of the box. We recommend to create a shortcut using the”…

        –user-data-dir=/IridiumUserData

        configuration option to store the user data to a preferred location (like a USB stick, etc.)

        I checked the reg and found 2 keys: a Google key in CU & LM, which was empty of values, and an Iridium key in CU, which had entries. The full source code is on github so it would be a simple matter to find out why these are stored.

        PS: Chrome & its clones are no where near as configurable/powerful as Firefox. So that takes a little to get used to. My biggest issue with Chrome/clones is their anaemic bookmark tool. Other than that, Iridium is top notch, fast as hell, and rock stable.

        I use dnscrypt and added the below rules to my blacklist. These rules block the bulk of non user generated dns request from iridium. The firewall rules catch the rest.

        cache.iridiumbrowser.de
        *accounts.google*
        redirector.gvt*
        clients*.google.com
        chrome.google.com

  28. Sound Judgment said on May 24, 2019 at 2:15 pm
    Reply

    Time saved by the removal of these two files from FF Browser Startup:
    0.00000000000000000001 mSec.

  29. Allen said on May 24, 2019 at 1:09 pm
    Reply

    I expect Mozilla would make users optional if they could. They deserve their dwindling market share.

  30. Sam said on May 24, 2019 at 12:34 pm
    Reply

    What about removing themes? Because the browser loads faster without.
    And addons? Who cares bout them btw?

    Seriously Mozilla…

  31. Anonymous said on May 24, 2019 at 11:45 am
    Reply

    “The preference in question is toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets.”

    That kinda says it all. It’s a “legacy” option. Only a matter of time before it’s completely removed.

    1. 99 said on May 24, 2019 at 1:31 pm
      Reply

      That kinda says it all. It’s a “legacy” option.

      It’s marked legacy because it’s a technology that’s been around for a _verrrrry_ long time, and we’ve allowed it to limp along for years.
      It might go away someday, but I know of no active plans to do that.
      Source: Mike Conley via twitter

      1. Stan said on May 24, 2019 at 11:11 pm
        Reply

        That sounds like Dotzler Speak to me.

  32. Tom Hawack said on May 24, 2019 at 10:46 am
    Reply

    “Mozilla plans to land a change in Firefox 69 that disables the loading of userChrome.css and userContent.css by default to improve performance.”

    To improve the performance? Is this a joke or, as suggested by ‘Iron Heart’ above, “The first step towards its removal.” even if the article states that “The organization announced no plans to retire the option in the future”? No plans now, or no announced plan. But then, why such a move?

    I use both user userChrome.css and userContent.css and they bring more than plain cosmetics.
    Frankly, as i see it now, should these two assistants be fired that I’d unsubscribe from the company.

    No performance issue here. “Issue” means issue, not a lost of a few tenths of a second.
    With userChrome.css, userContent.css, Autoconfig and Policy Templates, 45 extensions… Firefox 67 loads immediately, or perceived as such.

    I don’t understand this obsession of speed, “Speed Superstar” so to say. Speed is a parameter as well as comfort. Firefox pre-Quantum was so slow to start that speed at that time was required, needed to be considered. But faster than fast is obsessional.

    Of course a naked browser, ran out of the box, will break records. But what’s the point if the user wishes to fine tune other considerations ? If the trend is to aim a robotic world all of uniformity conceived for robotic users then count me out.

    1. Thorky said on July 10, 2019 at 8:51 am
      Reply

      I agree to 101%! 🙂👍

    2. John Fenderson said on May 24, 2019 at 4:58 pm
      Reply

      @Tom Hawack: “I don’t understand this obsession of speed”

      I think that Mozilla believes that speed is the thing that will drive users to Firefox over other browsers. I think that they’ve wrong about this, too.

      1. Tom Hawack said on May 24, 2019 at 10:24 pm
        Reply

        @John Fenderson, speed is important but it’s only a parameter among a few others. I’m not sure users consider their browser as a dragster, nor do they wish it to be a snail. Now that we have speed may the company consider that the price to pay for a few extra milliseconds is maybe not worth preventing users from accommodating their van as they like it.

        But, again, nothing is officially mentioned about removing userChrome/Content CSSs. Let’s wait and see. This said, those who do use theses “assistants” must be a minority.

    3. Anonymous said on May 24, 2019 at 4:03 pm
      Reply

      “Firefox pre-Quantum was so slow to start that speed at that time was required”

      Try Waterfox, it starts 2 seconds for me and you can customize everything with Classic Theme Restorer.

      1. Tom Hawack said on May 24, 2019 at 10:16 pm
        Reply

        @Anonymous, here Firefox 67 starts quasi instantaneously, even with all the luggage I mentioned above. Running on a PC which is not particularly powerful, but having my Firefox profile on a RAM disk may helop slightly (RAMDisk mainly intended to avoid the heavy disk usage when browsing, moreover disk cache disabled).

        Firefox now is better than great in my view, which is why I wouldn’t like “fundamentals” IMO to disappear. And userChrome.css together with userContent.css are fundamental. More than cosmetics, I happen to run several userChrome scripts which bring a lot.

        I’m sure Waterfox is nice, I had tested it several years ago (far before the Quantum era) and left it then because it didn’t appear to me any faster than Firefox.

      2. Anonymous said on May 25, 2019 at 5:58 am
        Reply

        “I’m sure Waterfox is nice, I had tested it several years ago (far before the Quantum era) and left it then because it didn’t appear to me any faster than Firefox.”

        “I don’t understand this obsession of speed”

        Isn’t it ironic that you’re obessing with speed yourself? 1-2 seconds faster won’t make any difference.. How many times do you open the browser a day?

        “Firefox now is better than great in my view, which is why I wouldn’t like “fundamentals” IMO to disappear. ”

        Firefox fundamental was its customization. When Firefox abandoned the powerful addons system for the sake of 1-2 seconds, it’s not Firefox anymore.
        So what we see here? Firefox keep on removing features here and there for the sake of ‘speed’.
        When a smartphone is almost as dumb as dumb phones, can you still call it smartphone?

      3. Tom Hawack said on May 25, 2019 at 9:40 am
        Reply

        @Anonymous, speed was a problem with older versions of Firefox when it’d take 6-7 seconds here to get it started, which is why it was of my concern at the time and led me to try Waterfox.

        As I mentioned it, the problematic is IMO excessively focusing on a parameter without balancing it with other ones. Firefox Quantum speed is now a no-problem so, IMO, pulling on other parameters (userChrome.css and userContent.css being disabled, by default or not) to gain a few milliseconds seems to be a non-argument.

        A browser’s fundamentals? Security, privacy, customization, speed as I see it. Firefox Quantum honors all four, I wouldn’t want the customization area to be discredited on the ground of speed and, if the reason was security and/or privacy then theses reasons would require explanations (today’s world is full of anti-progress explained by security, which is maybe not always the right explanation).

        Concerning Firefox : let’s not take for factual what is not even announced not what is announced as possible. We’ll see. But I maintain that, for my concern, usage, Firefox Quantum is the ultimate at this time. Of course perfection is not of this world but, globally, Firefox undeniably IMO is the leader. In My Opinion :=)

      4. 99 said on May 25, 2019 at 1:38 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack said on May 25, 2019 at 9:40 am

        pulling on other parameters (userChrome.css and userContent.css being disabled, by default or not) to gain a few milliseconds seems to be a non-argument.

        You miss the entire point of this new preference toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets

        The preference tells the broser on startup, if the files “userChrome.css” and “userContent.css” exists or not. In case not, there is no need to scan the harddrive if this files exist or not. That’s a leaner startup with less potentially hiccups and not holding back the parent process and content process, an improvement for the majority of users. And that’s an argument!

        Speaking about “userChrome.css and userContent.css being disabled, by default”

        From Firefox 69 on, in case of a fresh install – e.g. with a brand new Profile – the preference is set to “false” for the simple reason: On a fresh install there are no “userChrome.css” and no “userContent.css” yet. For the simple reason, they must be created by the user first. Logic, isn’t it? … and by no way “userChrome.css and userContent.css being disabled, by default”.

        If a user is savvy enough to create this files, one could expect that he is also able to flip the preference to “true”.

        Once this is done, the user may flip the preference later on to “false”, par example for testing purpose. In this case and only from this moment on – upon a user action! – you can call it “userChrome.css and userContent.css is disabled”.

        In summary, the majority of users is pleased with a leaner browser startup. The tiny group with pre existing customization stylesheets are not affected at all by this changes. On top of that, this minority of “power users” gain an easy switch to disable and enable theirs existing stylesheets with this new preference.

        That’s an improvement for everyone.

        Any thing wrong with that?

      5. YouWhut said on July 7, 2019 at 3:58 am
        Reply

        “Any thing wrong with that?” …because every time they have done anything like that in the past it has been prequel to subsequent removal of the feature.

        Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 20 times? We’ve seen this movie before.

      6. Klaas Vaak said on May 25, 2019 at 4:03 pm
        Reply

        @99: it seems to me that it is you who misses the real point entirely.
        On start-up FF does NOT need to scan the entire hard drive, but just the profile folder, which is where those 2 files reside if they are present. Therefore, scanning for those 2 plain text files does not take a long time, i.e. it takes a few microseconds.

        So, disabling the loading of those file will NOT contribute any perceptible improvement to the start-up time at all. This measure by Mozilla does not make any logical sense; either this is part of the ever more pervasive window dressing drive, or there is something more sinister behind it. To use a very “profound” cliché: time will tell.

      7. Cigologic said on May 27, 2019 at 3:12 am
        Reply

        > Klaas Vaak: “This measure by Mozilla does not make any logical sense; either this is part of the ever more pervasive window dressing drive, or there is something more sinister behind it”

        Perhaps prioritising multi-process (e10s) & DOM are the real reasons, while startup speed is just a smoke screen ? The aforementioned is the DIRECT answer given by Firefox developer Mike Conley (see bottom).

        If so, “no active plans” to remove user CSS functionality might just be a forked-tongue way of describing KIV (keep-in-view) plans that could be activated in the future.

        Note that Conley didn’t categorically say “no plans” to remove “legacy” functions that are perceived to be getting in the way of his babies.

        https://twitter.com/mike_conley/status/1131382554081320966
        Q: “Can you speak to the cost of keeping userChrome/userContent?”

        Response from Firefox developer Mike Conley (22 May 2019):
        “I think there was some work that needed to be done to make userContent.css work with e10s. Similar (or greater?) effort might be required for Fission. We’ll see, I guess. For userChrome, I think my main concern is total browser breakage if DOM changes unexpectedly.

        It’s marked legacy because it’s a technology that’s been around for a _verrrrry_ long time, and we’ve allowed it to limp along for years. It might go away someday, but I know of no active plans to do that.”

        Bio: Mike Conley describes himself as being “on the team that shipped Australis, helped ship multi-process Firefox (Electrolysis/ e10s), and Photon/ Quantum. These days, I’m trying to make Firefox fast. Like, really fast.”

      8. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:17 pm
        Reply

        @Cigalogic: you might be right. In any case Conley said “It might go away someday, but I know of no active plans to do that.”, which means we cannot be sure it won’t be deprecated one day, esp. considering its age. But then again, nothing is ever sure in the world, so this is no different from that.

        For now FF is still 1 of the most customisable, if not THE most customisable browser around. We’ll just have to wait & see.

      9. 99 said on May 25, 2019 at 10:24 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak said on May 25, 2019 at 4:03 pm

        Quote:
        “On start-up FF does NOT need to scan the entire hard drive”

        No one ever said that.

        Quote:
        “[…] any perceptible improvement to the start-up time”

        Improvement is the process of a thing moving from one state to a state considered to be better. In this case, it is the performance of the browser start-up process.

        E.g. the amount of useful work accomplished by the browser. This is estimated in terms of accuracy, efficiency and speed of executing programm instructions. The focus in this matter is on accuracy & efficiency and not on gaining “a few microseconds” at start-up time.

        Quote:
        “This measure by Mozilla does not make any logical sense;”

        If it doesn’t make “any logical sense” for you, this doesn’t mean it makes no logical sense for others as well. It’s just an indication for your lack of any knowledge in terms of the start-up process.

        or there is something more sinister behind it.

        Ah, I see! Well, that explains it all … Het leven doet geen pijn. Het JEUKT!

      10. Klaas Vaak said on May 26, 2019 at 12:44 pm
        Reply

        @99: In your reply tto Tom Hawack you stated: “….there is no need to scan the hard drive if this files exist or not.” That means you believe FF needs to scan the complete hard drive to find files, which is not true. Its search is limited to the Profiles folder, which you ignore, or in any case don’t seem to realise.

        Putting this measure in the context of efficiency and accuracy is meaningless. Those do NOT improve by not having to look for some simple plain text files, nor will shaving off a few microseconds noticeably/significantly improve search time.

        In other words, this measure by Mozilla does not make any logical sense. If it did, Mozilla would have given an explanation for it, but they did not. Your explanation does NOT make sense either. And, apart from your “explanation”, none of the other commenters here are amused by this measure, many are worried that this is the 1st step towards elimination of the functionality. In other words, the other commenters here don’t understand the logic of this measure either. Sorry, pal.

      11. Anonymous said on May 26, 2019 at 9:07 pm
        Reply

        @Klaasje
        Quote:
        In your reply tto Tom Hawack you stated: “….there is no need to scan the hard drive if this files exist or not.”

        Yes , indeed I said that.

        If a computer programm scans something, it examines it in order to look for a particular thing in a predefined area. In this case Firefox scans the predefined area – let’s say on a Win OS –
        C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xyz99zyx.default\
        if the files “userChrome.css” and/or “userContent.css” exists or not, in that particular predefined area called chrome folder — in case the folder exist.

        That’s the long version and basic knowledge, my dear Klaasje.

        Quote:
        “That means you believe FF needs to scan the complete hard drive to find files”

        That means, you imputing complete nonsense.
        The browser knows very well where it has to look up (Synonym of scan) for the necessary files and there is no need “to scan the complete hard drive to find files”.

        Except for Mister Klaasje Vaak, nobody else ever claimed such rubbish!

      12. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:10 pm
        Reply

        @99: thanks for confirming your asininity. 1st you try to argue FF needs to scan the whole hard drive looking 2 files, then, when I point out that it only scans the Profiles folder, you try to weasel your way out of your nonsense by turning the argument upside down and lacking respect by your condescending tone and use of a diminutive of my name. I have not lacked any respect to you, but now I understand your despair: having been shown to be at a loss as to your own nonsense, you want to win the argument in any case, poor thing. ROFLMAO.

        Just FYI, I have dealt with your ilk before, and whatever language you choose to use does not affect me, it just shows the kind of background you originate from.

      13. 99 said on May 27, 2019 at 6:52 pm
        Reply

        Quote:
        “1st you try to argue FF needs to scan the whole hard drive looking 2 files”

        That’s what you’re insinuating over and over again, and this is what I said, my dear Klaasje:

        … there is no need to scan the harddrive if this files exist or not.

        Compare this with your sayings:

        Klaas Vaak said on May 25, 2019 at 4:03 pm
        to scan the entire hard drive

        Klaas Vaak said on May 26, 2019 at 12:44 pm
        That means you believe[Oha → “I believe”? quod esset demonstrandum!] FF needs
        to scan the complete hard drive

        Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 2:10 pm
        to scan the whole harddrive

        “Entire, complete, whole, you believe, try to argue” … much wording from your side and multiple times the distinct attempt to introduce a brazenly lie.

        Oh I see, that’s your Unique Selling Point (USP), Mister Vaak … Tijd om je nagels te knippen

        Sincerely
        — out —

      14. Klaas Vaak said on May 27, 2019 at 7:18 pm
        Reply

        @99: the fact that you mention “no need to scan the hard drive” means that you believe there are situations where FF does that, which of course is complete nonsense otherwise there would be no need for the Profiles folder.

        In your original comment you did not even mention the Profiles folder, which means you weren’t even aware of its existence, or of its use. Nevertheless, you pretended to be an expert – how pathetic.

        Anyway, you can keep arguing any which asinine way you like in order to weasel out of this for you highly embarrassing situation, but the fact of the matter is that you have made a complete fool of yourself, and you keep digging that hole ever deeper by trying to upend what I have demonstrated beyond a shade of doubt.

        Like I said, you are incapable of constructing a proper, coherent argument, and think that by turning things around (a.k.a. lying) and using abusive language you can come out on top. Keep up the good work. ROFLMAO.

      15. 99 said on May 27, 2019 at 10:43 pm
        Reply

        Dear Klaasje

        Quote:
        “the fact that you mention “no need to scan the hard drive” means that you believe there are situations where FF does that,”

        First, I don’t believe in anything at all – especially not in this nonsense what you believe that I believe. In short, I prefer knowledge over believe.

        Secondly, it’s common knowlegde that FireFox is a browser … is a browser … is a browser … and is NOT a Virus Scanner or a Search Engine to find information stored on a hard drive.

        Last not least, nobody ever expects that a browser “scans the whole hard drive looking for files” …unless he is ignorant of common standards and widespread facts, like Mister Vaak does.

        Quote:
        “In your original comment you did not even mention the Profiles folder, […]

        In the context of discussing “userChrome.css” and “userContent.css” it’s not necessary to mention the Profiles folder explicitly, because one could assume, that anyone participating the debate knows where this files reside and what a Profiles folder is. Unless the participant is called Mister Vaak.

        Quote:
        “[…] which means you weren’t even aware of its existence, or of its use”

        Well, may I offer you this reading recommendation #comment-4411145

        Best regards

      16. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 5:14 am
        Reply

        @99: if “in the context of discussing “userChrome.css” and “userContent.css” it’s not necessary to mention the Profiles folder explicitly, because one could assume, that anyone participating the debate knows where this files reside and what a Profiles folder is.”, to quote you, then mentioning “no need to scan the hard drive”, to quote you, is an extraneous comment since “anyone participating where the files reside”, to requote you.

        In other words, mentioning “no need to scan the hard drive” cannot be made by anyone but an imposter pretending to be an expert. And only a fake expert exposed as such reacts with such violence, deceit and vulgarity to desperately try to clear their name.

        Next time you try something like that, you had better get your ducks in a row and really know what you are talking about if you want to pass for an expert.

      17. Anonymous said on May 28, 2019 at 2:07 pm
        Reply

        *In other words* …

        … mentioning “to scan the entire, complete, whole hard drive” cannot be made by anyone but an imposter pretending to be an expert.

      18. Klaas Vaak said on May 25, 2019 at 9:54 am
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack: that sums it up. What is less clear, and therefore of concern, is what is Mozilla’s strategy. Lately they have been implementing measures that are confirmation, or an indication thereof, that they care less about what makes FF unique, esp. the customisability, which can also be used to improve privacy, security, and even speed. That customisability is what in commercial terms is called a “unique selling point”, or USP.

        Whether because of strategy or for other reasons, Mozilla’s actions are/will reduce that customisability. That, in combination with nefarious activities like telemetry, already have and will continue to put users off. Now, maybe that is part of the strategy, we don’t know, but it sure reminds me of how Microsoft seems intent on putting users, esp. home users, off Windows, although that strategy, if it is one, has not been revealed as such.

        I do agree that for now FF’s USP is its customisability, which is 2nd best to none.

      19. Tom Hawack said on May 25, 2019 at 3:00 pm
        Reply

        @Klaas Vaak, I do agree with your perspective. Presently I perceive Mozilla’s strategy concerning Firefox (and possibly upcoming Thunderbird as well in July) as contradictory at times. There is obviously an effort on speed, security and privacy but meanwhile telemetry is gaining ground. If I was a lawyer defending a strategy I’d suggest that if tracking requires telemetry on the other hand telemetry is not as such systematically aimed at tracking, may be processed anonymously. The problem for us all is that this argument is the very one of most companies which deny tracking on the ground of simple, anonymous telemetry ‘to improve the user’s experience”. Who’s lying and who’s honest? As in life, hard to say without factual evidence.

        Hard to say which is why, without being cynical, I just cannot proceed otherwise than banning/disabling any form of telemetry I may find, and that includes Firefox. But what if I was mistaking?

        Concerning Firefox’s future, as you I have no idea. I guess many of us are in a wait and see position and I deplore comments which announce the worst as the best with no other evidence than their deep conviction : innocents have been sentenced to death because of deep convictions, those of the jury.

        Carpe diem. Let’s enjoy what we have, remain critic and cautious, keep the best and avoid the less good of our browsers. Tomorrows will come soon enough and then, as always, we’ll improvise and adapt. Just hoping that the great capacity of humans to adapt doesn’t mean to resign.

      20. Klaas Vaak said on May 25, 2019 at 3:56 pm
        Reply

        @Tom Hawack: +1

    4. 99 said on May 24, 2019 at 1:37 pm
      Reply

      One thing to note is that Firefox 68 is going to go out with bug 1550157, which automatically sets that pref for users that have a pre-existing userChrome.css or userContent.css file, so we expect that to help avoid annoying most people who have those types of customizations already – they shouldn’t notice a difference.
      — Mike Conley (:mconley)

      – they shouldn’t notice a difference. = there is no reason for you at all to complain.

      1. Stan said on May 24, 2019 at 10:29 pm
        Reply

        Yes there is, Mozilla have a history of speaking with forked tongue, I’m surprised the usual ‘security’ excuse wasn’t used, speed’s a new one.
        Why the hell do you think this suddenly came up, of course they’re angling to remove the option.
        Insert Pinocchio GIF here…

    5. Richard Allen said on May 24, 2019 at 1:31 pm
      Reply

      “It might go away someday, but I know of no active plans to do that.” Mike Conley @mike_conley (Mozilla software developer, FF front end)

      If userChrome.css or userContent.css are added AFTER the release of v69 then the config setting will need to be flipped to true. When my install of Nightly was updated to v69 the css files continued to work without any interaction on my part.

      Depends on the hardware but on my desktop (4 core cpu, ssd), after removing the “chrome” folder from my profile that contains the css files I’m not sure if there is Any improvement in startup time. If there is an improvement it’s less than a tenth of a second. Maybe one of the slower dual core laptops with a 5400 rpm HDD will see more of an improvement in startup times but even then I wonder what the improvement would be. Quarter of a second… more, less?

      1. Klaas Vaak said on May 28, 2019 at 6:34 pm
        Reply

        @Richard Allen: some people find that kindof “improvement” important for their user experience. I question their ability to notice that difference if they were given 2 computers, one with css on and one with no css files. With that kind of time “saving” would they be able to distinguish which one is which when FF is launched? I doubt it.

      2. Cigologic said on May 27, 2019 at 3:27 am
        Reply

        > Richard Allen: “Maybe one of the slower dual core laptops with a 5400 rpm HDD will see more of an improvement in startup times but even then I wonder what the improvement would be. Quarter of a second… more, less?”

        I’m using a 10-year-old dual-core Intel laptop with 5400 rpm HDD & 4 GB RAM. There is NO discernible change in Firefox’s launch speed, when userChrome.css & userContent.css removed from the profile folder. Which is rather disappointing after all that (hyped-up) speed speake …

        Or maybe Mozilla is being considerate to (hypothetical ?) users running Firefox on PCs common during the Windows 3.x era (1990 – 1995) ?

      3. Richard Allen said on May 24, 2019 at 1:42 pm
        Reply

        Couldn’t find it earlier but here’s the relevant tweet:
        “https://twitter.com/FirefoxNightly/status/1131287595563065344”

    6. anon said on May 24, 2019 at 12:02 pm
      Reply

      Mozilla has to balance customizability, maintenance, and user experience. Firefox will always be more customization-friendly than Chromium-based browsers.

      1. John Fenderson said on May 24, 2019 at 5:01 pm
        Reply

        @anon: “Firefox will always be more customization-friendly than Chromium-based browsers.”

        So what? Firefox is less customizable than it used to be in ways that are important to me. I don’t care about how it compares to Chromium.

      2. anon said on May 24, 2019 at 11:22 pm
        Reply

        @John Fenderson Endless and senseless customizability hinders maintenance, which then degrades the user experience. At least we still have a Firefox because they finally decided to create a new, unified, and well thought-out add-ons system.

      3. YouWhut said on July 7, 2019 at 3:48 am
        Reply

        Can we please ditch this mythical talking point that code *which you do not change* requires “maintenance”. As a coder I can tell you without equivocation it is utter nonsense.

        Furthermore Userchome is as the name suggests, code written by users.

        This is more of the “we know better than our users” garbage from Mozilla that they have spewing for the last decade that has caused their market share to shrink from ~40% to 10%. Great going. Obviously a pack of geniuses in charge there.

      4. John Fenderson said on May 28, 2019 at 5:26 pm
        Reply

        @anon: “Endless and senseless customizability hinders maintenance, which then degrades the user experience.”

        So, because of this, Mozilla has decided to just degrade the user experience up front? That makes no sense to me.

      5. Lord-Lestat said on May 26, 2019 at 9:27 pm
        Reply

        @anon

        A well thought-out add-on system which is highly limited and where you can not change much… That i would call exactly the opposite.

        The Chrome app-technology – which was not adopted by Mozilla is well thought-out – as it enables something like Vivaldi to exist. With your dear precious Webextension technology you can not even dream to create something like that.

        If Mozilla would not waste money for completely senseless projects or their try to mimic Google and their projects at every turn – there never would be the question of money issues. In the end – Mozilla values simple and Chrome users and what they expect and want higher than their origin vocal user base of power users and general feature enthusiasts these days.

        That is what Mozilla is all about in the present. Let’s stop pretending that there are other visions which have been leading to what happened and still is happening, because – let’s put Mozilla’s lies aside for once – they simply do either not exist or are not as grave as Mozilla wants to make others believe.

        How to manipulate the masses? Throw some buzzwords and ham around for which others are falling! That is what Mozilla is doing lately. And they are doing it since Australis was released in version 29!

      6. anon said on May 27, 2019 at 12:45 pm
        Reply

        What “Chrome app technology”? You mean the same one that Google already retired years ago? And WebExtensions are more capable than Chrome extensions.

        You keep insisting on this meme that Mozilla is trying to copy and catch up to Google, which is naught but pure fantasy. Just admit you don’t like to adapt to changes already, regardless of how “good” or “bad” they are, and keep using your Firefox forks that no one truly gives a damn about.

      7. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 3:56 pm
        Reply

        @anon Mozilla is in no better moral shape than the “Alternative for Germany” party or the “Austrian Freedom Party – FPOE”

        And to be simply being able to compare Mozilla with such highly questionable corrupt and moral-deprived political movements – if that is Mozilla-new’s legacy.. then god help them!

      8. Lord-Lestat said on May 27, 2019 at 3:20 pm
        Reply

        @anon Mozilla apologist speech – heard that before, seen that before.

        The technology which was used to build Vivaldi. Which also can not be done with Mozilla’s few cheap additional API – which are still a shallow remain of a once powerful tool-set for creators.

        Yeah, Mozilla wants to copy and surpass Chrome in everything, they tried with Microsoft and chanced their main target then for Chrome as soon as Google started to have huge success.

        The only difference is while Mozilla tried to beat IE with features and customization, they changed their war-concept against Chrome with “fighting on even ground” – aka adopting Chrome features and code.

        They are not only greedy, they are a lame imposter these days. And i would use every day a Firefox fork with features or if not available – Vivaldi or Otter-Browser or even Brave over Mozilla Firefox – because that guys have one benefit as compared to Mozilla.. they have respect of their own chosen primary user-group and value them while Mozilla sold them for the smallest chance of higher influence, money and success :D

        This is not a bad change, it is an idiotic one. And like the voters during the EU election, more and more people look behind Mozilla-new’s soul-less body and vote with their feet. So much to this :D

      9. anon said on May 27, 2019 at 8:43 pm
        Reply

        You keep spouting foolish nonsense and bringing up unrelated subjects for no reason.

      10. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 9:47 am
        Reply

        @anon And if it is allowed to say… Well… you rather look like a 4Chan/general troll… You could not have picked a more less meaningful and yet – at the same time fully revealing name which tells everything which is worthy to know.

      11. Lord-Lestat said on May 28, 2019 at 9:41 am
        Reply

        @anon nothing else was to expected as answer from a Mozilla apologist who applauds every single decision of this back-stabbing fake Social-Justice-Warrior developer who does everything for Chrome users these days.

        Sadly that is basically all what is Mozilla these days… Being greedy, spouting either blatant lies or half-truths and circling around their loath for and personal war with Google for which they sacrifice everything what made Firefox… Firefox – they act as they would still be the non-flawed hero which they may have been in the past – but they have been bleeding away in the last couple of years everything what made them heroic.

        And that is no personal attack, that is sadly the truth.

      12. ShintoPlasm said on May 24, 2019 at 3:35 pm
        Reply

        After removing legacy add-on support, (potentially) the .css files and the more limited amount of available APIs, how much customisation-friendly will Firefox really be?

        Also: “The organization states that not having to look for the two files on startup improves the start-up performance of the Firefox browser.”

        On a modern computer, looking for two text files in a specific folder takes an infinitesimal amount time and energy. Mozilla’s excuse for this move is beyond pathetic.

      13. Iron Heart said on May 24, 2019 at 1:11 pm
        Reply

        @anon

        Once userChrome.css is completely removed, Firefox will be less customizable than Vivaldi. Vivaldi is based on Chromium.

  33. Pedro said on May 24, 2019 at 10:40 am
    Reply

    I hope they don’t mess with this much more. I really like Firefox how it is, but I did a couple of changes to userChrome.css to make tab close buttons only visible when hovering the mouse over them (useful when you have lots of tabs open), and to give color to the bookmark folders. But there’s some really cool set-ups around.

  34. John C. said on May 24, 2019 at 10:13 am
    Reply

    Yes, I use those two files in the current release version of Firefox. And although Mozilla may not have announced any plans to remove options to load userChrome.css and userContent.css in the future, they haven’t said that they won’t either. I’m not sure if the User Scripts WebExtensions API will be a worthy alternative, but hopefully it will be.

  35. Antony said on May 24, 2019 at 9:54 am
    Reply

    For performance reasons? Well, I find that hard to believe. A lot of customization is being phased out and I don’t like that all. Currently, I use userChrome.css with just one rule to hide the menu button with the three lines in the top right corner in a portable Firefox for an elementary school, so that kids don’t screw around with it. I wish this won’t go away.

  36. FI-Flex said on May 24, 2019 at 8:56 am
    Reply

    I was scared for a second when I read the title thinking they disabled it permanently!

  37. SpywareFan said on May 24, 2019 at 8:53 am
    Reply

    Yes, Chromification is P1, not security issues like CSP… ( https://www.ghacks.net/2019/05/23/firefox-csp-issue-may-cause-extension-conflicts/ )
    And that’s only to make it harder for people who like tabs below toolbar because of startup performance? With modern hardware? And maybe with 3 conflicting extensions?
    Haha, liars.

  38. SocialMediaGrandpa said on May 24, 2019 at 8:44 am
    Reply

    It’s a great idea. Make the world’s fastest browser. By removing all functionality. Woosh.

  39. Iron Heart said on May 24, 2019 at 8:02 am
    Reply

    The first step towards its removal. The last possible method of interface customization gone, I totally don’t appreciate it.

    I hope this teaches a lesson to all those who have said: “Don’t worry, there is still userChrome.css.” when Mozilla disabled legacy add-ons. But I can imagine that those people will continue to say so until even the disabled by default preference gets removed as well.

    1. 01101001b said on June 3, 2019 at 10:06 am
      Reply

      +1

    2. Jody Thornton said on May 24, 2019 at 4:38 pm
      Reply

      @Iron Haart

      No, you won’t hear that from me. I’ve cited that I love ESR v60, but I am concerned about what change ESR v68 might bring. If I can escape the userChrome.css deprecation for eighteen more months, all the better. But I must admit the Pale Moon 28.5 has been kinda working well. And it now has the Photonic theme, so it can look like Quantum.

      1. Peterc said on May 24, 2019 at 9:40 pm
        Reply

        @Jody Thornton:

        “I must admit the Pale Moon 28.5 has been kinda working well. And it now has the Photonic theme, so it can look like Quantum.”

        Thanks for pointing this out. I’ve been using the Compact Moon theme and extension since I discovered them, and my Pale Moon still basically looks like pre-Australis Firefox (only, well, more compact, with more real estate available for content on moronically ill-conceived 16:9 laptop screens, and room for a *lot* more pinned tabs and toolbar buttons). I’m *very* happy with Compact Moon and I never check out other themes, so the Photonic theme was news to me.

        Pale Moon was already my default browser much of the time even *before* Firefox went Australis (because it was somewhat faster and much more stable), and a fully customizable pre-Australis GUI is what *I’m* used to and appreciate. But the new Photonic theme might make switching easier for more recent adopters, kind of like LibreOffice’s optional NotebookBar GUI might make switching easier for MS Office refugees who were used to the Ribbon.

        Anyway, it’s a useful tip for users who like Photon and are worried about Firefox GUI customizability eventually going away entirely.

      2. Jody Thornton said on May 29, 2019 at 1:54 pm
        Reply

        @Peterc: Never mind – I take it back

        Just look at how Moonchild treats Thandyman1957 at the bottom of this thread. Thandyman1957 has helped a lot of people on that forum. Now he expresses concern, and then gets a boat load of it from MoonMarcus. Awful treatment.

        https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&p=167907#p167907

        These guys are jerks, and I will continue to exude career-like dedication in showing it at every turn. Kind, helpful people are horribly treated by them. I hope this isn’t censored out.

      3. Peterc said on May 29, 2019 at 10:33 pm
        Reply

        In fairness, Thehandyman1957 appears to have initiated the hostility (with a parting rant) and he subsequently reciprocated and escalated it. This is possibly the worst example you could have produced. “The customer” is *not* always right.

        As for your general proposition, I don’t like incivility either and, sadly, it seems to be fairly widespread in IT circles. Many leading figures in the software industry are (or were) notorious for unhelpfully rude or hostile behavior. (Kudos to Linus Torvalds for voluntarily seeking professional help with his own “bluntness.”)

        That said, when I don’t have to work side by side with people or interact with them on a regular basis, I place a higher premium on their doing their jobs properly and not betraying my trust, and so far, Moonchild Productions has been exemplary in this regard. I’m not a coder and can’t speak to details, but based on the end result — a remarkably stable browser that does what it promises and doesn’t deliberately slip in spyware features for financial gain — they seem to be thoughtful, careful, and honest programmers.

        For what it’s worth, I’ve had a few interactions in Pale Moon’s forums with both Moonchild and Matt Tobin. They were civil and helpful in every instance. I’d like to think that this was because I tried to do my homework first (within the constraints of my *very* limited technical knowledge) so as not to waste their time, and was *myself* appropriately civil, respectful, and appreciative at all times. I’d certainly like to see their “social resilience” improve, for the sake of a friendlier online world as well as for the success of the project. Complaints about developer hostility seem to dominate potential users’ opinion of their work, with technical objections — Derivative! Single-threaded! Unsandboxed! Behind the curve in supporting new standards and protocols! — seemingly thrown in as makeweights. In particular, I’m sorry that Pale Moon has been blackballed by BSD and Solus, apparently for this reason.

        Regardless, given a choice among Chrome with its omnipresent user-tracking, Firefox with its Windows-10-caliber development and occasional sneakiness, Waterfox with its Firefox-dictated development, and Pale Moon with its sometimes rude developers, I’m sticking with Pale Moon for the immediate future. Tricked out with the extensions I like, it’s simply a markedly better browser for the kind of browsing *I* usually do.

      4. Jody Thornton said on May 29, 2019 at 1:55 pm
        Reply

        Correction – his username is “thehandyman1957”. My proper respects.

  40. Shiva said on May 24, 2019 at 7:34 am
    Reply

    I read the title of the post in the feeds and “by default” was covered by ellipsis (…). No comment in that time frame!
    My god, I’m wrong if I say that chrome folder doens’t exist after Firefox installation? So userChrome.css and userContent.css are added after by users those want to use them for specific purposes, right? Why Firefox’s Team keep me busy another neuron of my brain by disabling that setting for start-up performance? It seems to me that start-up is already optimized, or not?
    If they would commit themselves to solve the reasons why a user choose to use these files (try to guess?) it would be a step forward…

  41. Kristoff said on May 24, 2019 at 7:19 am
    Reply

    Two thoughts on this:

    1. I sincerely hope Mozilla never eliminates userChrome.css and userContent.css functionality. That functionality is at least 75% of the reason why I don’t switch to Chrome.

    2. I find it interesting that Mozilla is claiming that trying to open these two files on startup makes any noticeable difference. Why? Because, on startup, Firefox opens/creates all sorts of files and databases related to functionality that the user is likely not using. And the time duration from when the user exits Firefox to when the Firefox process actually terminates can still be measured in full seconds. In other words, they aren’t fixing what is really causing noticeable performance issues.

  42. Dave said on May 24, 2019 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    I use them, otherwise FF like like crap.

    I’m using a gaming PC FFS not some dirt cheap cell phone. I want to see pretty 3D buttons.

    1. peter said on September 5, 2019 at 12:48 pm
      Reply

      God, FF has become such an unsustainable crap. Keep fiddling with it and you will loose all users.

    2. anon said on May 24, 2019 at 11:44 am
      Reply

      It has nothing to do with mobile. Skeuomorphic design is ugly and a performance degrader.

      1. John Fenderson said on May 24, 2019 at 6:46 pm
        Reply

        @anon: “Skeuomorphic design is ugly”

        Not everyone agrees with this.

      2. Anonee said on May 25, 2019 at 12:19 am
        Reply

        @John Fenderson: “Not everyone agrees with this.”

        Not everyone disagrees with this.

      3. John Fenderson said on May 28, 2019 at 5:24 pm
        Reply

        @Anonee:

        Of course. That’s really my point — whether or not something is ugly is entirely subjective. For instance, I find pretty much the entire “modern” aesthetic in Windows 10 to be very ugly. Worse, it’s more difficult to use. Same with Google’s “Material Design”.

        That there are people who find the opposite to this is expected, and neither my opinion or theirs is incorrect.

      4. Jody Thornton said on May 26, 2019 at 7:54 pm
        Reply

        To me – I don’t hate skeuomorphic design. It was beautiful in Vista, but everyone complained that it was slow because on modest systems, the video wasn’t offloaded to the GPU. I kinda like a halfway between approach. The desktop/explorer portion of Windows 8x looks flat, but the colour-scheme seems to have a 3D-like depth to it.

        To me, the skeuomorphic type buttons and icons look old simply because it’s a “2006” thing. Flat icons “go with” 2019, if that makes any sense. For example – I hate most newer cars past 2006 or 2007, because of the high belt-lines and smaller back windows, but that’s how they make ’em

      5. Dave said on May 24, 2019 at 6:07 pm
        Reply

        It is not ugly, unless you perceive everything around you to be ugly.

        My PC has so much performance potential a skeuomorphic UI design does not degrade my performance enough to notice and…

        It totally has to do with mobile devices. They want everything to look the same and a skeuomorphic UI design would noticeably degrade the performance of those tiny wannabe PC’s and those cpu cycles are needed for far more important things like, targeted advertising and tracking your location. So they try to make the PC UI look like the mobile UI.

        They can’t make both look good so they try to make both look flat, lifeless, plain.

        PS My mobile devices look like the pads in Star Trek with every button functional, every readout realtime. It’s still flat, but at least it’s not so plain and lifeless looking.

  43. Klaas Vaak said on May 24, 2019 at 6:58 am
    Reply

    I use userChrome.css, but the setting toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets does not occur in my about:config. Does that mean I have to create it in order to ensure I can keep using userChrome.css from FF69 onwards?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on May 24, 2019 at 7:10 am
      Reply

      It will be created when you upgrade, if you use at least one of the files, it should be set to true automatically so that you don’t need to do anything.

      1. Rick said on July 14, 2020 at 1:19 am
        Reply

        I have created the userChrome.css file in folder named Chrome and also created the userContent.css. I have followed all the instructions and marked toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets as TRUE and yet when changes are made to the userChrome.css nothing happens after restart. No changes have been made ???

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